Text -- Ephesians 1:1-7 (NET)

Salutation

1:1 From Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. 1:2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

Spiritual Blessings in Christ

1:3 Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ. 1:4 For he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we may be holy and unblemished in his sight in love. 1:5 He did this by predestining us to adoption as his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the pleasure of his will– 1:6 to the praise of the glory of his grace that he has freely bestowed on us in his dearly loved Son. 1:7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per phrase)

Robertson: Eph 1:1

Of Christ Jesus ( Christou Iēsou ).

So B D, though Aleph A L have Iēsou Christou . Paul is named as the author and so he is. Otherwise the Epistle is pseudepigraphic.

Robertson: Eph 1:1

By the will of God ( dia thelēmatos theou ).

As in 1Co 1:1; 2Co 1:1; Rom 1:1.

Robertson: Eph 1:1

At Ephesus ( en Ephesōi ).

In Aleph and B these words are inserted by later hands, though both MSS. give the title Pros Ephesious . Origen explains the words tois hagiois tois ousin as meaning "the saints that are"(genuine saints), showing that his MSS. did not have the words en Ephesōi . The explanation of the insertion of these words has already been given in the remarks on "The Destination"as one copy of the general letter that was preserved in Ephesus. It is perfectly proper to call it the Epistle to the Ephesians if we understand the facts.

Robertson: Eph 1:3

Blessed ( eulogētos ).

Verbal of eulogeō , common in the lxx for Hebrew baruk (Vulgate benedictus ) and applied usually to God, sometimes to men (Gen 24:31), but in N.T. always to God (Luk 1:68), while eulogēmenos (perfect passive participle) is applied to men (Luk 1:42). "While eulogēmenos points to an isolated act or acts, eulogētos describes the intrinsic character"(Lightfoot). Instead of the usual eucharistoumen (Col 1:3) Paul here uses eulogētos , elsewhere only in 2Co 1:3 in opening, though in a doxology in Rom 1:25; Rom 9:5; 2Co 11:31. The copula here is probably estin (is), though either estō (imperative) or eiē (optative as wish) will make sense.

Robertson: Eph 1:3

The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ( ho theos kai patēr tou Kuriou hēmōn Iēsou Christou ).

Kai is genuine here, though not in Col 1:3. The one article (ho ) with theos kai patēr links them together as in 1Th 1:3; 1Th 3:11, 1Th 3:13; Gal 1:4. See also the one article in 2Pe 1:1, 2Pe 1:11. In Eph 1:17 we have ho theos tou Kuriou hēmōn Iēsou Christou , and the words of Jesus in Joh 20:17.

Robertson: Eph 1:3

Who hath blessed us ( ho eulogēsas humās ).

First aorist active participle of eulogeō , the same word, antecedent action to the doxology (eulogētos ).

Robertson: Eph 1:3

With ( en ).

So-called instrumental use of en though in is clear.

Robertson: Eph 1:3

Every spiritual blessing ( pasēi eulogiāi pneumatikēi ).

Third use of the root eulog (verbal, verb, substantive). Paul lovingly plays with the idea. The believer is a citizen of heaven and the spiritual blessings count for most to him.

Robertson: Eph 1:3

In the heavenly places in Christ ( en tois epouraniois en Christōi ).

In four other places in Ephesians (Eph 1:20; Eph 2:6; Eph 3:10; Eph 6:12). This precise phrase (with en ) occurs nowhere else in the N.T. and has a clearly local meaning in Eph 1:20; Eph 2:6; Eph 3:10, doubtful in Eph 6:12, but probably so here. In Eph 2:6 the believer is conceived as already seated with Christ. Heaven is the real abode of the citizen of Christ’ s kingdom (Phi 3:20) who is a stranger on earth (Phi 1:27; Eph 2:19). The word epouranios (heavenly) occurs in various passages in the N.T. in contrast with ta epigeia (the earthly) as in Joh 3:12; 1Co 15:40, 1Co 15:48, 1Co 15:49; Phi 2:10, with patris (country) in Heb 11:16, with klēsis (calling) in Heb 3:1, with dōrea (gift) in Heb 6:4, with basileia (kingdom) in 2Ti 4:18.

Robertson: Eph 1:4

Even as he chose us in him ( kathōs exelexato hēmās en autōi ).

First aorist middle indicative of eklegō , to pick out, to choose. Definitive statement of God’ s elective grace concerning believers in Christ.

Robertson: Eph 1:4

Before the foundation of the world ( pro katabolēs kosmou ).

Old word from kataballō , to fling down, used of the deposit of seed, the laying of a foundation. This very phrase with pro in the Prayer of Jesus (Joh 17:24) of love of the Father toward the Son. It occurs also in 1Pe 1:20. Elsewhere we have apo (from) used with it (Mat 25:34; Luk 11:50; Heb 4:3; Heb 9:26; Rev 13:8; Rev 17:8). But Paul uses neither phrase elsewhere, though he has apo tōn aiōnōn (from the ages) in Eph 3:9. Here in Eph 1:3-14. Paul in summary fashion gives an outline of his view of God’ s redemptive plans for the race.

Robertson: Eph 1:4

That we should be ( einai hēmās ).

Infinitive of purpose with the accusative of general reference (hēmās ). See note on Col 1:22 for the same two adjectives and also katenōpion autou .

Robertson: Eph 1:5

Having foreordained us ( Proorisas hēmās ).

First aorist active participle of proorizō , late and rare compound to define or decide beforehand. Already in Act 4:28; 1Co 2:7; Rom 8:29. See also Eph 1:11. Only other N.T. example in Eph 1:11. To be taken with exelexato either simultaneous or antecedent (causal).

Robertson: Eph 1:5

Unto adoption as sons ( eis huiothesian ).

For this interesting word see note on Gal 4:5 (included with discussion of Gal 4:4). Also see Rom 8:15; Rom 9:4.

Robertson: Eph 1:5

Unto himself ( eis auton ).

Unto God.

Robertson: Eph 1:5

According to the good pleasure of his will ( kata tēn eudokian tou thelēmatos autou ).

Here eudokian means purpose like boulēn in Eph 1:11 rather than benevolence (good pleasure). Note the preposition kata here for standard.

Robertson: Eph 1:6

To the praise ( eis epainon ).

Note the prepositions in this sentence.

Robertson: Eph 1:6

Which ( hēs ).

Genitive case of the relative hēn (cognate accusative with echaritōsen (he freely bestowed), late verb charitoō (from charis , grace), in N.T. attracted to case of antecedent charitos only here and Luk 1:28.

Robertson: Eph 1:6

In the Beloved ( en tōi ēgapēmenōi ).

Perfect passive participle of agapaō . This phrase nowhere else in the N.T. though in the Apostolic Fathers.

Robertson: Eph 1:7

In whom ( en hōi ).

Just like Col 1:14 with paraptōmatōn (trespasses) in place of hamartiōn (sins) and with the addition of dia tou haimatos autou (through his blood) as in Col 1:20. Clearly Paul makes the blood of Christ the cost of redemption, the ransom money (lutron , Mat 20:28; Mar 10:45; antilutron , 1Ti 2:6). See note on Col 1:9.

Vincent: Eph 1:1

By the will of God

As frequently in the introductions of the epistles, to emphasize his divine appointment. In Rom 1:1; 1Co 1:1, called is added.

Vincent: Eph 1:1

To the saints

See on Rom 1:7; see on Col 1:2; see on Phi 1:1.

Vincent: Eph 1:1

At Ephesus

There is much discussion as to the genuineness of these words. They are bracketed by both Westcott and Hort, and Tischendorf. On their omission or retention turns the question whether the epistle was addressed to the church at Ephesus, or was a circular epistle, addressed to Ephesus along with several other churches. For Ephesus , see on Rev 2:1.

Vincent: Eph 1:2

Grace

One of the leading words of the epistle. It is used thirteen times.

Vincent: Eph 1:3

Blessed ( εὐλογητὸς )

Placed first in the clause for emphasis, as always in the corresponding Hebrew in the Old Testament. The verb is commonly omitted - blessed the God . In the New Testament used of God only. The perfect participle of the verb, εὐλογημένος blessed , is used of men. See on 1Pe 1:3. The word differs from that used in the Beatitudes, μακάριος . which denotes character , while this word denotes repute . Lit., well-spoken of .

Vincent: Eph 1:3

God and Father of our Lord, etc.

Some object to this rendering on the ground that the phrase God of Christ is unusual, occurring nowhere in Paul, except Eph 1:17 of this chapter. Such render, God who is also the Father , etc. But Christ of God is found Mat 27:46; and my God , Joh 20:17; Rev 3:12. Compare, also, 1Co 3:23; and the phrase is undoubted in Eph 1:17.

Vincent: Eph 1:3

Hath blessed ( εὐλογήσας )

Kindred with εὐλογητὸς blessed .

Vincent: Eph 1:3

Spiritual ( πνευματικῇ )

Another leading word. Spirit and spiritual occur thirteen times. Paul emphasizes in this epistle the work of the divine Spirit upon the human spirit. Not spiritual as distinguished from bodily, but proceeding from the Holy Spirit . Note the collocation of the words, blessed , blessed , blessing .

Vincent: Eph 1:3

In the heavenly places ( ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις )

Another keyword; one of the dominant thoughts of the epistle being the work of the ascended Christ. Places is supplied, the Greek meaning in the heavenlies . Some prefer to supply things , as more definitely characterizing spiritual blessing . But in the four other passages where the phrase occurs, Eph 1:20; Eph 2:6; Eph 3:10; Eph 6:12, the sense is local, and ἐπουράνιος heavenly , is local throughout Paul's epistles. The meaning is that the spiritual blessings of God are found in heaven and are brought thence to us. Compare Phi 3:20.

Vincent: Eph 1:4

Even as ( καθὼς )

Explaining blessed us , in Eph 1:3. His blessing is in conformity with the fact that He chose.

Vincent: Eph 1:4

Chose ( ἐξελέξατο )

Middle voice, for himself .

Vincent: Eph 1:4

In Him

As the head and representative of our spiritual humanity. Compare 1Co 15:22. Divine election is in Christ the Redeemer. The crown of divine sovereignty is redemption. God rules the world to save it.

Vincent: Eph 1:4

Holy and without blame ( ἁγίους καὶ ἀμώμους )

The positive and negative aspects of christian life. See on Col 1:22. Rev., without blemish . The reference is to moral rather than to forensic righteousness. Compare 1Th 4:7.

Vincent: Eph 1:4

In love

Join with foreordained , Eph 1:5. Having in love foreordained .

Vincent: Eph 1:5

Having predestinated ( προορίσας )

Rev. foreordained . From πρό before , ὁρίζω to define , the latter word being from ὅπος a boundary . Hence to define or determine beforehand .

Vincent: Eph 1:5

Adoption ( υἱοθεσίαν )

See on Rom 8:15. Never used of Christ.

Vincent: Eph 1:5

Good pleasure ( εὐδοκίαν )

Not strictly in the sense of kindly or friendly feeling , as Luk 2:14; Phi 1:15, but because it pleased Him , see Luk 10:21; Mat 11:26. The other sense, however, is included and implied, and is expressed by in love .

Vincent: Eph 1:6

To the praise of the glory of His grace

The ultimate aim of foreordained . Glory is an attribute of grace: that in which grace grandly and resplendently displays itself. Praise is called forth from the children of God by this divine glory which thus appears in grace. The grace is not merely favor , gift , but it reveals also the divine character. In praising God for what He does, we learn to praise Him for what He is. Glory is another of the ruling words of the epistle, falling into the same category with riches and fullness . The apostle is thrilled with a sense of the plenitude and splendor of the mystery of redemption.

Vincent: Eph 1:6

Wherein He hath made us accepted ( ἐν ᾗ ἐχαρίτωσεν ἡμᾶς )

The correct reading is ἧς which , referring to grace . The meaning is not endued us with grace , nor made us worthy of love , but, as Rev., grace - which he freely bestowed . Grace is an act of God, not a state into which He brings us.

Vincent: Eph 1:6

The beloved

Christ. Beloved par excellence . Compare the Son of His love , Col 1:13; also Mat 3:17; Mat 17:5.

Vincent: Eph 1:7

We have

Or are having . The freely bestowed (Eph 1:6) is thus illustrated by experience. The divine purpose is being accomplished in the lives of believers.

Vincent: Eph 1:7

Redemption ( τὴν ἀπολύτρωσιν )

See on Rom 3:24. Note the article: our redemption.

Vincent: Eph 1:7

Through His blood

Further defining and explaining in whom .

Vincent: Eph 1:7

Forgiveness ( ἄφεσιν )

See on Luk 3:3; see on Jam 5:15; see on Rom 3:25. Forgiveness specifies the peculiar quality of redemption.

Vincent: Eph 1:7

Sins ( παραπτωμάτων )

Rev., better, trespasses . See on Mat 6:14.

Vincent: Eph 1:7

Riches

See on glory , Eph 1:6, and Rom 2:4.

Wesley: Eph 1:1

Not by any merit of my own.

Wesley: Eph 1:1

And in all the adjacent places. For this epistle is not directed to the Ephesians only, but likewise to all the other churches of Asia.

Wesley: Eph 1:3

God's blessing us is his bestowing all spiritual and heavenly blessings upon us. Our blessing God is the paying him our solemn and grateful acknowledgments, both on account of his own essential blessedness, and of the blessings which he bestows upon us. He is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, as man and Mediator: he is his Father, primarily, with respect to his divine nature, as his only begotten Son; and, secondarily, with respect to his human nature, as that is personally united to the divine.

Wesley: Eph 1:3

With all manner of spiritual blessings, which are heavenly in their nature, original, and tendency, and shall be completed in heaven: far different from the external privileges of the Jews, and the earthly blessings they expected from the Messiah.

Wesley: Eph 1:4

Both Jews and gentiles, whom he foreknew as believing in Christ, 1Pe 1:2.

Wesley: Eph 1:5

Having foreordained that all who afterwards believed should enjoy the dignity of being sons of God, and joint - heirs with Christ.

Wesley: Eph 1:5

According to his free, fixed, unalterable purpose to confer this blessing on all those who should believe in Christ, and those only.

Wesley: Eph 1:6

His glorious, free love without any desert on our part.

Wesley: Eph 1:7

Who believe.

Wesley: Eph 1:7

From the moment we believe.

Wesley: Eph 1:7

From the guilt and power of sin.

Wesley: Eph 1:7

Through what he hath done and suffered for us.

Wesley: Eph 1:7

According to the abundant overflowings of his free mercy and favour.

JFB: Eph 1:1

Rather, "through the will of God": called to the apostleship through that same "will" which originated the Church (Eph 1:5, Eph 1:9, Eph 1:11; compare Gal 1:4).

JFB: Eph 1:1

(See Introduction.)

JFB: Eph 1:1

The same persons are referred to by both designations, as the Greek proves: "to those who are saints, and faithful in Christ Jesus." The sanctification by God is here put before man's faith. The twofold aspect of salvation is thus presented, God's grace in the first instance sanctifying us, (that is, setting us apart in His eternal purposes as holy unto Himself); and our faith, by God's gift, laying hold of salvation (2Th 2:13; 1Pe 1:2).

JFB: Eph 1:2

(Rom 1:7; 1Co 1:3; 2Co 1:2; Gal 1:3).

JFB: Eph 1:3

The doxologies in almost all the Epistles imply the real sense of grace experienced by the writers and their readers (1Pe 1:3). Eph 1:3-14 sets forth summarily the Gospel of the grace of God: the FATHER'S work of love, Eph 1:3 (choosing us to holiness, Eph 1:4; to sonship, Eph 1:5; to acceptance, Eph 1:6): the SON'S, Eph 1:7 (redemption, Eph 1:7; knowledge of the mystery of His will, Eph 1:9; an inheritance, Eph 1:11); the HOLY SPIRIT'S, Eph 1:13 (sealing, Eph 1:13; giving an earnest of the inheritance, Eph 1:14).

JFB: Eph 1:3

And so the God and Father of us who are in Him (Joh 20:17). God is "the God" of the man Jesus, and "the Father" of the Divine Word. The Greek is, "Blessed us," not "hath blessed us"; referring to the past original counsel of God. As in creation (Gen 1:22) so in redemption (Gen 12:3; Mat 5:3-11; Mat 25:34) God "blesses" His children; and that not in mere words, but in acts.

JFB: Eph 1:3

All Christians.

JFB: Eph 1:3

Greek, "blessing." "All," that is, "every possible blessing for time and eternity, which the Spirit has to bestow" (so "spiritual" means; not "spiritual," as the term is now used, as opposed to bodily).

JFB: Eph 1:3

A phrase five times found in this Epistle, and not elsewhere (Eph 1:20; Eph 2:6; Eph 3:10; Eph 6:12); Greek, "in the heavenly places." Christ's ascension is the means of introducing us into the heavenly places, which by our sin were barred against us. Compare the change made by Christ (Col 1:20; Eph 1:20). While Christ in the flesh was in the form of a servant, God's people could not realize fully their heavenly privileges as sons. Now "our citizenship (Greek) is in heaven" (Phi 3:20), where our High Priest is ever "blessing" us. Our "treasures" are there (Mat 6:20-21); our aims and affections (Col 3:1-2); our hope (Col 1:5; Tit 2:13); our inheritance (1Pe 1:4). The gift of the Spirit itself, the source of the "spiritual blessing," is by virtue of Jesus having ascended thither (Eph 4:8).

JFB: Eph 1:3

The center and source of all blessing to us.

JFB: Eph 1:4

Greek, "chose us out for Himself" (namely, out of the world, Gal 1:4): referring to His original choice, spoken of as past.

JFB: Eph 1:4

The repetition of the idea, "in Christ" (Eph 1:3), implies the paramount importance of the truth that it is in Him, and by virtue of union to Him, the Second Adam, the Restorer ordained for us from everlasting, the Head of redeemed humanity, believers have all their blessings (Eph 3:11).

JFB: Eph 1:4

This assumes the eternity of the Son of God (Joh 17:5, Joh 17:24), as of the election of believers in Him (2Ti 1:9; 2Th 2:13).

JFB: Eph 1:4

Positively (Deu 14:2).

JFB: Eph 1:4

Negatively (Eph 5:27; 1Th 3:13).

JFB: Eph 1:4

It is to Him the believer looks, walking as in His presence, before whom he looks to be accepted in the judgment (Col 1:22; compare Rev 7:15).

JFB: Eph 1:4

Joined by BENGEL and others with Eph 1:5, "in love having predestinated us," &c. But English Version is better. The words qualify the whole clause, "that we should be holy . . . before Him." Love, lost to man by the fall, but restored by redemption, is the root and fruit and sum of all holiness (Eph 5:2; 1Th 3:12-13).

JFB: Eph 1:5

More special in respect to the end and precise means, than "chosen" or elected. We are "chosen" out of the rest of the world; "predestinated" to all things that secure the inheritance for us (Eph 1:11; Rom 8:29). "Foreordained."

JFB: Eph 1:5

Greek, "through Jesus."

JFB: Eph 1:5

The Father (Col 1:20). ALFORD explains, "adoption . . . into Himself," that is, so that we should be partakers of the divine nature (2Pe 1:4). LACHMANN reads, "unto Him." The context favors the explanation of CALVIN: God has regard to Himself and the glory of His grace (Eph 1:6, Eph 1:12, Eph 1:14) as His ultimate end. He had one only-begotten Son, and He was pleased for His own glory, to choose out of a lost world many to become His adopted sons. Translate, "unto Himself."

JFB: Eph 1:5

So the Greek (Mat 11:26; Luk 10:21). We cannot go beyond "the good pleasure of His will" in searching into the causes of our salvation, or of any of His works (Eph 1:9). (Job 33:13.) Why needest thou philosophize about an imaginary world of optimism? Thy concern is to take heed that thou be not bad. There was nothing in us which deserved His love (Eph 1:1, Eph 1:9, Eph 1:11) [BENGEL].

JFB: Eph 1:6

(Eph 1:7, Eph 1:17-18). The end aimed at (Psa 50:23), that is, that the glory of His grace may be praised by all His creatures, men and angels.

JFB: Eph 1:6

Some of the oldest manuscripts read, "which." Then translate, "which He graciously bestowed on us." But English Version is supported by good manuscripts and the oldest versions.

JFB: Eph 1:6

A kindred Greek word to "grace": charitos, echaritosen: translate, "graciously accepted"; "made us subjects of His grace"; "embraced us in the arms of His grace" (Rom 3:24; Rom 5:15).

JFB: Eph 1:6

Pre-eminently so called (Mat 3:17; Mat 17:5; Joh 3:35; Col 1:13). Greek, "Son of His love." It is only "IN HIS BELOVED" that He loves us (Eph 1:3; 1Jo 4:9-10).

JFB: Eph 1:7

"the Beloved" (Eph 1:6; Rom 3:24).

JFB: Eph 1:7

As a present possession.

JFB: Eph 1:7

Greek, "our (literally, 'the') redemption"; THE redemption which is the grand subject of all revelation, and especially of the New Testament (Rom 3:24), namely, from the power, guilt, and penal consequences of sin (Mat 1:21). If a man were unable to redeem himself from being a bond-servant, his kinsman might redeem him (Lev 25:48). Hence, antitypically the Son of God became the Son of man, that as our kinsman He might redeem us (Mat 20:28). Another "redemption" follows, namely, that "of the purchased possession" hereafter (Eph 1:14).

JFB: Eph 1:7

(Eph 2:13); as the instrument; the propitiation, that is, the consideration (devised by His own love) for which He, who was justly angry (Isa 12:1), becomes propitious to us; the expiation, the price paid to divine justice for our sin (Act 20:28; Rom 3:25; 1Co 6:20; Col 1:20; 1Pe 1:18-19).

JFB: Eph 1:7

Greek, "the remission of our transgressions": not merely "pretermission," as the Greek (Rom 3:25) ought to be translated. This "remission," being the explanation of "redemption," includes not only deliverance from sin's penalty, but from its pollution and enslaving power, negatively; and the reconciliation of an offended God, and a satisfaction unto a just God, positively.

JFB: Eph 1:7

(Eph 2:7); "the exceeding riches of His grace." Compare Eph 1:18; Eph 3:16, "according to the riches of His glory": so that "grace" is His "glory."

Clarke: Eph 1:1

To the saints which are at Ephesus - As some learned men think that this epistle was written to the Church of the Laodiceans, and that the words εν Εφεσῳ, in Ephesus, were not originally in this epistle, the consideration of the subject has appeared to be more proper for the preface; and to that the reader is referred for a particular discussion of this opinion. By the term saints we are to understand those who in that place professed Christianity, and were members of the Christian Church. Saint properly signifies a holy person, and such the Gospel of Christ requires every man to be, and such every true believer is, both in heart and life; but saint appears to have been as ordinary a denomination of a believer in Christ in those primitive times, as the term Christian is now. Yet many had the name who had not the thing

Clarke: Eph 1:1

The faithful in Christ Jesus - Πιστοις· the believers - the persons who received Christ as the promised Messiah, and the Savior of the world, and continued in the grace which they had received.

Clarke: Eph 1:2

Grace be to you - See the note on Rom 1:7.

Clarke: Eph 1:3

Blessed be the God - See the note on 2Co 1:3, where the same form is used

Clarke: Eph 1:3

With all spiritual blessings - With the pure doctrines of the Gospel, and the abundant gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost, justifying, sanctifying, and building us up on our most holy faith

Clarke: Eph 1:3

In heavenly places - Εν τοις επουρανιοις· In heavenly things, such as those mentioned above; they were not yet in heavenly places, but they had abundance of heavenly things to prepare them for heavenly places. Some think the word should be understood as signifying blessings of the most exalted or excellent kind, such as are spiritual in opposition to those that are earthly, such as are eternal in opposition to those that are temporal; and all these in, through and by Christ. We have already seen, on Gal 4:26, that the heavenly Jerusalem, or Jerusalem which is from above, is used by the Jews to signify the days of the Messiah, and that state of grace and glory which should follow the Levitical worship and ceremonies; and it is possible that St. Paul may use the word επουρανια, heavenly things, in this sense: God hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly things, or in this heavenly state, in which life and immortality are brought to light by the Gospel. This is apparently the preferable sense.

Clarke: Eph 1:4

According as he hath chosen us in him - As he has decreed from the beginning of the world, and has kept in view from the commencement of the religious system of the Jews, (which the phrase sometimes means), to bring us Gentiles to the knowledge of this glorious state of salvation by Christ Jesus. The Jews considered themselves an elect or chosen people, and wished to monopolize the whole of the Divine love and beneficence. The apostle here shows that God had the Gentiles as much in the contemplation of his mercy and goodness as he had the Jews; and the blessings of the Gospel, now so freely dispensed to them, were the proof that God had thus chosen them, and that his end in giving them the Gospel was the same which he had in view by giving the law to the Jews, viz. that they might be holy and without blame before him. And as his object was the same in respect to them both, they should consider that, as he loved them, so they should love one another: God having provided for each the same blessings, they should therefore be ἁγιους, holy - fully separated from earth and sin, and consecrated to God and αμωμους, without blame - having no spot nor imperfection, their inward holiness agreeing with their outward consecration. The words are a metaphor taken from the perfect and immaculate sacrifices which the law required the people to bring to the altar of God. But as love is the fulfilling of the law, and love the fountain whence their salvation flowed, therefore love must fill their hearts towards God and each other, and love must be the motive and end of all their words and works.

Clarke: Eph 1:5

Having predestinated us - Προορισας . As the doctrine of eternal predestination has produced much controversy in the Christian world, it may be necessary to examine the meaning of the term, that those who do use it may employ it according to the sense it has in the oracles of God. The verb προοριζω, from προ, before, and ὁριζω, I define, finish, bound, or terminate, whence ὁρος, a boundary or limit, signifies to define beforehand, and circumscribe by certain bounds or limits; and is originally a geographical term, but applied also to any thing concluded, or determined, or demonstrated. Here the word is used to point out God’ s fixed purpose or predetermination to bestow on the Gentiles the blessing of the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ, which adoption had been before granted to the Jewish people; and without circumcision, or any other Mosaic rite, to admit the Gentiles to all the privileges of his Church and people. And the apostle marks that all this was fore-determined by God, as he had fore-determined the bounds and precincts of the land which he gave them according to the promise made to their fathers; that the Jews had no reason to complain, for God had formed this purpose before he had given the law, or called them out of Egypt; (for it was before the foundation of the world, Eph 1:4); and that, therefore, the conduct of God in calling the Gentiles now - bringing them into his Church, and conferring on them the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, was in pursuance of his original design; and, if he did not do so, his eternal purposes could not be fulfilled; and that, as the Jews were taken to be his peculiar people, not because they had any goodness or merit in themselves; so the Gentiles were called, not for any merit they had, but according to the good pleasure of his will; that is, according to his eternal benevolence, showing mercy and conferring privileges in this new creation, as he had done in the original creation; for as, in creating man, he drew every consideration from his own innate eternal benevolence, so now, in redeeming man, and sending the glad tidings of salvation both to the Jews and the Gentiles, be acted on the same principles, deriving all the reasons of his conduct from his own infinite goodness

This argument was exceedingly conclusive, and must silence the Jews on the ground of their original, primitive, and exclusive rights, which they were ever ready to plead against all pretensions of the Gentiles. If therefore God, before the foundation of the Jewish economy, had determined that the Gentiles, in the fullness of time, should be called to and admitted into all the privileges of the Messiah’ s kingdom, then the exclusive salvation of the Jews was chimerical; and what God was doing now, by the preaching of the apostles in the Gentile world, was in pursuance of his original design. This same argument St. Paul repeatedly produces in his Epistle to the Romans; and a proper consideration of it unlocks many difficulties in that epistle. See the notes on Rom 8:29, Rom 8:30 (note); and elsewhere, in the course of that epistle, where this subject is handled. But why is the word προορισας, fore-determined, limited, or circumscribed, used here? Merely in reference to the settlement of the Israelites in the promised land. God assigned to them the portions which they were to inherit; and these portions were described, and their bearings, boundaries, vicinities to other portions, extent and length, as exactly ascertained as they could be by the most correct geographical map. As God, therefore, had dealt with the Jews in making them his peculiar people, and when he divided the earth among the sons of Noah reserved to himself the twelve portions which he afterwards gave to the twelve tribes; (see on Deu 32:8 (note)); and as his dealings with them were typical of what he intended to do in the calling and salvation of the Gentiles; so he uses the terms by which their allotment and settlement were pointed out to show that, what he had thus designed and typified, he had now fulfilled according to the original predetermination; the Gentiles having now the spiritual inheritance which God had pointed out by the grant made of the promised land to the children of Israel. This is the grand key by which this predestination business is unlocked. See on Eph 1:11 (note).

Clarke: Eph 1:6

To the praise of the glory of his grace - Δοξης της χαριτος αὑτου· The glory of his grace, for χαρις ενδοξος, his glorious or illustrious grace, according to the Hebrew idiom. But the grace or mercy of God is peculiarly illustrated and glorified in the plan of redemption by Christ Jesus. By the giving of the Law, God’ s justice and holiness were rendered most glorious; by the giving of the Gospel, his grace and mercy are made equally conspicuous

Clarke: Eph 1:6

Wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved - This translation of εν ᾑ εχαριτωσεν ἡμας εν τῳ Ηγαπημενῳ is not clear; with which he has graciously favored us through the Beloved, is at once more literal and more intelligible. Whitby, Macknight, and Wakefield translate the passage in nearly the same way

In the Beloved must certainly mean in Christ, who is termed God’ s beloved Son, Mat 3:17; but several excellent MSS., such as D*EFG, the later Syriac, the Ethiopic, Vulgate, Itala, with several of the fathers, add, υιῳ αυτου, his beloved Son. This is the meaning, whether the reading be received or rejected.

Clarke: Eph 1:7

In whom we have redemption - God has glorified his grace by giving us redemption by the blood of his Son, and this redemption consists in forgiving and delivering us from our sins; so then Christ’ s blood was the redemption price paid down for our salvation: and this was according to the riches of his grace; as his grace is rich or abundant in benevolence, so it was manifested in beneficence to mankind, in their redemption by the sacrifice of Christ, the measure of redeeming grace being the measure of God’ s own eternal goodness

It may not be useless to remark that, instead of της χαριτος αυτου, his grace, the Codex Alexandrinus and the Coptic version have της χρηστοτητος, his goodness.

Calvin: Eph 1:1

1.Paul, an apostle As the same form of salutation, or at least very little varied, is found in all the Epistles, it would be superfluous to repeat here the observations which we have formerly made. He calls himself “an apostle of Jesus Christ;” for all to whom has been given the ministry of reconciliation are his ambassadors. The word Apostle, indeed, carries something more; for it is not every minister of the gospel, as we shall afterwards see, (Eph 4:11,) that can be called an apostle. But this subject has been explained more fully in my remarks on the Epistle to the Galatians. (See Calvin on “Gal 1:1 ”)

He adds, by the will of God; for “no man ought to take this honor unto himself,” (Heb 5:4,) but every man ought to wait for the calling of God, which alone makes lawful ministers. He thus meets the jeers of wicked men by holding out the authority of God, and removes every occasion of inconsiderate strife.

To all the saints He gives the name of saints to those whom he afterwards denominates faithful in Christ Jesus. No man, therefore, is a believer who is not also a saint; and, on the other hand, no man is a saint who is not a believer. Most of the Greek copies want the word all; but I was unwilling to strike it out, because it must, at all events, be understood.

Calvin: Eph 1:3

3.Blessed ¹⁰⁸ be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The lofty terms in which he extolls the grace of God toward the Ephesians, are intended to rouse their hearts to gratitude, to set them all on flame, to fill them even to overflowing with this thought. They who perceive in themselves discoveries of the Divine goodness, so full and absolutely perfect, and who make them the subject of earnest meditation, will never embrace new doctrines, by which the very grace which they feel so powerfully in themselves is thrown into the shade. The design of the apostle, therefore, in asserting the riches of divine grace toward the Ephesians, was to protect them against having their faith shaken by the false apostles, as if their calling were doubtful, or salvation were to be sought in some other way. He shews, at the same time, that the full certainty of future happiness rests on the revelation of his love to us in Christ, which God makes in the gospel. But to confirm the matter more fully, he rises to the first cause, to the fountain, — the eternal election of God, by which, ere we are born, (Rom 9:11,) we are adopted as sons. This makes it evident that their salvation was accomplished, not by any accidental or unlooked-for occurrence, but by the eternal and unchangeable decree of God.

The word bless is here used in more than one sense, as referring to God, and as referring to men. I find in Scripture four different significations of this word. 1. We are said to bless God when we offer praise to him for his goodness. 2. God is said to bless us, when he crowns our undertakings with success, and, in the exercise of his goodness, bestows upon us happiness and prosperity; and the reason is, that our enjoyments depend entirely upon his pleasure. Our attention is here called to the singular efficacy which dwells in the very word of God, and which Paul expresses in beautiful language. 3. Men bless each other by prayer. 4. The priest’s blessing is not simply a prayer, but is likewise a testimony and pledge of the Divine blessing; for the priests received a commission to bless in the name of the Lord. Paul therefore blesses God, because he hath blessed us, that is, hath enriched us with all blessing and grace.

With all spiritual blessings I have no objection to Chrysostom’s remark, that the word spiritual conveys an implied contrast between the blessing of Moses and of Christ. The law had its blessings; but in Christ only is perfection found, because he gives us a perfect revelation of the kingdom of God, which leads us directly to heaven. When the body itself is presented to us, figures are no longer needed.

In heavenly Whether we understand the meaning to be, in heavenly Places, or in heavenly Benefits, is of little consequence. All that was intended to be expressed is the superiority of that grace which we receive through Christ. The happiness which it bestows is not in this world, but in heaven and everlasting life. In the Christian religion, indeed, as we are elsewhere taught, (1Ti 4:8,) is contained the “promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come;” but its aim is spiritual happiness, for the kingdom of Christ is spiritual. A contrast is drawn between Christ and all the Jewish emblems, by which the blessing under the law was conveyed; for where Christ is, all those things are superfluous.

Calvin: Eph 1:4

4.According as he hath chosen us The foundation and first cause, both of our calling and of all the benefits which we receive from God, is here declared to be his eternal election. If the reason is asked, why God has called us to enjoy the gospel, why he daily bestows upon us so many blessings, why he opens to us the gate of heaven, — the answer will be constantly found in this principle, that he hath chosen us before the foundation of the world. The very time when the election took place proves it to be free; for what could we have deserved, or what merit did we possess, before the world was made? How childish is the attempt to meet this argument by the following sophism! “We were chosen because we were worthy, and because God foresaw that we would be worthy.” We were all lost in Adam; and therefore, had not God, through his own election, rescued us from perishing, there was nothing to be foreseen. The same argument is used in the Epistle to the Romans, where, speaking of Jacob and Esau, he says,

“For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.” (Rom 9:11.)

But though they had not yet acted, might a sophist of the Sorbonne reply, God foresaw that they would act. This objection has no force when applied to the depraved natures of men, in whom nothing can be seen but materials for destruction.

In Christ This is the second proof that the election is free; for if we are chosen in Christ, it is not of ourselves. It is not from a perception of anything that we deserve, but because our heavenly Father has introduced us, through the privilege of adoption, into the body of Christ. In short, the name of Christ excludes all merit, and everything which men have of their own; for when he says that we are chosen in Christ, it follows that in ourselves we are unworthy.

That we should be holy This is the immediate, but not the chief design; for there is no absurdity in supposing that the same thing may gain two objects. The design of building is, that there should be a house. This is the immediate design, but the convenience of dwelling in it is the ultimate design. It was necessary to mention this in passing; for we shall immediately find that Paul mentions another design, the glory of God. But there is no contradiction here; for the glory of God is the highest end, to which our sanctification is subordinate.

This leads us to conclude, that holiness, purity, and every excellence that is found among men, are the fruit of election; so that once more Paul expressly puts aside every consideration of merit. If God had foreseen in us anything worthy of election, it would have been stated in language the very opposite of what is here employed, and which plainly means that all our holiness and purity of life flow from the election of God. How comes it then that some men are religious, and live in the fear of God, while others give themselves up without reserve to all manner of wickedness? If Paul may be believed, the only reason is, that the latter retain their natural disposition, and the former have been chosen to holiness. The cause, certainly, is not later than the effect. Election, therefore, does not depend on the righteousness of works, of which Paul here declares that it is the cause.

We learn also from these words, that election gives no occasion to licentiousness, or to the blasphemy of wicked men who say, “Let us live in any manner we please; for, if we have been elected, we cannot perish.” Paul tells them plainly, that they have no right to separate holiness of life from the grace of election; for

“whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified.” (Rom 8:30.)

The inference, too, which the Catharists, Celestines, and Donatists drew from these words, that we may attain perfection in this life, is without foundation. This is the goal to which the whole course of our life must be directed, and we shall not reach it till we have finished our course. Where are the men who dread and avoid the doctrine of predestination as an inextricable labyrinth, who believe it to be useless and almost dangerous? No doctrine is more useful, provided it be handled in the proper and cautious manner, of which Paul gives us an example, when he presents it as an illustration of the infinite goodness of God, and employs it as an excitement to gratitude. This is the true fountain from which we must draw our knowledge of the divine mercy. If men should evade every other argument, election shuts their mouth, so that they dare not and cannot claim anything for themselves. But let us remember the purpose for which Paul reasons about predestination, lest, by reasoning with any other view, we fall into dangerous errors.

Before him it love Holiness before God (κατενώπιον αὐτοῦ) is that of a pure conscience; for God is not deceived, as men are, by outward pretense, but looks to faith, or, which means the same thing, the truth of the heart. If we view the word love as applied to God, the meaning will be, that the only reason why he chose us, was his love to men. But I prefer connecting it with the latter part of the verse, as denoting that the perfection of believers consists in love; not that God requires love alone, but that it is an evidence of the fear of God, and of obedience to the whole law.

Calvin: Eph 1:5

5.Who hath predestinated us What follows is intended still further to heighten the commendation of divine grace. The reason why Paul inculcated so earnestly on the Ephesians the doctrines of free adoption through Christ, and of the eternal election which preceded it, has been already considered. But as the mercy of God is nowhere acknowledged in more elevated language, this passage will deserve our careful attention. Three causes of our salvation are here mentioned, and a fourth is shortly afterwards added. The efficient cause is the good pleasure of the will of God, the material cause is, Jesus Christ, and the final cause is, the praise of the glory of his grace. Let us now see what he says respecting each.

To the first belongs the whole of the following statement God hath predestinated us in himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, unto the adoption of sons, and hath made us accepted by his grace. In the word predestinate we must again attend to the order. We were not then in existence, and therefore there was no merit of ours. The cause of our salvation did not proceed from us, but from God alone. Yet Paul, not satisfied with these statements, adds in himself. The Greek phrase is, εἰς αὑτὸν, and has the same meaning with ἐν αὑτῷ. By this he means that God did not seek a cause out of himself, but predestinated us, because such was his will.

But this is made still more clear by what follows, according to the good pleasure of his will. The word will was enough, for Paul very frequently contrasts it with all outward causes by which men are apt to imagine that the mind of God is influenced. But that no doubt may remain, he employs the word good pleasure, which expressly sets aside all merit. In adopting us, therefore, God does not inquire what we are, and is not reconciled to us by any personal worth. His single motive is the eternal good pleasure, by which he predestinated us. ¹⁰⁹ Why, then, are the sophists not ashamed to mingle with them other considerations, when Paul so strongly forbids us to look at anything else than the good pleasure of God?

Lest anything should still be wanting, he adds, ἐχαρίτωσεν ἐν χάριτι ¹¹⁰ This intimates, that, in the freest manner, and on no mercenary grounds, does God bestow upon us his love and favor, just as, when we were not yet born, and when he was prompted by nothing but his own will, he fixed upon us his choice. ¹¹¹

The material cause both of eternal election, and of the love which is now revealed, is Christ, the Beloved. This name is given, to remind us that by him the love of God is communicated to us. Thus he is the well-beloved, in order that we may be reconciled by him. The highest and last end is immediately added, the glorious praise of such abundant grace. Every man, therefore, who hides this glory, is endeavoring to overturn the everlasting purpose of God. Such is the doctrine of the sophists, which entirely overturns the doctrine of Christ, lest the whole glory of our salvation should be ascribed undividedly to God alone.

Calvin: Eph 1:7

7.In whom we have redemption The apostle is still illustrating the material cause, — the manner in which we are reconciled to God through Christ. By his death he has restored us to favor with the Father; and therefore we ought always to direct our minds to the blood of Christ, as the means by which we obtain divine grace. After mentioning that, through the blood of Christ, we obtain redemption, he immediately styles it the forgiveness of sins, — to intimate that we are redeemed, because our sins are not imputed to us. Hence it follows, that we obtain by free grace that righteousness by which we are accepted of God, and freed from the chains of the devil and of death. The close connection which is here preserved, between our redemption itself and the manner in which it is obtained, deserves our notice; for, so long as we remain exposed to the judgment of God, we are bound by miserable chains, and therefore our exemption from guilt, becomes an invaluable freedom.

According to the riches of his grace He now returns to the efficient cause, — the largeness of the divine kindness, which has given Christ to us as our Redeemer. Riches, and the corresponding word overflow, in the following verse, are intended to give us large views of divine grace. The apostle feels himself unable to celebrate, in a proper manner, the goodness of God, and desires that the contemplation of it would occupy the minds of men till they are entirely lost in admiration. How desirable is it that men were deeply impressed with “the riches of that grace” which is here commended! No place would any longer be found for pretended satisfactions, or for those trifles by which the world vainly imagines that it can redeem itself; as if the blood of Christ, when unsupported by additional aid, had lost all its efficacy. ¹¹²

Defender: Eph 1:1

Unlike the other Pauline epistles, there are few, if any, references to individuals or to local church problems in Ephesians. Nevertheless, strong confirmation exists in the ancient manuscripts and in writings of the church fathers that it was, indeed, addressed to the Ephesian church. In view of the fact that Paul visited Ephesus at least three times and once spent at least three years there teaching them night and day (Act 20:31), he knew this church and its people better than any other. No doubt he felt they would be best equipped to receive, then circulate, this most doctrinal of all his epistles. It is significant that the letters to the seven churches in Asia (Revelation 2 and 3) begin with the letter to Ephesus, suggesting that Ephesus was the mother church of the seven. None of the others (Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea) apparently received a letter from Paul (although there is a possible reference to a Laodicean letter in Col 4:16). So it seems plausible that Paul wanted the Ephesian epistle to be read in all the churches of Asia. That could well be the reason why he included no personal references. The latter could have been conveyed by Tychicus (Eph 6:21), who carried the epistle from Rome to Ephesus, presumably with the instruction to circulate it among the other churches."

Defender: Eph 1:4

God chose us by His own will (Eph 1:11), not because He could foresee our choice of Him. Jesus made this compellingly clear. "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you" (Joh 15:16). Nevertheless, from our human perspective, every believer has also made his own willing decision to receive Christ (Joh 1:12; Joh 3:16; Rom 10:13).

Defender: Eph 1:4

The phrase "in him," "in Christ" or the equivalent occurs at least thirty times in Ephesians. For example, we have been "blessed ... in Christ" (Eph 1:3), "accepted in the Beloved" (Eph 1:6), "in whom we have redemption" (Eph 1:7), "in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph 2:6), and many others.

Defender: Eph 1:4

God in Christ was the Creator of the space/matter/time universe, but before He began the world, in some way beyond our comprehension, we were chosen in Him. Note also the other events that were planned, and (since God does not change) in effect all consummated before the world began: (1) love within the Godhead (Joh 17:5, Joh 17:24); (2) Lamb of God slain (1Pe 1:20); (3) names written in Book of Life (Rev 13:8; Rev 17:8); (4) chosen ones saved by grace (2Ti 1:9);(5) saved ones given assurance of eternal life (Tit 1:2); (6) established hidden wisdom of God (1Co 2:7); (7) all God's works known and planned (Act 15:18). Even though our finite minds cannot really comprehend such truths, we can believe them since God has revealed them to us. He did not say we must understand the full depths of His gospel to be saved, we just have to believe."

Defender: Eph 1:5

The goals of God's predestinating work are given in this chapter as: (1) producing holiness in those so chosen (Eph 1:4); (2) adopting them as His own sons and daughters (Eph 1:5); (3) assuring them of an inheritance in eternity (Eph 1:11). Its over-all purpose is to be "to the praise of his glory" (Eph 1:6, Eph 1:12, Eph 1:14; Eph 3:21). The word "predestinate" is also used in Act 4:28, note; (there rendered "determined before"), Rom 8:29, Rom 8:30, note; (see notes on these verses), and 1Co 2:7 (rendered as "ordained before"). The same Greek word, without the prefix, is found in Luk 22:22; Act 17:26 ("determined") and Act 10:42; Act 17:31 ("ordained") with essentially the same meaning. Since our minds are finite, we are unable to comprehend the infinite character of the plan and purpose of God, which is exactly the situation with regard to the clearly Biblical truth of predestination. In no way does this preclude the ability of God to plan also the paradoxical truth of human freedom and responsibility, which also are clearly Biblical (remember God's ability is infinite). We cannot fully comprehend with our minds, but can believe and rejoice with our hearts that God has known and chosen us believers for Himself even before the world began."

Defender: Eph 1:6

"Accepted" is translated "highly favored" in the angel's message to Mary (Luk 1:28). The Greek word, charitoo, means "graced," or "graciously honored.""

Defender: Eph 1:7

The attributes of God are characterized by this term of abundance. Note "the riches of his grace" in this verse, "the exceeding riches of his grace" (Eph 2:7), "the riches of the glory of his inheritance" (Eph 1:18), His "unsearchable riches" (Eph 3:8), "the riches of his glory" (Eph 3:16; Rom 9:23), "the riches of his goodness" (Rom 2:4), "the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God" (Rom 11:33), His "riches in glory" (Phi 4:19). No wonder men have suggested the familiar acrostic for GRACE to be "God's riches at Christ's expense!""

TSK: Eph 1:1

an : Rom 1:1; 1Co 1:1; Gal 1:1

to the saints : Rom 1:7; 1Co 1:2; 2Co 1:1

which : Eph 6:21; Num 12:7; Luk 16:10; Act 16:15; 1Co 4:12, 1Co 4:17; Gal 3:9; Col 1:2; Rev 2:10,Rev 2:13, Rev 17:14

faithful : Acts 19:1-20:38

TSK: Eph 1:2

Rom 1:7; 2Co 1:2; Gal 1:3; Tit 1:4

TSK: Eph 1:3

Blessed : Gen 14:20; 1Ch 29:20; Neh 9:5; Psa 72:19; Dan 4:34; Luk 2:28; 2Co 1:3; 1Pe 1:3; Rev 4:9-11, Rev 5:9-14

God : Eph 1:17; Joh 10:29, Joh 10:30, Joh 20:17; Rom 15:6; 2Co 1:3, 2Co 11:31; Phi 2:11

who : Gen 12:2, Gen 12:3, Gen 22:18; 1Ch 4:10; Psa 72:17, Psa 134:3; Isa 61:9; Gal 3:9

heavenly : Eph 1:20, Eph 2:6, Eph 3:10, Eph 6:12 *marg. Heb 8:5, Heb 9:23

places : or, things, Eph 6:12

in Christ : Eph 1:10; Joh 14:20, Joh 15:2-5, Joh 17:21; Rom 12:5; 1Co 1:30, 1Co 12:12; 2Co 5:17, 2Co 5:21

TSK: Eph 1:4

as : Deu 7:6, Deu 7:7; Psa 135:4; Isa 41:8, Isa 41:9, Isa 42:1, Isa 65:8-10; Mat 11:25, Mat 11:26, Mat 24:22, Mat 24:24; Mat 24:31; Joh 10:16; Act 13:48, Act 18:10; Rom 8:28, Rom 8:30,Rom 8:33, Rom 9:23, Rom 9:24, Rom 11:5, Rom 11:6; 2Th 2:13, 2Th 2:14; 2Ti 2:10; Tit 1:1, Tit 1:2; Jam 2:5; 1Pe 1:2, 1Pe 2:9

before : Mat 25:34; Joh 17:24; Act 15:18; 1Pe 1:20; Rev 13:8, Rev 17:8

that : Eph 2:10; Luk 1:74, Luk 1:75; Joh 15:16; Rom 8:28, Rom 8:29; Col 3:12; 1Th 4:7; 2Ti 1:9; 2Ti 2:19; Tit 2:11, Tit 2:12; 2Pe 1:5-10

without : Eph 5:27; 1Co 1:8; Phi 2:15; Col 1:22; 2Pe 3:14

love : Eph 3:17, Eph 4:2, Eph 4:15, Eph 4:16, Eph 5:2; Gal 5:6, Gal 5:13, Gal 5:22; Col 2:2; 1Th 3:12; 1Jo 4:16

TSK: Eph 1:5

predestinated : Eph 1:11; Rom 8:29, Rom 8:30

unto : Jer 3:4, Jer 3:19; Hos 1:10; Joh 1:12, Joh 11:52; Rom 8:14-17, Rom 8:23; 2Co 6:18; Gal 4:5, Gal 4:6; Heb 12:5-9; 1Jo 3:1; Rev 21:7

by : Joh 20:17; Gal 3:26; Heb 2:10-15

according : Eph 1:9, Eph 1:11; Dan 4:35; Mat 1:25, Mat 11:26; Luk 10:21, Luk 11:32; Rom 9:11-16; 1Co 1:1, 1Co 1:21; Phi 2:13; 2Th 1:11

TSK: Eph 1:6

praise : Eph 1:7, Eph 1:8, Eph 1:12, Eph 1:14, Eph 1:18, Eph 2:7, Eph 3:10,Eph 3:11; Pro 16:4; Isa 43:21, Isa 61:3, Isa 61:11; Jer 33:9; Luk 2:14; Rom 9:23, Rom 9:24; 2Co 4:15; Phi 1:11, Phi 4:19; 2Th 1:8-10; 1Ti 1:14-16; 1Pe 2:9, 1Pe 4:11

he : Isa 45:24, Isa 45:25; Jer 23:6; Rom 3:22-26, Rom 5:15-19, Rom 8:1; 2Co 5:21; Phi 3:9; 1Pe 2:5

in : Psa 22:20, Psa 60:5; Pro 8:30,Pro 8:31; Isa 42:1, Isa 49:1-3; Zec 13:7; Mat 3:17, Mat 17:5; Joh 3:35, Joh 10:17; Col 1:13

TSK: Eph 1:7

whom : Job 33:24; Psa 130:7; Dan 9:24-26; Zec 9:11, Zec 13:1, Zec 13:7; Mat 20:28, Mat 26:28; Mar 14:24; Act 20:28; Rom 3:24; 1Co 1:30; Col 1:14; 1Ti 2:6; Tit 2:14; Heb 9:12-15, Heb 9:22, Heb 10:4-12; 1Pe 1:18, 1Pe 1:19, 1Pe 2:24, 1Pe 3:18; 1Jo 2:2, 1Jo 4:10; Rev 5:9, Rev 14:4

the forgiveness : Exo 34:7; Psa 32:1, Psa 32:2, Psa 86:5, Psa 130:4; Isa 43:25, Isa 55:6, Isa 55:7; Jer 31:34; Dan 9:9, Dan 9:19; Jon 4:2; Mic 7:18; Luk 1:77, Luk 7:40-42, Luk 7:47-50, Luk 24:47; Joh 20:23; Act 2:38, Act 3:19, Act 10:43, Act 13:38, Act 13:39; Rom 4:6-9; Col 2:13; Heb 10:17, Heb 10:18; 1Jo 1:7-9, 1Jo 2:12

to : Eph 1:6, Eph 2:4, Eph 2:7, Eph 3:8, Eph 3:16; Rom 2:4, Rom 3:24, Rom 9:23; 2Co 8:9; Phi 4:19; Col 1:27, Col 2:2; Tit 3:6 *marg.

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per Verse)

Barnes: Eph 1:1

Paul, an apostle; - see the notes at Rom 1:1.

By the will of God - see the notes at 1Co 1:1.

To the saints - A name often given to Christians because they are holy; see the notes at 1Co 1:2.

In Ephesus - see the introduction, sections 1 and 5.

And to the faithful in Christ Jesus - This evidently refers to others than to those who were in Ephesus, and it is clear that Paul expected that this Epistle would be read by others. He gives it a general character, as if he supposed that it might be transcribed, and become the property of the church at large. It was not uncommon for him thus to give a general character to the epistles which he addressed to particular churches, and so to write that others than those to whom they were particularly directed, might feel that they were addressed to them. Thus, the First Epistle to the Corinthians was addressed to "the church of God in Corinth - with all that in every place call upon the name of Christ Jesus our Lord."The Second Epistle to the Corinthians in like manner was addressed to "the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints which are in all Achaia."Perhaps, in the Epistle before us, the apostle referred particularly to the churches of Asia Minor which he had not visited, but there is no reason for confining the address to them.

All who are "faithful in Christ Jesus"may regard the Epistle as addressed by the Holy Spirit to them, and may feel that they are as much interested in the doctrines, promises, and duties set forth in this Epistle, as were the ancient Christians of Ephesus. The word "faithful"here is not used in the sense of "trustworthy,"or in the sense of "fidelity,"as it is often employed, but in the sense of "believing,"or "having faith"in the Lord Jesus. The apostle addresses those who were firm in the faith - another name for true Christians. The Epistle contains great doctrines about the divine purposes and decrees in which they, as Christians, were particularly concerned; important "mysteries"Eph 1:9, of importance for them to understand, and which the apostle proceeds to communicate to them as such. The fact that the letter was designed to be published, shows that he was not unwilling that those high doctrines should be made known to the world at large; still they pertained particularly to the church, and they are doctrines which should be particularly addressed to the church. They are rather suited to comfort the hearts of "Christians,"than to bring "sinners"to repentance. These doctrines may be addressed to the church with more prospect of securing a happy effect than to the world. In the church they will excite gratitude, and produce the hope which results from assured promises and eternal purposes; in the minds of sinners they may arouse envy, and hatred, and opposition to God.

Barnes: Eph 1:2

Grace to you, ... - see the notes, Rom 1:7.

Barnes: Eph 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ - This commences a sentence which continues to the close of Eph 1:12. The length of the periods in the writings of Paul, is one cause of the obscurity of his style, and renders an explanation often difficult. The meaning of this phrase is, that God has laid a foundation for gratitude for what he has done. The ground or reason of the praise here referred to, is that which is stated in the following verses. The leading thing on which the apostle dwells is God’ s eternal purpose - his everlasting counsel in regard to the salvation of man. Paul breaks out into the exclamation that God is worthy of praise for such a plan, and that his eternal purposes, now manifest to people, give exalted views of the character and glory of God. Most persons suppose the contrary. They feel that the plans of God are dark, and stern, and forbidding, and such as to render his character anything but amiable.

They speak of him, when he is referred to as a sovereign, as if he were tyrannical and unjust, and they never connect the idea of that which is amiable and lovely with the doctrine of eternal purposes. There is no doctrine that is usually so unpopular; none that is so much reproached; none that is so much abused. There is none that people desire so much to disbelieve or avoid; none that they are so unwilling to have preached; and none that they are so reluctant to find in the Scriptures. Even many Christians turn away from it with dread; or if they "tolerate"it, they yet feel that there is something about it that is especially dark and forbidding. Not so felt Paul. He felt that it laid the foundation for eternal praise; that it presented glorious views of God; that it was the ground of confidence and hope; and that it was desirable that Christians should dwell upon it and praise God for it. Let us feel, therefore, as we enter upon the exposition of this chapter, that God is to be praised for all his plans, and that it is "possible"for Christians to have such views of the doctrine of "eternal predestination"as to give them most elevated conceptions of the glory of the divine character. And let us also be "willing"to know the truth. Let us approach word after word, and phrase after phrase, and verse after verse, in this chapter, willing to know all that God teaches; to believe all that he has revealed; and ready to say, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for all that he has done."

Who hath blessed us - Who does Paul mean here by "us?"Does he mean all the world? This cannot be, for all the world are not thus blessed with "all"spiritual blessings. Does he mean "nations?"For the same reason this cannot be. Does he mean the Gentiles in contradistinction from the Jews? Why then does he use the word "us,"including himself, who was a Jew? Does he mean to say that they were blessed with external privileges, and that this was the only object of the eternal purposes of God? This cannot be, for he speaks of "spiritual blessings;"he speaks of the persons referred to as having "redemption"and "the forgiveness of sins;"as having "obtained an inheritance,"and as being sealed with the "Holy Spirit of promise."These appertain not to nations, or to external privileges, or the mere offers of the gospel, but to true Christians; to persons who have been redeemed. The persons referred to by the word "us,"are those who are mentioned in Eph 1:1, as "saints,"- ἅγίοις hagiois - "holy;"and "faithful"- πιστοῖς pistois - "believing,"or "believers."

This observation is important, because it shows that the plan or decree of God had reference to individuals, and not merely to nations. Many have supposed (see Whitby, Dr. A. Clarke, Bloomfield, and others) that the apostle here refers to the "Gentiles,"and that his object is to show that they were now admitted to the same privileges as the ancient Jews, and that the whole doctrine of predestination here referred to, has relation to that fact. But, I would ask, were there no Jews in the church at Ephesus? See Act 18:20, Act 18:24; Act 19:1-8. The matter of fact seems to have been, that Paul was uncommonly successful there among his own countrymen, and that his chief difficulty there arose, not from the Jews, but from the influence of the heathen; Act 19:24. Besides what evidence is there that the apostle speaks in this chapter especially of the Gentiles, or that he was writing to that portion of the church at Ephesus which was of Gentile origin? And if he was, why did he name himself among them as one on whom this blessing had been bestowed? The fact is, that this is a mere supposition, resorted to without evidence, and in the face of every fair principle of interpretation, to avoid an unpleasant doctrine. Nothing can be clearer than that Paul meant to write to "Christians as such;"to speak of privileges which they enjoyed as special to themselves; and that he had no particular reference to "nations,"and did not design merely to refer to external privileges.

With all spiritual blessings - Pardon, peace, redemption, adoption, the earnest of the Spirit, etc., referred to in the following verses - blessings which "individual Christians"enjoy, and not external privileges conferred on nations.

In heavenly places in Christ - The word "places"is here understood, and is not in the original. It may mean heavenly "places,"or heavenly "things."The word "places"does not express the best sense. The idea seems to be, that God has blessed us in Christ in regard to heavenly subjects or matters. In Eph 1:20, the word "places"seems to be inserted with more propriety. The same phrase occurs again in Eph 2:6; Eph 3:10; and it is remarkable that it should occur in the same elliptical form four times in this one epistle, and, I believe, in no other part of the writings of Paul. Our translators have in each instance supplied the word "places,"as denoting the rank or station of Christians, of the angels, and of the Saviour, to each of whom it is applied. The phrase probably means, in things pertaining to heaven; suited to prepare us for heaven; and tending toward heaven. It probably refers here to every thing that was heavenly in its nature, or that had relation to heaven, whether gifts or graces. As the apostle is speaking, however, of the mass of Christians on whom these things had been bestowed, I rather suppose that he refers to what are called Christian graces, than to the extraordinary endowments bestowed on the few. The sense is, that in Christ, i. e. through Christ, or by means of him, God had bestowed all spiritual blessings that were suited to prepare for heaven - such as pardon, adoption, the illumination of the Spirit, etc.

Barnes: Eph 1:4

According as - The importance of this verse will render proper a somewhat minute examination of the words and phrases of which it is composed. The general sense of the passage is, that these blessings pertaining to heaven were bestowed upon Christians in accordance with an eternal purpose. They were not conferred by chance or hap-hazard. They were the result of intention and design on the part of God. Their value was greatly enhanced from the fact that God had designed from all eternity to bestow them, and that they come to us as the result of his everlasting plan. It was not a recent plan; it was not an afterthought; it was not by mere chance; it was not by caprice; it was the fruit of an eternal counsel. Those blessings had all the value, and all the assurance of "permanency,"which must result from that fact. The phrase "according as"- καθὼς kathōs - implies that these blessings were in conformity with that eternal plan, and have flowed to us as the expression of that plan. They are limited by that purpose, for it marks and measures all. It was as God had chosen that it should be, and had appointed in his eternal purpose.

He hath chosen us - The word "us"here shows that the apostle had reference to individuals, and not to communities. It includes Paul himself as one of the "chosen,"and those whom he addressed - the mingled Gentile and Jewish converts in Ephesus. That it must refer to individuals is clear. Of no "community"as such can it be said that it was"chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy."It is not true of the Gentile world as such, nor of anyone of the nations making up the Gentile world. The word rendered here "hath chosen"- ἐξελέξατο exelexato - is from a word meaning "to lay out together,"(Passow,) to choose out, to select. It has the idea of making a choice or selection among different objects or things. It is applied to things, as in Luk 10:42, Mary "hath chosen that good part;"- she has made a choice, or selection of it, or has shown a "preference"for it. 1Co 1:27, "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world;"he has preferred to make use of them among all the conceivable things which might have been employed"to confound the wise;"compare Act 1:2, Act 1:24; Act 6:5; Act 15:22, Act 15:25.

It denotes "to choose out,"with the accessary idea of kindness or favor. Mar 13:20, "for the elect’ s sake whom "he hath chosen,"he hath shortened the days."Joh 13:18, "I know whom I have chosen."Act 13:17, "the God of this people of Israel "chose"our fathers;"that is, selected them from the nations to accomplish important purposes. This is evidently the sense of the word in the passage before us. It means to make a selection or choice with the idea of favor or love, and with a view to impart important benefits on those whom be chose. The idea of making some "distinction"between them and others, is essential to a correct understanding of the passage - since there can be no choice where no such distinction is made. He who chooses one out of many things makes a difference, or evinces a preference - no matter what the ground or reason of his doing it may be. Whether this refers to communities and nations, or to individuals, still it is true that a distinction is made or a preference given of one over another. It may be added, that so far as "justice"is concerned, it makes no difference whether it refers to nations or to individuals. If there is injustice in choosing an "individual"to favor, there cannot be less in choosing a "nation"- for a nation is nothing but a collection of individuals. Every objection which has ever been made to the doctrine of election as it relates to individuals, will apply with equal force to the choice of a nation to unique privileges. If a distinction is made, it may be made with as much propriety in respect to individuals as to nations.

In him - In Christ. The choice was not without reference to any means of saving them; it was not a mere purpose to bring a certain number to heaven; it was with reference to the mediation of the Redeemer, and his work. It was a purpose that they should be saved "by"him, and share the benefits of the atonement. The whole choice and purpose of salvation had reference to him, and "out"of him no one was chosen to life, and no one out of him will be saved.

Before the foundation of the world - This is a very important phrase in determining the time when the choice was made. It was not an "afterthought."It was not commenced in time. The purpose was far back in the ages of eternity. But what is the meaning of the phrase "before the foundation of the world?"Dr. Clarke supposes that it means "from the commencement "of the religious system of the Jews,"which,"says he, "the phrase sometimes means."Such principles of interpretation are they compelled to resort to who endeavor to show that this refers to a national election to privileges, and who deny that it refers to individuals. On such principles the Bible may be made to signify anything and everything. Dr. Chandler, who also supposes that it refers to nations, admits, however, that the word "foundation"means the beginning of anything; and that the phrase here means, "before the world began"There is scarcely any phrase in the New Testament which is more clear in its signification than this.

The word rendered "foundation"- καταβολή katabolē - means properly a laying down, a founding, a foundation - as where the foundation of a building is laid - and the phrase "before the foundation of the world"clearly means before the world was made, or before the work of creation; see Mat 13:35; Mat 25:34; Luk 11:50; Heb 9:26; Rev 13:8, in all which places the phrase "the foundation of the world"means the beginning of human affairs; the beginning of the world; the beginning of history, etc. Thus, in Joh 17:24, the Lord Jesus says, "thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world,"i. e., from eternity, or before the work of creation commenced. Thus, Peter says 1Pe 1:20 of the Saviour, "who verily was fore-ordained before the foundation of the world."It was the purpose of God before the worlds were made, to send him to save lost men; compare Rev 17:8. Nothing can be clearer than that the phrase before us must refer to a purpose that was formed before the world was made. it is not a temporary arrangement; it has not grown up under the influence of vacillating purposes; it is not a plan newly formed, or changed with each coming generation, or variable like the plans of people. It has all the importance, dignity, and assurances of stability which necessarily result from a purpose that has been eternal in the mind of God. It may be observed here,

\caps1 (1) t\caps0 hat if the plan was formed "before the foundation of the world,"all objections to the doctrine of an "eternal"plan are removed. If the plan was formed "before"the world, no matter whether a moment, an hour, a year, or millions of years, the plan is equally fixed, and the event equally necessary. All the objections which will lie against an "eternal"plan, will lie against a plan formed a day or an hour before the event. The one interferes with our freedom of action as much as the other.

\caps1 (2) i\caps0 f the plan was formed "before the foundation of the world,"it "was eternal."God has no new plan, He forms no new schemes. He is not changing and vacillating. If we can ascertain what is the plan of God at any time, we can ascertain what his eternal plan was with reference to the event. It has always been the same - for "he is of one MinD, and who can turn him?"Job 23:13. In reference to the plans and purposes of the Most High, there is nothing better settled than that what he actually does, he always meant to do - which is the doctrine of eternal decrees - "and the whole of it.

That we should be holy - Paul proceeds to state the "object"for which God had chosen his people. It is not merely that they should enter into heaven. It is not that they may live in sin. It is not that they may flatter themselves that they are safe, and then live as they please. The tendency among people has always been to abuse the doctrine of predestination and election; to lead people to say that if all things are fixed there is no need of effort; that if God has an eternal plan, no matter how people live, they will be saved if he has elected them, and that at all events they cannot change that plan, and they may as well enjoy life by indulgence in sin. The apostle Paul held no such view of the doctrine of predestination. In his apprehension it is a doctrine suited to excite the gratitude of Christians, and the whole tendency and design of the doctrine, according to him, is to make people holy, and without blame before God in love.

And without blame before him in love - The expression "in love,"is probably to be taken in connection with the following verse, and should be rendered "In love,"having predestinated us unto the adoption of children."It is all to be traced to the love of God.

\caps1 (1) i\caps0 t was love for us which prompted to it.

\caps1 (2) i\caps0 t is the highest expression of love to be ordained to eternal life - for what higher love could God show us?

\caps1 (3) i\caps0 t is love on his part, because we had no claim to it, and had not deserved it. If this be the correct view, then the doctrine of predestination is not inconsistent with the highest moral excellence in the divine character, and should never be represented as the offspring of partiality and injustice. Then too we should give thanks that"God "has, in love,"predestinated us to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will."

Barnes: Eph 1:5

Having predestinated us - On the meaning of the word here used, see the notes at Rom 1:4; Rom 8:29, note. The word used πρωρίζω prōrizō means properly "to set bounds before;"and then to "pre-determine."There is the essential idea of setting bounds or limits, and of doing this beforehand. It is not that God determined to do it when it was actually done, but that he intended to do it beforehand. No language could express this more clearly, and I suppose this interpretation is generally admitted. Even by those who deny the doctrine of particular election, it is not denied that the word here used means to "pre-determine;"and they maintain that the sense is, that God had pre-determined to admit the Gentiles to the privileges of his people. Admitting then that the meaning is to predestinate in the proper sense, the only question is, "who"are predestinated? To whom does the expression apply? Is it to nations or to individuals? In reply to this, in addition to the remarks already made, I would observe,

(1)\caps1     t\caps0 hat there is no specification of "nations"here as such, no mention of the Gentiles in contradistinction from the Jews.

(2)\caps1     t\caps0 hose referred to were those included in the word "us,"among whom Paul was one - but Paul was not a heathen.

(3)\caps1     t\caps0 he same objection will lie against the doctrine of predestinating "nations"which will lie against predestinating "individuals."

(4)\caps1     n\caps0 ations are made up of individuals, and the pre-determination must have had some reference to individuals.

What is a nation but a collection of individuals? There is no such abstract being or thing as a nation; and if there was any purpose in regard to a nation, it must have had some reference to the individuals composing it. He that would act on the ocean, must act on the drops of water that make up the ocean; for besides the collection of drops of water there is no ocean. He that would remove a mountain, must act on the particles of matter that compose that mountain; for there is no such thing as an abstract mountain. Perhaps there was never a greater illusion than to suppose that all difficulty is removed in regard to the doctrine of election and predestination, by saying that it refers to "nations."What difficulty is lessened? What is gained by it? How does it make God appear more amiable and good?

Does it render him less "partial"to suppose that he has made a difference among nations, than to suppose that he has made a difference among individuals? Does it remove any difficulty about the offer of salvation, to suppose that he has granted the knowledge of his truth to some "nations,"and withheld it from others? The truth is, that all the reasoning which has been founded on this supposition, has been merely throwing dust in the eyes. If there is "any"well-founded objection to the doctrine of decrees or predestination, it is to the doctrine "at all,"alike in regard to nations and individuals, and there are just the same difficulties in the one case as in the other. But there is no real difficulty in either. Who could worship or honor a God who had no plan, or purpose, or intention in what he did? Who can believe that the universe was formed and is governed without design? Who can doubt that what God "does"he always meant to do?

When, therefore, he converts and saves a soul, it is clear that he always intended to do it. He has no new plan. It is not an afterthought. It is not the work of chance. If I can find out anything that God has "done,"I have the most certain conviction that he "always meant"to do it - and this is all that is intended by the doctrine of election or predestination. What God does, he always meant to do. What he permits, he always meant to permit. I may add further, that if it is right to "do"it, it was right to "intend"to do it. If there is no injustice or partiality in the act itself, there is no injustice or partiality in the intention to perform it. If it is right to save a soul, it was also right to intend to save it. If it is right to condemn a sinner to we, it was right to intend to do it. Let us then look "at the thing itself,"and if that is not wrong, we should not blame the purpose to do it, however long it has been cherished.

Unto the adoption ... - see Joh 1:12 note; Rom 8:15 note.

According to the good pleasure of his will - The word rendered "good pleasure"- ( εὐδοκία eudokia ) - means "a being well pleased;"delight in anything, favor, good-will, Luk 2:14; Phi 1:15; compare Luk 12:32. Then it denotes purpose, or will, the idea of benevolence being included - Robinson. Rosenmuller renders the phrase, "from his most benignant decree."The evident object of the apostle is to state why God chose the heirs of salvation. It was done as it seemed good to him in the circumstances of the case. It was not that man had any control over him, or that man was consulted in the determination, or that it was based on the good works of man, real or foreseen. But we are not to suppose that there were no good reasons for what he has thus done. Convicts are frequently pardoned by an executive. He does it according to his own will, or as seems good in his sight.

He is to be the judge, and no one has a right to control him in doing it. It may seeM to be entirely arbitrary. The executive may not have communicated the reasons why he did it, either to those who are pardoned, or to the other prisoners, or to anyone else. But we are not to infer that there was no "reason"for doing it. If he is a wise magistrate, and worthy of his station, it is to be presumed that there were reasons which, if known, would be satisfactory to all. But those reasons he is under no obligations to make known. Indeed, it might be improper that they should be known. Of that he is the best judge. Meantime, however, we may see what would be the effect in those who were not forgiven. It would excite, very likely, their hatred, and they would charge him with partiality or with tyranny. But they should remember that whoever might be pardoned, and on whatever ground it might be done, they could not complain.

They would suffer no more than they deserve. But what if, when the act of pardon was made known to one part, it was offered to the others also on certain plain and easy conditions? Suppose it should appear that while the executive meant, for wise but concealed reasons, to forgive a part, he had also determined to offer forgiveness to all. And suppose that they were in fact disposed in the highest degree to neglect it, and that no inducements or arguments could prevail on them to accept of it. Who then could blame the executive? Now this is about the case in regard to God, and the doctrine of election. All people were guilty and condemned. For wise reasons, which God has not communicated to us, he determined to bring a portion at least of the human race to salvation. This he did not intend to leave to chance and hap-hazard. He saw that all would of themselves reject the offer, and that unless some efficient means were used, the blood of the atonement would be shed in vain.

He did not make known to people who they were that he meant to save, nor the reason why they particularly were to be brought to heaven. Meantime he meant to make the offer universal; to make the terms as easy as possible, and thus to take away every ground of complaint. If people will not accept of pardon; if they prefer their sins; if nothing can induce them to come and be saved, why should they complain? If the doors of a prison are open, and the chains of the prisoners are knocked off, and they will not come out, why should they complain that others are in fact willing to come out and be saved? Let it be borne in mind that the purposes of God correspond exactly to facts as they actually occur, and much of the difficulty is taken away. If in the facts there is no just ground of complaint, there can be none, because it was the "intention of God that the facts should be so."

Barnes: Eph 1:6

To the praise of the glory of his grace - This is a Hebraism, and means the same as "to his glorious grace."The object was to excite thanksgiving for his glorious grace manifested in electing love. The real tendency of the doctrine in minds that are properly affected, is not to excite opposition to God, or to lead to the charge of partiality, tyranny, or severity; it is to excite thankfulness and praise. In accordance with this, Paul introduced the statement Eph 1:3 by saying that God was to be regarded as "blessed"for forming and executing this plan. The meaning is, that the doctrine of predestination and election lays the foundation of adoring gratitude and praise. This will appear plain by a few considerations.

\caps1 (1) i\caps0 t is the only foundation of hope for man. If he were left to himself, all the race would reject, the offers of mercy and would perish. History, experience, and the Bible alike demonstrate this.

\caps1 (2) a\caps0 ll the joys which any of the human race have, are to be traced to the purpose of God to bestow them. Man has no power of originating any of them, and if God had not intended to confer them, none of them would have been possessed.

\caps1 (3) a\caps0 ll these favors are conferred on those who had no claim on God. The Christian who is pardoned had no claim on God for pardon; he who is admitted to heaven could urge no claim for such a privilege and honor; he who enjoys comfort and peace in the hour of death, enjoys it only through the glorious grace of God.

(4) "all"that is done by election is suited to excite praise. Election is to life, and pardon, and holiness, and heaven. But why should not a man praise God for these things? God chooses people to be holy, not sinful; to be happy, not miserable; to be pure, not impure; to be saved, not to be lost. For these things he should be praised. He should be praised that he has not left the whole race to wander away and die. Had he chosen but one to eternal life, that one should praise him, and all the holy universe should join in the praise. Should he now see it to be consistent to choose but one of the fallen spirits, and to make him pure, and to readmit him to heaven, that one spirit would have occasion for eternal thanks, and all heaven might join in his praises. How much more is praise due to him, when the number chosen is not one, or a few, but when millions which no man can number, shall be found to be chosen to life; Rev 7:9.

\caps1 (5) t\caps0 he doctrine of predestination to life has added no pang of sorrow to anyone of the human race. It has made millions happy who would not otherwise have been, but not one miserable. It is not a choice to sorrow, it is a choice to joy and peace.

\caps1 (6) n\caps0 o one has a right to complain of it. Those who are chosen assuredly should not complain of the grace which has made them what they are, and which is the foundation of all their hopes. And they who are "not"chosen, have no right to complain; for,

\tx720 \tx1080 (a)\caps1     t\caps0 hey have no claim to life;

(b)\caps1     t\caps0 hey are "in fact"unwilling to come.

They have no desire to be Christians and to be saved. Nothing can induce them to forsake their sins and come to the Saviour.

Why then should they complain if others are "in fact"willing to be saved? Why should a man complain for being left to take his own course, and to walk in his own way? Mysterious, therefore, as is the doctrine of predestination; and fearful and inscrutable as it is in some of its aspects, yet, in a just view of it, it is suited to excite the highest expressions of thanksgiving, and to exalt God in the apprehension of man. He who has been redeemed and saved by the love of God; who has been pardoned and made pure by mercy; on whom the eye of compassion has been tenderly fixed, and for whom the Son of God has died, has abundant cause for thanksgiving and praise.

Wherein he hath made us accepted - Has regarded us as the objects of favor and complacency.

In the Beloved - In the Lord Jesus Christ, the well-beloved Son of God; notes, Mat 3:17. He has chosen us in him, and it is through him that these mercies have been conferred on us.

Barnes: Eph 1:7

In whom we have redemption - On the meaning of the word here rendered "redemption"- ( ἀπολύτρωσις apolutrōsis ) - see the notes at Rom 3:24. The word here, as there, denotes that deliverance from sin and from the evil consequences of sin, which has been procured by the atonement made by the Lord Jesus Christ. This verse is one of the passages which prove conclusively that the apostle here does not refer to "nations"and to "national privileges."Of what "nation"could it be said that it had "redemption through the blood of Jesus, even the forgiveness of sins?"

Through his blood - By means of the atonement which he has made; see this phrase fully explained in the notes at Rom 3:25.

The forgiveness of sins - We obtain through his blood, or through the atonement which he has made, the forgiveness of sins. We are not to suppose that this is all the benefit which we receive from his death, or that this is all that constitutes redemption. It is the main, and perhaps the most important thing. But we also obtain the hope of heaven, the influences of the Holy Spirit, grace to guide us and to support us in trial, peace in death, and perhaps many more benefits. Still "forgiveness"is so prominent and important, that the apostle has mentioned that as if it were all.

According to the riches of his grace - According to his rich grace; see a similar phrase explained in the notes at Rom 2:4. The word "riches,"in the form in which it is used here, occurs also in several other places in this Epistle; Eph 1:18; Eph 2:7; Eph 3:8, Eph 3:16. It is what Paley (Horae Paul) calls "a cant phrase,"and occurs often in the writings of Paul; see Rom 2:4; Rom 9:23; Rom 11:12, Rom 11:33; Phi 4:19; Col 1:27; Col 2:2. It is not found in any of the other writings of the New Testament, except once in a sense somewhat similar, in James Jam 2:5, "Hath not God chosen the poor of this world "rich"in faith,"and Dr. Paley from this fact has constructed an argument to prove that this Epistle was written by Paul. It is unique to him, and marks his style in a manner which cannot be mistaken. An impostor, or a forger of the Epistle, would not have thought of introducing it, and yet it is just such a phrase as would naturally be used by Paul.

Poole: Eph 1:1

Chapter Summary

Eph 1:1,2 After saluting the Ephesians,

Eph 1:3-6 Paul blesseth God for his spiritual blessings on

those whom he had chosen in Christ, and predestinated

to the adoption of children,

Eph 1:7-10 for our redemption by his grace, according to his

revealed purpose of gathering together all in one

under Christ,

Eph 1:11,12 for the inhertance already obtained by those who

first trusted in Christ,

Eph 1:13,14 and for the Spirit given to after believers, as an

earnest of the same.

Eph 1:15-19 He declareth his continual thankfulness to God for

their faith, and his prayers that God would perfect

them in the knowledge of those things which concerned

their state in Christ,

Eph 1:20-23 whom God had raised up, and exalted to be the supreme

Head of his body the church.

The faithful this may be understood either:

1. By way of restriction, of those that are sincere and constant to Christ, and so not only saints by profession, but true to their profession; or rather:

2. By way of explication: he defines those saints he spake of, and calls them faithful in Christ here, whom he called saints before.

Christ Jesus the Author and Fountain of that holiness which denominates them saints.

Poole: Eph 1:2-3

Ver. 2,3. Blessed be i.e. thanked, praised. We bless God when we praise him for, and acknowledge him in, his excellencies or benefits.

Who hath blessed us hath vouchsafed or communicated, all spiritual blessings to us. God blesseth us when he doeth good to us: and so the word blessed is taken in a different sense from what it was in the former clause.

With all of all sorts or kinds.

Spiritual blessings in opposition to temporal and worldly, which the carnal Jews principally expected, and the law mostly promised, Deu 28:1-14and which were but types and shadows of those spiritual blessings which immediately relate to the spiritual life and salvation of believers.

In heavenly places Gr. supercelestial, or heavenly: understand either:

1. Things; and then it seems to be the same as spiritual blessings, only in other terms. Or:

2. Places, in opposition to earthly places, particularly the land of Canaan, in which God had formerly promised to bless his people. These spiritual blessings are in heavenly places, because, though they reach us here on earth, yet they are derived to us from God and Christ in heaven, and in heaven only have their full perfection and consummation hereafter.

In Christ by or through Christ; upon the account of whose merit, and by whose efficiency, these spiritual blessings are derived from God to us. Or, in Christ as our Head, the repository and seat of all Divine blessings, from whom they flow down upon us as his members, receiving all we have out of his fulness. He seems to have respect to the promise made to Abraham, Gen 22:18 : That in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed; pointing out Christ as that seed, and those blessings as spiritual. See Act 3:25,26 .

Poole: Eph 1:4

God blesseth us with all spiritual blessings according as he hath chosen us election being the fountain from whence those blessings come, so that God doeth nothing for us in carrying on the work of our salvation, but what he had in his eternal counsel before determined.

Chosen us separated us in his purpose and decree from others, (whom he left out of that gracious act of his will), and determined that we should be holy and unblamable, &c.

In him either:

1. By and through Christ, (as in the former verse), for his sake, and upon the account of his merit as the procuring cause, not of our election, but sanctification; q.d. God hath chosen us, that we should be made holy and unblamable by Christ. Or rather:

2. In Christ, as the foundation on which he would build us, (his spiritual house), and by which both we might be united to God, and he communicate his influence and grace to us; or as our Head, by which he might convey grace, and strength, and life to us as Christ’ s members.

Before the foundation of the world either before God’ s decree of creating the world, or rather, before his executing that decree in the actual creation of it; i.e. from eternity, when neither we nor the world had a being.

That we should be holy and without blame by inherent grace begun in regeneration, and carried on in sanctification and mortification in this life, though not perfected till the other. Holiness in us is declared here to be not the cause, but the effect of our election; we are chosen that we may be holy, not because we are, or God foresees we will be holy.

Before him in the sight of God, who is not deceived with an outward appearance, but looks to the heart.

In love as a principal part of our sanctification, and the best evidence of the fear of God in us, and our obedience to the whole law.

Poole: Eph 1:5

Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children having appointed us unto a state of sonship and right to glory. This seems to be more than the former, a greater thing to be the sons of God, and heirs of heaven, than to be holy.

By Jesus Christ as Mediator, and Head of the elect, and the foundation of all spiritual blessings vouchsafed them, and so of this relation into which they are brought, by being united to him. The adopted children come into that state by the intervention of the natural Son.

To himself either:

1. In himself, i.e. looking no farther than to himself for the cause of and motive to his adopting them. Or:

2. To himself, (according to our translation), i.e. to God. Or, rather:

3. For himself (as the Syriac renders it); God would have the honour of having many adopted children that shall all call him Father.

According to the good pleasure of his will his sovereign grace and good will, as the only spring from which predestination issued, God being moved to it by nothing out of himself.

Poole: Eph 1:6

To the praise of the glory of his grace : glory of his grace, by a usual Hebraism, for glorious grace, i.e. large, abundant, admirable. The praise of this grace the apostle makes the end of God’ s choosing and predestinating us to the adoption of children. God hath chosen us, &c., and therein manifested his grace to us, that such as it is in itself, such it may be acknowledged to be; and therefore praised and adored by us.

Wherein in, or through, or by the same grace out of which he chose us.

He hath made us accepted in the beloved having chosen us in Christ, he likewise favours us, is well pleased with us in Christ, to whom we are united, whose members we are, and in whom God looks upon us. We are hateful in ourselves as sinners, but accepted in Christ as sons.

Poole: Eph 1:7

In whom in Christ, God-man, the immediate worker of this redemption; for though the Father and the Spirit concurred to it, yet the redeeming work was peculiarly terminated in the Second Person. The other two Persons have a right of propriety to redeem us; Christ only a right of propinquity, as assuming our nature, and being of kin to us.

We we elect, before mentioned.

Have redemption freedom from the wrath of God, and curse of the law, to which we are obnoxious, and consequently the power of sin and tyranny of Satan, as the effects of the former.

Through his blood i.e. by the sacrifice of his death upon the cross, where his blood was shed. This was the price of redemption paid to God for us, and wherewith his justice being satisfied, we could no longer be detained under the custody of the devil, or the dominion of sin.

Even the forgiveness of sins redemption is not formally forgiveness, but causally, forgiveness being the effect of it; and it is mentioned not as the only or adequate, but the prime and principal fruit of redemption, and upon which the other depend.

According to the riches of his grace: what he called glorious grace, Eph 1:6 , here he calls riches of grace, meaning plentiful and superabundant grace, by a phrase frequently used by him elsewhere in the same sense, Rom 9:23 2:4,7 .

PBC: Eph 1:1

What kind of person does the gospel address? Does it address all mankind? Or does it address a particular kind or class of people? In this introduction to the Ephesian letter, Paul carefully defined the recipients of his letter by two descriptive terms, saints and faithful in Christ Jesus.  41

" saints"

Who are saints? How does one become a saint? By Paul’s use of the word here and by its use in other New Testament scriptures, we conclude that saints are not as exclusive as many would have us think. Neither are they made saints by an act of the church. When we study the doctrine of sanctification, we will learn more about saints. Legally, every child of God is a saint. 41

" to the faithful in Christ Jesus."

The person who fits this description is already in Christ Jesus. Further, in Christ Jesus he manifests faithfulness. This verse should encourage us to understand that faithfulness does not put the sinner in Christ Jesus. It rather manifests that the faithful saint holds an established relationship with Christ, dwelling permanently in him. 41

REFLECTIONS.

This chapter is a rich storehouse of Spiritual truth. Paul here treats of the foundation principles of Christian hope. As ponderous stones are laid deep in the earth to support some mighty structure, so would Paul find in God’s eternal purpose and omnipotent power, a sure basis for the building of mercy. Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid—laid deep and strong ere man came upon the scene. If we are true believers, or faithful ministers of Christ, we owe it to the unmerited and sovereign grace of God. He might justly had left all to perish evermore; so Christians are but as brands plucked from the burning. The thought that our present hopeful state grows out of, or is due to, God’s eternal purpose, is an abiding well-spring of joy. It led Paul to exclaim, " All things work together for good to them that love God, who are the called according to his purpose."

I am not sad nor surprised that self-confident men dislike these pride-debasing truths, but my heart is pained within me to know that some who are Christians in heart, and who love the Redeemer, dislike the thought that our eternal salvation in heaven is the result of God’s eternal purpose and foreknowledge. God has given us this truth as a stronghold in the day of trouble, a resting-place in despondency, a rock of comfort in the gloomy hour. When we consider our poor fallen state here, our weakness, the evil of our hearts, our proneness to do wrong; and when we remember that Satan is our foe; that the world is at war with our eternal interests; that death and the tomb are waiting for each one of us, should we not press to our hearts those wonderful truths that Paul has given for the consolation of believers? Should not every child rejoice to hear that God remembered his people in eternity’ that they were chosen in Christ Jesus ere time began; predestinated to be holy and without blame, given redemption and forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance in Christ? Is it not a source of exceeding joy that God manifested his greatness of his power to us-ward; opening the eyes of our understanding, causing us to believe, and sealing us with the Holy Spirit of promise, and giving us the inspiring truth that we are one with the Redeemer? May these considerations be the solace of our lives, and make us tender to those who know them not. If thus favored, it is ours to commend in life and heart the great truths we profess, that God may be glorified by the children of men.

Eph 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus:

" Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, by the will of God:"

This eminent servant in the Gospel, the most striking character in the New Testament next to Jesus, was not an apostle from his own choice. He had not thrust himself into the office, nor sought it, but declared of it, " Necessity is laid upon me, yea woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel." His labors, sacrifices, and sufferings were patiently endured because of this necessity. He did not engage in this work that he might obtain a livelihood, or secure an honorable name, but simply because God had called him to the work. No man taketh this honor upon himself, nor does he shrink from its sacrifices and responsibility, when moved by the " necessity" that God implants.

We yet need men " called of God" to preach the ever-living gospel of truth, men who do not labor for gain, but from love to God and to his people. The man who engages in this work from any other motive, cannot preach the gospel. He may preach many things pleasing to the world, but the bearer of the true message to God’s people must be " sent" of him. It was God who sent the prophets and servants of old, who sent Jesus of Nazareth, and John the forerunner of his kingdom. It was he who called and sent each one of his apostles, who " set in the church" every official gift; and it is to him, as the Lord of the harvest, that we are directed to pray that he will send laborers into his field and the question may properly be asked, " How can they preach, except they be sent?"

" To the Saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus."

This epistle is clearly addressed to Christian people, and not to men of the world. The distinction should be kept in view with every part of the letter. Being directed " to the Saints," or faithful believers, no minister or teacher has the right to apply it to unbelievers, or the unregenerate. The same thought is connected with every portion of God’s word, and it is a fruitful source of error and confusion to disregard so plain a truth. Whatever there may be of promise, privilege, or comfort in this letter, it cannot be applied farther than to the faithful in Christ Jesus.

Eld. James Oliphant

PBC: Eph 1:2

By " grace" in this expression, the apostle does not refer to the doctrine of grace as saving his people from ruin, but to the Lord’s presence and help in their daily life. The same thought occurs in the exhortation, " Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably and godly fear." So it is indispensable in the true service of God, and with it there is a sweetness to us that makes his worship the most delightful employment. It becomes the children of God to be constantly seeking this state of the heart and pray that God’ fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. Peace with God is equally desirable and dear to the believer. How precious is the experience that we are at peace with " our Father!" When thus at peace, we can easily bear the malice and injustice of men. Nothing on earth can disturb the serenity of mind when Jesus has left his peace, for the peace that abides and arms us against the stings of this world, is from no less a friend than God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Eld. James Oliphant

PBC: Eph 1:3

At times we tend to divide eternal blessings and timely blessings into neat compartments. We seem averse to allowing them to flow logically and freely across the band of time that marks our current physical universe into eternity. Paul had no such aversion to this logical flow of blessings between eternity and time. For him the same hand of grace that chose us in Christ before God created the universe is the hand that blesses us with all spiritual blessings now, and it is that same hand of grace that will complete our blessings as it gathers us together in Heaven in our Lord Jesus Christ. This river runs long and wide! We drink of it sparingly in time; we shall drink deeply of its waters in eternity.

313

Eph 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:

" Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

How truly this expresses the feelings of the Christian, who is engaged, as Paul was, in reviewing the mercies of Jehovah. It denotes reverence and tender affection, and rises spontaneous in the heart of every believer. " Bless the Lord, O my soul," cries the Psalmist, " and forget not all his benefits." Luke tells how Mary, Elizabeth, and Zachariah all poured forth the sweetest strains of blessing and praise to God under a sense of his mercy and good will to men. This expression confirms the doctrine of a Triune God as to the Father and Son. Take from us this sweet truth, and you take from us the mediatorial office and our hope perishes. There is no sweeter portion of divine truth, and no gift so precious as the knowledge of a Savior equal with God and one with him, and yet who could say, " I must work the works of him who sent me." Our praise to God grows out of a sense of his goodness, as prayer grows out a knowledge of our wants. Jesus teaches us to say " Our Father," and Paul inculcates a common interest with believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

" Who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ."

Our blessing God confers no real benefit on him, but when he blesses us, " the poor are filled with good things" and made to rejoice. When a mother, helpless and poor, exclaims, " bless my child," she but manifests a tenderness and depth of love, that tells plainly what she would do if she were able, and so Paul, in the same manner, reveals a supreme devotion and tender, loving regard for his Maker, while utterly unable to bestow the slightest favor. If God hath blessed us, then we are secure in estate, character, and hope. The earth may reel and stagger as a drunken man, and the elements grow black with terror, but he who created all material things, will never remove far from us the everlasting arms. If we are not blessed of the Father, we are ruined, though all the world speaks well of us. We are to place little value upon the applause of men or the flattery of the world. We should esteem spiritual blessings as infinitely of more value than material good. Paul seemed to forget temporal blessings in his ardor to commend the things that pertained to his eternal welfare. There seems often to be a connection between temporal losses and our spiritual well being. " Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep thy word," may be said by many as truthfully as David. If riches and honor bring pride and cause us to forget God, it is a mercy to be stripped of those snares, and if tribulation brightens us as does the hope that maketh not ashamed, let us receive it as the " excellent oil of kindness." Humility is the royal gem of religion, and is God’s gift. Sometimes it is like bitter herbs to the tried soul. David becomes humble when driven from his throne and stripped of earthly glory. If bereavements or poverty be attended with lowliness of spirit, then we may bless God, even for what we suffer.

" Places" is an italicized word, and is rendered " things" in the margin. This phrase should not give rise to vain speculation. It no doubt refers to our being raised to walk in newness of life. The apostle would certainly include faith, repentance, love to God, spiritual discernment and understanding. These blessings do not make believers proud and boastful, but on the contrary, lowly minded, thankful and tender hearted. If you are a child of God, it is his work, and your heart should overflow with unceasing love to him, and kindliness of spirit to all men. Who can portray the advantages of a Christian life, which is but a display of the spiritual blessings the apostle had in view.

Eld. James Oliphant

PBC: Eph 1:4

See PBtop: PERSEVERANCE AND PRESERVATION

" According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world."

The world " according" here is highly significant. It illustrates the harmony to be found between God’s design and its exact fulfillment. The Bible teaches that God works according to his purposes, and that purpose is eternal. The thought should not frighten nor distress us, but rather exalt our ideas of God’s perfection and immutability. His dear favor and the blessings contemplated by Paul and his Ephesian brethren, and like manner " to the faithful in Christ Jesus," which adapts it to people of every land and every period of time. Some would call this high doctrine, and would break its force by saying that the Christian dispensation was intended by the word " world," but the weakness of this idea is exposed by remembering that Paul was not called before the " gospel age," but some years after the church was set up. And again, the Greek word for world (kosmos) SGreek: 2889. kosmos occurs nearly two hundred times in the New Testament, and is never once rendered age or dispensation. Its use indicates invariably that Paul taught that God’s choice was before the " worlds were framed." This same writer says to Timothy, " Who hath saved us and called us, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace given us in Christ before the world began." The translation of 1881 reads, " before the times eternal." So Paul plainly designed his readers should understand God’s choice to be from eternity.

" That we should be holy and without blame before him in love."

It is taught by some that election rests on foreseen goodness or obedience, but that doctrine is overthrown by this text. The design of God’s choice is that men " should be holy." Holiness is the result of election, and does not go before it, and this is the undoubted meaning of the passage here. This truth is confirmed by many proofs. The same apostle declares, " Not by works of righteousness which we have done," " Not of works, lest any man should boast," " Not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth." If it were by any of these things, and God which foresaw, it would be the election of obedience, or the election of works, whereas it is called by the apostle, " The election of grace." The doctrine of eternal election is inseparable from the perfections of God, and an intelligence that is infinite. It is foolish and absurd for men to decry election as leading to unholiness. Holiness of life does not go before election, but it is the very end and evidence of it. That we should be holy and without blame is the intent of God’s choosing us. A man that is inclined to an evil course is cut off from the hope of election, but if his heart is drawn to obedience and upright living, there is ground to hope that God has remembered him. The spirit bears witness to all filial obedience, and gives the sweet hope of sonship. When Jesus was baptized the Spirit testified, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," and when the believer now, is baptized, he is given the answer of a good conscience toward God. To be without blame before God in love, is the happiest thought that ever thrilled the heart of a poor, erring man in this world of sin. In this life, the best of men are sensible of imperfection. " Who shall deliver me, for I am the chief of sinners. All my righteousness is but filthy rags. O my leanness, my leanness. Behold I am vile." Such expressions reveal the state of warfare and unrest which the believer encounters, and to all such what a comforter is Paul, when he points to the blessed of being at last before God without blame in love! This they will be when the work of grace is completed, and they stand before God with clothing of wrought gold, and raiment of needlework—the imputed righteousness of Christ—which alone can bear the piercing eye of Jehovah and give exceeding joy.

Eld. James Oliphant

PBC: Eph 1:5

" Having predestinated us to the adoption of children, by Jesus Christ to Himself."

Paul was not afraid of the doctrine of predestination. He esteemed it as the ground of a sinner’s hope—the guarantee of a certain redemption. The adoption of Jesus Christ to himself—the Father—is but manifesting in time, what God purposed in eternity. Men fix their minds on certain individuals to inherit their estates, and seek to arrange infallibly the accomplishment of their wishes; so God chose a people before the foundation of the world in Christ Jesus, and in him, and by him, established for them every spiritual good. " Every good gift, is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights." By reason of God’s predestination, the " adoption of children" is secured to them, and by adoption is here meant the work of regeneration or bringing in among his children, as the word here signifies. " Delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son." Individuals receive not only the adoption, but the Spirit of it, whereby they cry " Abba, Father." The Christian loves God as a Father, and draws near to him as a child. Dr. Gill and others, speak of adoption as in some sense eternal, which perhaps is true, as God’s purpose to adopt is itself adoption, but here it seems to me, is intended the act God in bringing men into his own family by regeneration.

" According to the good pleasure of his will."

The world has long sought to find a reason in man why he should be saved, and system after system has been devised to subvert or supercede God’s sovereignty, but the skill of man has fallen short of the task, and while God’s word remains, and he continues to reveal himself in our hearts as the hope of glory, they must forever fail. The apostle here gives the standard by which God works, " According to the good pleasure of his will." Should not this put to silence all who speak of human merit or the work of man in accomplishing salvation? It agrees with the experience of God’s children in every age. Each one is made to know and feel himself as utterly unworthy of salvation, and the Bible presents many instances where (apparently) the worst of men realized the adoption of children, as the thief at the cross, the woman at the well of Samaria, Mary Magdalene, Saul of Tarsus, and many others.

Eld. James Oliphant

PBC: Eph 1:6

The great object of God in bestowing salvation is to manifest his grace, and not to pay an obligation he is under to man. Each person saved stands in time, and will through the cycles of eternity, as a monument of God’s rich grace. Paul would put mountain upon mountain in his desire to magnify and intensify the power of grace. " To the praise of the glory of his grace." What luster shines and sparkles in the words! The sun is dimmed and the stars grow pale as we contemplate the wonder-working power of almighty grace. And so all true ministers should seek to extol the heavenly excellence of redeeming, sanctifying, saving grace! This is not done by urging that God ought to do anything for man, nor by insisting that there is something good in the nature of the life of man, but he who would glorify the lifting, cleansing power of grace, must first see man justly condemned and destitute of all claim to the favor of his Maker. It is a sweet thought to be accepted in the beloved. The ground of this acceptance is not a mixture of our obedience with God’s grace, but our sins are thoroughly purged away by his blood and his righteousness is imputed to us.

Eld. James Oliphant

PBC: Eph 1:7

" redemption"

We know that to redeem something, one must have prior ownership. The children of God were given to Christ in election before the foundation of the world. {Eph 1:4; Joh 6:39} In Adam, they fell in sin. They come into this world with a sin nature and willingly commit sins. They are deserving of eternal condemnation and separation from God along with eternal suffering in hell. But Jesus loved His own so much that He suffered in their place and secured eternal redemption for them!

314

" In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace."

Here two great blessings are secured to God’s children, through the blood, that is the death of Jesus. He was the " near kinsman," and so related that he had the right of redemption. Being chosen in him, he represented them publicly and officially. His sufferings throughout were vicarious. He restored that which he took not away. He saved others, himself he could not save, but he saw of the travail of his soul and was satisfied. He justified many by bearing their iniquities, and opened not his mouth against the stroke. His people are called the " purchased possession." They are bought with a goodly price—the precious blood of their Redeemer. He that has redemption, shall have the forgiveness of sins, and this not of himself, his merit or deserving. Paul is careful to give the ground or reason of every blessing, and here redemption and forgiveness of sins, are " according to the riches of his grace." It is only in realizing man’s need of redemption and forgiveness, that we get true ideas of the length, and depth, and splendor of the riches of that grace that prepares lost men and women for a home in glory.

Eld. James Oliphant

Haydock: Eph 1:1

St. John Chrysostom take notice, in his preface to this epistle, that the doctrinal part in the first three chapters is treated in a very sublime manner, with long periods and sentences, which makes the style more perplexed and the sense more obscure than in his other epistles. On this account I shall first give the reader a paraphrase as literal as I can, and then make some short notes on the difficulties in the text. (Witham)

Haydock: Eph 1:3

Blessed by the God, who, through his Son Jesus Christ, made man, hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings and gifts; and by his grace, infused into our souls, has given us a title to a happy eternity in heaven. (Witham) ---

In heavenly things; (in cælestibus) i.e. all spiritual blessings from heaven, or for eternity. This is the object of all the blessings we receive from God; and we ought, according to the first intention of them, to refer them all to eternal or heavenly beatitude. St. Paul distinguishes the blessings which we receive in Jesus Christ from those bestowed upon the Jews, which were temporal and limited to this earth. (Calmet; Challoner)

With all spiritual blessings in heavenly places: literally, in heavenlies, [1] or celestials, which some expound and translate, in heavenly things; but this being expressed just before by spiritual blessings, it rather seems to be understood of the glory prepared for us un heaven, or in the heavenly mansions; in which sense it seems to me, according to the interpretation both of St. Jerome and of St. John Chrysostom in their commentaries on these words. Estius takes notice that the same expression, in the celestials, is used five times in this epistle, and in all of them signifies places above us. (Witham)

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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]

In cælestibus, Greek: en tois epouraniois, in supercælestibus. St. Jerome, (p. 324, tom. 4. nov. edit.) Spiritualia in cælestibus expectanda....thesaurizamus nobis in cælis. See St. John Chrysostom, Greek: log. a. p. 765.

Haydock: Eph 1:4-8

As by his eternal decree, according to the purpose of his good will and pleasure, he hath made choice of us to be his adoptive sons, and predestinated us to be saved and glorified by the merits and grace of his beloved Son, our Redeemer, without any merits of ours to the glorious praise and riches of his grace, by which he hath made us abound in all wisdom and true prudence. (Witham)

Haydock: Eph 1:6

To the praise of the glory of his grace; i.e. unto the glorious praise or commendation of his grace. (Witham)

Gill: Eph 1:1

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God,.... See Gill on Rom 1:1. See Gill on 1Co 1:1. See Gill on 2Co 1:1. See Gill on Gal 1:1.

To the saints which are at Ephesus; of this place, see the note above upon the title of the epistle, and See Gill on Act 18:19. The persons residing there, to whom the epistle is written, are described by their character, as "saints"; being separated by the grace of God the Father in eternal election; whose sins were expiated by the blood and sacrifice of Christ; and to whom he himself was made sanctification; and who were internally sanctified by the Spirit of God, and lived holy lives and conversations. The Alexandrian copy, and some others, and the Vulgate Latin version, read, "to all the saints"; whether officers of the church, or private members, whether rich or poor, bond or free, strong or weak believers, of greater or lesser abilities.

And to the faithful in Christ Jesus: who were in Christ, not only by electing grace, but were openly and manifestly in him, through converting grace; and abode in him as branches in the vine; continued constant, and persevered in faith and holiness; and were faithful to the cause and interest of Christ, and to his Gospel and ordinances; and were hearty and sincere in the profession of their faith in Christ, and love to him and his: or, as the Arabic version renders it, "and to them that believe in Jesus Christ"; with all their hearts, to the saving of their souls; who look unto him, venture on him, rely upon him, and trust in him for life and salvation, and who shall certainly be saved; of such the church at Ephesus consisted, to whom this epistle was written: of the church there; see Gill on Act 20:17.

Gill: Eph 1:2

Grace be to you, and peace from God,.... See Gill on Rom 1:7.

Gill: Eph 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,.... God, the first person in the Trinity, is the God of Christ, as Christ is man and Mediator; he chose and appointed him to be the Mediator, and made a covenant with him as such; he formed and prepared an human nature for him, and anointed it with the Holy Ghost above measure, and supported it under all his trials and sufferings, and at last glorified it: and Christ, as man, prayed to him as his God, believed, hoped, and trusted in him as such, and loved him as in such a relation to him, and cheerfully obeyed his commands. And the same is the Father of Christ, as Christ is God; as such he is the Son of God; not by creation, as angels and Adam, nor by adoption, as saints, but by natural generation; he being the only begotten of the Father, his own proper Son, of the same nature and perfections with him, and equal to him. Now to "bless" God is neither to invoke nor confer a blessing on him; for there is none greater than he to be called upon; nor does he need anything, nor can he receive anything from his creature; but it is either to congratulate his greatness and goodness, to ascribe blessing, glory, and honour to him, or to give thanks unto him, both for temporal and spiritual mercies. And the reasons why he is blessed, or praised by the saints as the God and Father of Christ, are; because these are his New Testament titles, under which he is more clearly made known, and in which he delights; and because he is their God and Father in Christ; nor can they come to him in any other way, but through him; and because it is through him that all their blessings come to them, and therefore all their praises must go this way, as follows:

who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: God is the author and giver of all blessings; and he blesses his people with them, as he is the God and Father of Christ, and as he is their covenant God and Father in Christ; and he only can bless; if he blesses not, none can; and if he blesses, they are blessed indeed: the "us" that are blessed, are such who deserve, according to the tenor of the law, to be cursed; and are not all men, but some distinct from others; and who are before described as saints, and faithful in Christ Jesus; and include both Jews and Gentiles, who belong to the election of grace. And the blessings such are blessed with are spiritual, so called to distinguish them from temporal blessings. The Jews have the like distinction of טובות זמניות, "temporal blessings", and טובות רוחניות, "spiritual blessings" ^d; which latter are solid, substantial, and lasting blessings; and which concern the good of the soul or spirit of man; and are agreeable to, and desired by a spiritual man; and are applied by the Holy Spirit of God; and so the Ethiopic version renders it, "with every blessing of the Holy Spirit": and which are very comprehensive, and take in all the fulness of grace in Christ; all the blessings and sure mercies of the everlasting covenant; all things pertaining to life and godliness, such as justification, peace, pardon, adoption, sanctification, and eternal life: and with these the saints are blessed "in heavenly" places; God that blesses them is in heaven, and so is Christ, in whom they are blessed; and the completion of their blessedness will be in heaven, where their hope is laid up, and their inheritance is reserved: and this phrase may denote the safety of them, being out of the reach of any enemy, sin, Satan, or the world, to deprive them of them, as well as the nature of them; for it may be read, "in heavenly things", and so distinguishes these blessings from such as are of an earthly kind; and points at the original of them, being such as descend from above, come down from heaven; and also the tendency of them, which is to heaven; and being what give a right unto, and a meetness for the kingdom of heaven: and these they are blessed with "in Christ"; as he is their head and representative, and as they are members in him, and partakers of him; through whom, and for whose sake, they are conveyed unto them, and who himself is the sum and substance of them. Agreeably to this way of speaking, the Targumist, Jonathan ben Uzziel, on Num 6:27 paraphrases the last clause thus, "I will bless them", במימרי, "in my word". The date of these blessings, "hath blessed us", may respect either first conversion, when the discovery and application of the blessings of grace are made to God's people; or the making of the covenant with Christ, their head, to whom all grace was then given, and to them in him, and their election was in Christ, as follows.

Gill: Eph 1:4

According as he hath chosen us in him,.... This choice cannot be understood of a national one, as Israel of old were chosen by the Lord; for the persons the apostle writes to were not a nation; nor does he address all the inhabitants of Ephesus, only the saints and faithful in Christ that resided there; nor are they all intended here, if any of them. However, not they only, since the apostle includes himself, and perhaps some others, who did not belong to that place, nor were of that country: nor does this choice regard them as a church; for though the saints at Ephesus were in a church state, yet the apostle does not write to them under that formal consideration, but as saints and faithful; nor are these persons said to be chosen to church privileges, but to grace and glory, to be holy and blameless: besides, from Eph 1:3, the apostle seems to speak of himself, and some others, who first trusted in Christ, as distinct from the believers at Ephesus, Eph 1:13, nor is this choice of persons to an office, for all that are here intended were not apostles, or pastors, or deacons: nor can it design the effectual calling, or the call of persons in time by efficacious grace; because this was before the foundation of the world, as follows: but it intends an eternal election of particular persons to everlasting life and salvation; and which is the first blessing of grace, and the foundation one, upon which all the rest proceed, and

according to which they are dispensed; for according to predestination are calling, justification, and glorification. The author of this choice is God, God the Father, who is distinguished from Christ, in whom this act is made; and it is according to his foreknowledge, and is an act of his grace, and is entirely sovereign: the objects of it, us, are not angels, but men, considered as unfallen with respect to the end, and as fallen with respect to the means; and these not all mankind: to choose, implies the contrary; and they that are chosen are distinguished from others, and are represented as few; nor do all men partake either of the means or end appointed in the decree of election; and yet some of all nations, Jews and Gentiles, are included in it; though none for any previous qualifications in them, as not for their good works, faith, holiness, or perseverance therein; for these are fruits and effects of election, and therefore cannot be causes or conditions of it: and this choice is made in Christ; and the persons chosen are chosen in him, and by being chosen they come to be in him; for this refers not to their openly being in him at conversion, as believers, but to their secretly being in him before time. Christ, as Mediator, is the object of election himself; and all the elect were chosen in him as their head, in whose hands their persons, grace, and glory are, and so are safe and secure in him: the Arabic version renders it, "by him"; not as the meritorious cause, for Christ's merits are not the cause of election, though they are of redemption and salvation; but as the means, in order to the end: the Ethiopic version renders it, "to him"; to salvation by him, and to the obtaining of his glory; as if he and his benefits, being the end of this choice, were intended; which was made

before the foundation of the world: and that it was so early, is certain, from the love of God to his people, which this is the effect of, and which is an everlasting love; and from the covenant which was made with Christ from everlasting, on account of these chosen ones, when Christ was set up as the head and representative of them; and from the provision of all spiritual blessings for them in it, which proceeds according to this choice; and from the preparation of a kingdom for them from the foundation of the world; and from the nature of God's decrees, which are eternal; for no new will, or act of will, can arise in God, or any decree be made by him, which was not from eternity: God's foreknowledge is eternal, and so is his decree, and is no other than himself decreeing. The end of this choice follows,

that we should be holy, and without blame, before him in love; the objects of it are not chosen because they were holy, but that they might partake of the sanctification of the Spirit; that they might be sanctified by him here, and be perfectly holy hereafter; and be without fault and blame, both in this life, as instilled by the righteousness of Christ, and as washed in his blood; and in the life to come, being entirely freed from all sin, and without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; and appear so in the sight of Christ, who will present them to himself, and in the sight of his Father, to whom they will also be presented by him, even in the sight of divine justice: and this will be all "in love", or "through love", as the Syriac version renders it; or "through his love", as the Arabic version; for the love of God is the source and spring of election itself, and of holiness and happiness, the end of it; and which is shed abroad in the hearts of God's people now, and will be more fully comprehended and enjoyed in the other world; and which causes love again in them to him. A phrase somewhat like this is used by the Targumist on Ecc 11:6 where, speaking of a man's children, he says;

"it is not known unto thee which of them אתבחר למהוי טב, "is chosen to be good", this, or that, or both of them, to be alike good.''

Some copies put the stop at before him; and read the phrase, "in love"; in connection with the words following, thus, "in love", or "by love hath predestinated us"; so the Syriac version.

Gill: Eph 1:5

Having predestinated us,.... Predestination, taken in a large sense, includes both election and reprobation, and even reaches to all affairs and occurrences in the world; to the persons, lives, and circumstances of men; to all mercies, temporal or spiritual; and to all afflictions, whether in love or in wrath: and indeed providence, or the dispensations of providence, are no other than the execution of divine predestination; but here it is the same with election, and is concerned with the same persons, and has regard to a special blessing, the elect are appointed to, as follows;

unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto himself; by which is meant, either the grace of adoption, which is an act of the Father's love, a blessing provided and secured in the covenant of grace; and is of persons to an inheritance, to which they have no legal right; and is entirely free, there being no need on the adopter's part, and no worth on the part of the adopted: or rather the inheritance they are adopted to; which exceeds all others, is incorruptible, undefiled, and fades not away; and lies among the saints in light, and belongs to all the children of God: and this they are predestinated unto by God the Father, who takes them into his family, puts them among the children, and gives them a goodly heritage: and that "by Jesus Christ"; or through him; for both the grace of adoption, and the kingdom and glory they are adopted to, come by and through him as Mediator; through his espousing their persons, assuming their nature, and redeeming them from under the law and its curses; through his giving them a power and privilege openly to be the sons of God; and through faith in him, whereby they are manifestly such: the phrase "unto himself", either refers to God the Father, who has chosen, set apart, formed and reserved his people and children for himself, for his peculiar treasure, and for his own glory; or to Jesus Christ, that he might have some brethren, and they be conformed to him, and he be the firstborn among them, and in all things have the pre-eminence; and that they might be with him, and behold his glory, and he be glorified in them: and this act of divine predestination was

according to the good pleasure of his will: the will of God is the rule of all his actions, and of all his acts of grace and goodness; and the good pleasure of it appears in the predestination of men to grace and glory: and from hence it is manifest, that foreseen faith, holiness, and good works, are excluded from being the moving cases of predestinating grace; and that it is wholly to be resolved into the good will and pleasure of God; the view in it being entirely as follows,

Gill: Eph 1:6

To the praise of the glory of his grace,.... The grace of God manifestly appears in the predestination of men to adoption; in that God had no need of sons, he having a dear and well beloved one; in whom he is well pleased; and in that those he adopts are so unworthy of the relation; and in that men, and not angels, should be taken by him into his family; and that some, and not others of the same race; and that this should be before the world was; and in providing Christ as a Redeemer, to open the way for the reception of this grace and happiness; and in appointing the grace of faith to be the receiver of it: and the glory of the grace of God appears herein; the glory of God is the supreme end of all he does; and the glory of his grace, and not his power, or other perfections of his, and the manifestative glory of that is here intended; yea, the "praise" of that glory: and this end is answered, when the children of God ascribe their adoption to the free grace of God; and when they admire it, and are thankful for it, and walk worthy of the relation they are brought into:

wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved; the Vulgate Latin and Ethiopic versions read, "his own beloved Son", and so the Claromontane exemplar; the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the beloved of God the Father; and was so from everlasting, and will be so to everlasting; which has appeared by his nearness to him, lying in his bosom; by his being privy to all his counsels, purposes, and designs; in putting all things into his hands, and in showing him all that he does; and by his giving him honour and glory, as man and Mediator: and he is the beloved of the saints, for the transcendent excellencies that are in him, and for his love to them, and for what he has done for them, and is unto them; and in him is their acceptance: which is to be understood of the acceptance of their persons, as founded in the blood and righteousness of Christ, and so of their services in him; of God's act of delight and complacency in them, as considered in Christ; who looks upon them, and is well pleased with them, and rests in his love towards them; which is an amazing instance of grace: it was grace that gave them a being in Christ, and which has provided in predestination everything to make them grateful to God; and the very act of acceptance is of mere grace; for internal grace, or grace infused, is not here meant, but the free favour of God: some read not "in which", but "which" εχαριτωσεν, "he freely gave us in the beloved"; so the Alexandrian copy, and some others, and the Syriac and Arabic versions.

Gill: Eph 1:7

In whom we have redemption through his blood,.... Redemption supposes captivity and slavery, and is a deliverance out of it; God's elect by nature are in bondage to sin, Satan, and the law; through the grace of Christ, they are redeemed from all iniquity; ransomed out of the hands of him that is stronger than they; and are freed from the law, its bondage, curse, and condemnation, and from every other enemy: and this benefit Christ is the author of; he was called to be the Redeemer of his people from all eternity; and he was sent in the fulness of time, to procure the redemption of them; to which he had a right, being their near kinsman; and for which he was every way fit, being God as well as man; and which he has obtained by his obedience, sufferings, and death: and in whom it resides, as in its proper subject and author; who, by imputation, is made redemption to all the chosen ones; for not angels, but men, share in this redemption; and not all men, but elect men; such as are chosen in Christ, predestinated to the adoption of children by him, and who are accepted in the beloved: and this comes to them through the blood of Christ, which was freely shed on the cross to procure it; and was a sufficient ransom, or redemption price; it being not only the same blood with those who are redeemed, but the blood of an innocent person; and not of a mere man, but of one who is truly and properly God, as well as man; see more of this See Gill on Col 1:14. A branch of this redemption follows, or a blessing that comes by it, and along with it,

the forgiveness of sins; of all sins, original and actual, past, present, and to come; and this is through the blood of Christ, which was shed for the same: and yet is

according to the riches of his grace; for God of his rich grace found the ransom price, and gave his Son, as well as he gave himself, his life, a ransom for many; and how much soever it cost Christ to procure redemption and pardon, they are free to his people; who are redeemed without money and price of theirs, and whose sins are forgiven freely for Christ's sake.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Eph 1:1

¹ tn Grk “Paul.” The word “from” is not in the Greek text, but has been supplied to indicate the sender of the letter.

² tc The earliest and most important mss omit “in Ephesus” (Ì⁴⁶ א* B* 6 1739 [Mcion^T,E]), yet the opening line of this epistle makes little sense without the phrase (“to the saints who are and are faithful…”? or perhaps “to the saints who are also faithful,” though with this sense the οὖσιν [ousin] is redundant and the καί [kai] is treated somewhat unnaturally). What is interesting is Marcion’s canon list which speaks of the letter to the Laodiceans among Paul’s authentic epistles. This, coupled with some internal evidence that the writer did not know his audience personally (cf. 1:15; 3:2; absence of personal names throughout), suggests that Ephesians was an encyclical letter, intended for more than one audience. Does this mean that the shorter reading is to be preferred? Yes and no. A plausible scenario is as follows, assuming Pauline authorship (though this is strongly contested today; for arguments on behalf of Pauline authorship, see M. Barth, Ephesians [AB 34], 1:36-50; P. T. O’Brien, Ephesians, 4-47; and H. W. Hoehner, Ephesians, 2-61): Paul sent the letter from Rome, intending it first to go to Ephesus. At the same time, Colossians was dispatched. Going counterclockwise through Asia Minor, this letter would first come to Ephesus, the port of entry, then to Laodicea, then Colossae. Tychicus’ instructions may well have been for each church to “fill in the blank” on the address line. The church at Ephesus would have certainly made the most copies, being Paul’s home base for nearly three years. Hence, most of the surviving copies have “in Ephesus” in v. 1 (so א² A B² D F G Ψ 0278 33 1881 Ï latt sy co). But one might expect a hint of evidence that Laodicea also made a few copies: Both Marcion’s list and Col 4:16 may well imply this. What is to account for the early Alexandrian evidence, then? These mss were perhaps made from a very early copy, one reflecting the blank line before each church filled it in. Although it is of course only speculation (as is necessary in a historical investigation lacking some of the pieces to the puzzle), this scenario accounts for all of the data: (1) “in Ephesus” in most mss; (2) Laodicea in Marcion’s list and Col 4:16; (3) the lack of an addressee in the earliest witnesses; (4) why the earliest witnesses’ reading must be rejected as too hard; and (5) why the author seems not to know the readership. In sum, is “in Ephesus” original? Yes and no. Some address belongs there; ἐν ᾿Εφέσῳ (en Efesw) is the predominant address, but several other churches also received this circular letter as their own. For this reason the phrase has been placed in single brackets in the translation. NA²⁷ also lists the words in brackets, indicating doubt as to their authenticity.

map For location see JP1 D2; JP2 D2; JP3 D2; JP4 D2.

³ tn Grk “and faithful.” The construction in Greek (as well as Paul’s style [and even if this letter is not by Paul it follows the general style of Paul’s letters, with some modifications]) suggests that the saints are identical to the faithful; hence, the καί (kai) is best left untranslated. See M. Barth, Ephesians (AB 34), 1:68 and ExSyn 282.

NET Notes: Eph 1:2

¹ tn Grk “Grace to you and peace.”

NET Notes: Eph 1:3

¹ sn Eph 1:3-14 comprises one long sentence in Greek, with three major sections. Each section ends with a note of praise for God (vv. 6, 12, 14), focusing on a different member of the Trinity. After an opening summary of all the saints’ spiritual blessings (v. 3), the first section (vv. 4-6) offers up praise that the Father has chosen us in eternity past; the second section (vv. 7-12) offers up praise that the Son has redeemed us in the historical past (i.e., at the cross); the third section (vv. 13-14) offers up praise that the Holy Spirit has sealed us in our personal past, at the point of conversion.

² tn There is no verb in the Greek text; either the optative (“be”) or the indicative (“is”) can be supplied. The meaning of the term εὐλογητός (euloghtos), the author’s intention at this point in the epistle, and the literary genre of this material must all come into play to determine which is the preferred nuance. εὐλογητός as an adjective can mean either that one is praised or that one is blessed, that is, in a place of favor and benefit. The meaning “blessed” would be more naturally paired with an indicative verb here and would suggest that blessedness is an intrinsic part of God’s character. The meaning “praised” would be more naturally paired with an optative verb here and would suggest that God ought to be praised. Pauline style in the epistles generally moves from statements to obligations, expressing the reality first and then the believer’s necessary response, which would favor the indicative. However, many scholars regard Eph 1:3-14 as a berakah psalm (cf. A. T. Lincoln, Ephesians [WBC], 10-11). Rooted in the OT and Jewish worship, berakah psalms were songs of praise in which the worshiper gave praise to God; this would favor the optative (although not all scholars are agreed on this genre classification here; see H. W. Hoehner, Ephesians, 153-59, for discussion and an alternate conclusion). When considered as a whole, although a decision is difficult, the indicative seems to fit all the factors better. The author seems to be pointing to who God is and what he has done for believers in this section; the indicative more naturally fits that emphasis. Cf. also 2 Cor 1:3; 1 Pet 1:3.

³ tn Or “enriched,” “conferred blessing.”

NET Notes: Eph 1:4

¹ tn Grk “just as.” Eph 1:3-14 are one long sentence in Greek that must be broken up in English translation. Verse 4 expresses the reason why God the Father is blessed (cf. BDAG 494 s.v. καθώς 3).

² tn Grk “in him.”

³ sn The Greek word translated unblemished (ἀμώμους, amwmous) is often used of an acceptable paschal lamb. Christ, as our paschal lamb, is also said to be unblemished (Heb 9:14; 1 Pet 1:19). Since believers are in Christ, God views them positionally and will make them ultimately without blemish as well (Jude 24; Eph 5:27; Col 1:22).

⁴ tn Grk “before him.”

⁵ tn The prepositional phrase ἐν ἀγάπῃ (en agaph, “in love”) may modify one of three words or phrases: (1) “chose,” (2) “holy and unblemished,” both in v. 4, or (3) “by predestining” in v. 5. If it modifies “chose,” it refers to God’s motivation in that election, but this option is unlikely because of the placement of the prepositional phrase far away from the verb. The other two options are more likely. If it modifies “holy and unblemished,” it specifies that our holiness cannot be divorced from love. This view is in keeping with the author’s use of ἀγάπη to refer often to human love in Ephesians, but the placement of the prepositional phrase not immediately following the words it modifies would be slightly awkward. If it modifies “by predestining” (v. 5), again the motivation of God’s choice is love. This would fit the focus of the passage on God’s gracious actions toward believers, but it could be considered slightly redundant in that God’s predestination itself proves his love.

NET Notes: Eph 1:5

¹ tn Grk “by predestining.” Verse 5 begins with an aorist participle dependent on the main verb in v. 4 (“chose”).

sn By predestining. The aorist participle may be translated either causally (“because he predestined,” “having predestined”) or instrumentally (“by predestining”). A causal nuance would suggest that God’s predestination of certain individuals prompted his choice of them. An instrumental nuance would suggest that the means by which God’s choice was accomplished was by predestination. The instrumental view is somewhat more likely in light of normal Greek syntax (i.e., an aorist participle following an aorist main verb is more likely to be instrumental than causal).

² tn Grk “to himself” after “through Jesus Christ.”

³ tn The Greek term υἱοθεσία (Juioqesia) was originally a legal technical term for adoption as a son with full rights of inheritance. BDAG 1024 s.v. notes, “a legal t.t. of ‘adoption’ of children, in our lit., i.e. in Paul, only in a transferred sense of a transcendent filial relationship between God and humans (with the legal aspect, not gender specificity, as major semantic component).” Although some modern translations remove the filial sense completely and render the term merely “adoption” (cf. NAB, ESV), the retention of this component of meaning was accomplished in the present translation by the phrase “as…sons.”

sn Adoption as his sons is different from spiritual birth as children. All true believers have been born as children of God and will be adopted as sons of God. The adoption is both a future reality, and in some sense, already true. To be adopted as a son means to have the full rights of an heir. Thus, although in the ancient world, only boys could be adopted as sons, in God’s family all children – both male and female – are adopted.

⁴ tn Or “good pleasure.”

NET Notes: Eph 1:6

¹ tn Or “to the praise of his glorious grace.” Many translations translate δόξης τῆς χάριτος αὐτοῦ (doxh" th" carito" autou, literally “of the glory of his grace”) with τῆς χάριτος as an attributed genitive (cf., e.g., NIV, NRSV, ESV). The translation above has retained a literal rendering in order to make clear the relationship of this phrase to the other two similar phrases in v. 12 and 14, which affect the way one divides the material in the passage.

² tn Grk “the beloved.” The term ἠγαπημένῳ (hgaphmenw) means “beloved,” but often bears connotations of “only beloved” in an exclusive sense. “His dearly loved Son” picks up this connotation.

sn God’s grace can be poured out on believers only because of what Christ has done for them. Hence, he bestows his grace on us because we are in his dearly loved Son.

NET Notes: Eph 1:7

¹ tn Grk “in whom” (the relative clause of v. 7 is subordinate to v. 6). The “him” refers to Christ.

² sn In this context his blood, the blood of Jesus Christ, refers to the price paid for believers’ redemption, which is the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross.

Geneva Bible: Eph 1:1

Paul, ^{( 1 )} an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the ^{( a )} faithful in Christ Jesus:

^{( 1 )} The inscription and salutation, of which we have spoken in the former epistles.

^{( a )} This is the definition of the saints, showing what they are.

Geneva Bible: Eph 1:3

^{( 2 )} Blessed [be] the God ^{( 3 )} and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ^{( 4 )} who hath blessed us with ^{( b )} all spiritual blessings in ^{( c )} heavenly [places] in ^{( 5 )} Christ:

^{( 2 )} The first part of the epistle, in which he handles all the parts of our salvation, setting forth the example of the Ephesians. And he uses various exhortations, and begins after his manner with thanksgiving. ^{( 3 )} The efficient cause of our salvation is God, not considered generally, but as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. ^{( 4 )} The next final cause, and in respect of us, is our salvation, all things being bestowed upon us which are necessary to our salvation, which type of blessings is heavenly and proper to the elect.

^{( b )} With every type of gracious and bountiful goodness which is heavenly indeed, and from God alone.

^{( c )} Which God our Father gave us from his high throne from above: or because the saints have those gifts bestowed on them, which belong properly to the citizens of heaven. ^{( 5 )} The matter of our salvation is Christ, in whom alone we are endued with spiritual blessing and that to salvation.

Geneva Bible: Eph 1:4

^{( 6 )} According as he hath chosen us in ^{( d )} him before the foundation of the world, ^{( 7 )} that we ^{( e )} should ^{( f )} be holy and without blame ^{( g )} before him in love:

^{( 6 )} He declares the efficient cause, or by what means God the Father saves us in his Son: because, he says, he chose us from everlasting in his Son.

^{( d )} To be adopted in him. ^{( 7 )} He expounds the next final cause which is twofold, that is, sanctification and justification, of which he will speak later. And by this also two things are to be noted, that is, that holiness of life cannot be separated from the grace of election: and again, whatever pureness is in us, is the gift of God who has freely of his mercy chosen us.

^{( e )} God then, did not choose us because we were, or otherwise would have been holy, but to the end we should be holy.

^{( f )} Being clothed with Christ's righteousness.

^{( g )} Truly and sincerely.

Geneva Bible: Eph 1:5

^{( 8 )} Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ ^{( h )} to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

^{( 8 )} Another plainer exposition of the efficient cause, and also of eternal election, by which God is said to have chosen us in Christ, that is, because it pleased him to appoint us when we were not yet born, whom he would make to be his children by Jesus Christ. So that there is no reason for our election to be looked for here, except in the free mercy of God. And neither is faith which God foresaw the cause of our predestination, but the effect.

^{( h )} God respects nothing, either anything that is present, or anything that is to come, but himself only.

Geneva Bible: Eph 1:6

^{( 9 )} To the ^{( i )} praise of the glory of his grace, ^{( 10 )} wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.

^{( 9 )} The uttermost and chiefest final cause is the glory of God the Father, who saves us freely in his Son.

^{( i )} That as his bountiful goodness deserves all praise, so also it should be set forth and proclaimed.

^{( 10 )} Another final cause more near is our justification, in that he freely accounted us as being righteous in his Son.

Geneva Bible: Eph 1:7

^{( 11 )} In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;

^{( 11 )} An expounding of the material cause, how we are made acceptable to God in Christ, for it is he alone whose sacrifice by the mercy of God is imputed to us, for the forgiveness of sins.

Commentary -- Verse Range Notes

TSK Synopsis: Eph 1:1-23

1 After the salutation,

3 and thanksgiving for the Ephesians,

4 he treats of our election,

6 and adoption by grace;

11 which is the true and proper fountain of man's salvation.

13 And because the height of this mystery cannot be easily attained unto,

16 he prays that they may come to the full knowledge and possession thereof in Christ.

Combined Bible: Eph 1:1

An "apostle" is one with authority and a commission--One who operates and lives within the protection and directives of the one who sent him out. It is in this very sense that Paul declares himself to be "an apostle of Christ Jesus" with singleness of purpose. He belongs totally and solely to his Lord. In order that we not mistake his commission, he plainly states that he was conscripted into service "by the will of God". You will recall that on the road to Damascus, Paul was struck down by the brilliant presence of the ascended Jesus. There he was confronted with the gospel of His saving work and he was drawn directly into serving Him.  

  

"Saints" ('hagios', ones set apart to a particular purpose) are those in Ephesus who are believers. The same Greek root word is translated, "saint", "sanctify", and "holy" and consistently means to be "set apart". This refers to their position. These same recipients of the letter are also called "the faithful in Christ Jesus". "Faithful" refers to their condition or experience. Does this mean that those who are 'full of faith' never doubt? No. They are people just like us who have their own moments of soul-searching. Thankfully, they are not held to God by their own strength, but by His.  

  

  

Combined Bible: Eph 1:2

"Grace and peace" are always found joined when reference is made to the believer and to the riches provided him/her through union with Jesus Christ. The most essential element of this verse is the declaration that everything we have comes to us directly from "God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ". Watch this carefully now--The role of Christ as Savior is widely advertised in most Christian churches today. His adoration is almost universal in both evangelical and liturgical bodies that claim to be Christian. But, it is also sadly the case that the position and role of God the Father is; ignored by the Clergy, often forgotten, and mainly overlooked by many believers. It is not a matter of intentional omission, but simply one of neglect and lack of emphasis from the pulpit. Many bible teachers and a large percentage of church leadership simply omit focus on the Father out of habit. Is this a serious problem? Unfortunately, it is. This is a very dangerous course and leads to the continued weakening of the Church, as we will see.  

  

I believe that this process is started whenever certain trends of thought begin to grow in the collective mind of any group of believers or in its leadership. It often begins with attempts to make Jesus "more relevant" to those being taught. Then we realize that it is difficult to describe a relationship that exists as spiritual rather than physical. Now we know that God is spirit, and must be worshiped in spirit and truth; but it surely is easier to describe our relationship to God in terms of human attributes. This appears to be sound reasoning--After all, wasn't Jesus, who is the Son of God, fully human as well as undiminished deity? Let's look at some of the results of following this path . . .  

  

It is with the very best of intentions that we subtly indoctrinate our children in these erroneous concepts by only describing God in terms of human attributes and do it at the earliest ages by means that include;   

  

(1)    The songs we teach them--("What a friend we have in Jesus").  

(2)    The images of the man Jesus--a kind-faced Jewish prophet, as the object of their prayers.  

(3)    Baby Jesus in the manger--A sweet, innocent baby worthy of being adored.   

  

"So, what is so wrong with that?" you ask. The resulting idea that children who are fed these images visualize, of God as man, reduces God and His Son to the role of super-men. This is not the scripturally defined persona of either the First or the Second Person of the Trinity. When awe of Christ-as-God is lost, the reality of absolute values associated with His attributes as the Son of God is thoroughly done away with. Jesus was not simply a better man. He was God come in flesh and identified as perfect man. However, as a man, He was never not God--fully God. Every biblical record of His confrontation of demonic entities shows that they clearly recognized Him as the Son of God and reigning deity. Do we indeed rush in where angels fear to tread? Our choices for Sunday School fare and public worship suggest that we often do.  

  

Our sanctuary from this kind of debilitating imagery is a clear and continuing adoration of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in ways that our children can see and understand. When we have clearly before our mind's eye the spiritual and scriptural presence of the Father as the sole object of our prayers and petitions, then the concept of Jesus the Man as God remains real to us. Our children can then relate to Him in the same manner. This is the view offered by the Apostle Paul as he brings our focus repeatedly to rest on the Father. When we do not have a clear under-standing of the supreme position of the Father, then we lose spiritual sight of the very Person to whom Jesus Christ surrendered His own will. Once Jesus is separated from His Father, the mind is free to redefine Him into a Superman-a Jesus that can be manipulated. The charismatic church is exploding in growth based on precisely this kind of concept of Jesus.  

  

Whenever I return to my hometown, Pascagoula Mississippi, and meet someone new, or someone I haven't seen in a number of years, they will usually ask if I have family there. When I mention my dad's name, I gain immediate recognition as belonging to the community--I am Mac Bowman's oldest son. People who know him will immediately come to some conclusions about me, based solely on their relationship to him. That is exactly as it should be! After all, I bear his name. As "Sons of God", heirs to the kingdom, and "Christians", we bear the name of the Almighty and are intimately identified with Him and all that He is!  

  

ACTION ITEM: Teach your children to pray to our "Heavenly Father". Let them know that Jesus the man was God, because He was the Son of the Father. Establish the parenting concept that forms the basis for surrendering our will to a loving and benevolent father. Demonstrate that concept by your own attitudes towards parents and grandparents.  

  

  

Combined Bible: Eph 1:3

Father, The Source of Our Blessings  

  

(1:3) To reinforce this focus, Paul points to God the Father as the source of every Christian blessing. "Praise" is also to be directed to the Father. Further, these blessings are not earthly assets, but heavenly. They are deposited for us "in Christ", which is to say that He holds every asset available to us where He is at the right hand of His Father. That does not mean that we are without resources here, but that our resources, strengths, means, and authority, are all sourced from our position in-Christ at the right hand of the Father. What joy this brings Paul.  

  

  

Combined Bible: Eph 1:4

"For He chose us..." (Thank you Father for not leaving it up to me) identifies the Father as the One who made the choice to claim us individually as His own. The middle voice verb says that the Father chose us for Himself. "...in Him..." refers back to the previous verse "in Christ", and identifies Christ as the One in whom we are placed. We are now located, or found to be, "in Christ", joined completely and irreversibly to Him, just as a bride is irrevocably joined to her husband and he to she. Divorce, you see, does not represent what is actually true.  

  

All of this preparation is for the particular benefit of the Bride of the Son of God and occurred historically prior to the point of the "foundation of the world." In considering the sequence of events, it must be recognized that because God is eternal in His being, there is no single point of beginning for Him as there is for that which He creates. As far as we are concerned, creation was simply the initiation, the starting point, of the continuum of time, as we know it. Prior to that 'event', we were "chosen" by God to occupy a special position in His plan based solely upon the counsel of His own will.  

  

The result is that we are to be "holy." "Holy" is a translation of 'hagios' (see verse one) and means to be set apart to a purpose. We have been selected out of all creation and set apart in this Age (dispensation) for the specific purpose of being the recipients of God's blessing and a source of His praise as the Bride of Christ. There are three types of "set-apart-ness" or sanctification with which we should be familiar as Christians:  

  

(1)    Positional Sanctification - We are joined to Christ and share Christ's being set-apart as the perfect sacrifice for sin. This occurs the very moment we believe and is declared to be so from "before the creation of the world".  

  

(2)    Experiential Sanctification - We are living in light of our having been joined to Christ. The means by which that is accomplished is to "reckon (declare) ourselves to be dead to Sin", to live in freedom from condemnation and under the grace of God's provision to His Son.  

  

(3)    Ultimate Sanctification - To be in a glorified, resurrection body. This will occur when we are transported to the Rapture where the Bride (the Church) will be claimed by the Groom as His own for all eternity.  

  

We are also to be "blameless". There is nothing that can be held to our account. Nothing remains to be paid as a penalty for wrongdoing on our part. This does not concern simply the affairs of life among men, but the relationship between man and God. When the Father looks at us, He sees only His Son for we are entirely clothed in His righteousness. And, we must remember that this all was so "before the foundation of the world."  

  

  

  

Combined Bible: Eph 1:5

Omniscience and Omnipresence of God  

  

(1:5) In order to understand the concepts of the next verse, it is necessary that we consider the nature of God and His attributes. "Predestined" is a word that usually requires us to think of time and events in a linear matrix. If we limit our definition to our experience, 'predestine' suggests that an event, yet future, is fixed in its details and cannot change. In that model it is impossible for anyone within the event to exercise choice or free will, because all outcomes are determined before their times arrive. We must achieve a richer understanding.  

  

    Omniscience  

  

It is very hard for any of us to conceive of knowing everything (and at the same time, to act as if it were the case). One of the main reasons why this is so very difficult a concept for us to grasp is that there are so many new things that we learn every day. Too, we have come to expect that the process will continue as long as we live. If you think about it, you know that each of us start some projects that simply will not be completed in our lifetime. There are places unvisited, letters unwritten, houses partially remodeled, gardens half -planted, degrees not yet attained, missions unfulfilled, good relationships unpursued and bad relationships not broken off. At worst, it is our passions for procrastination. At best, we leave that unfinished work-in-process for our successors to complete, knowing that it will add to their knowledge and understanding beyond any studied level that we achieved during our own lifetime. Trees are planted that our grandchildren will enjoy. Research is begun that will take several professional generations to analyze and then learn to apply for the benefit of others who follow them. In the age of the computer and realm of the Internet, we have grown accustomed to the proposition that whatever we know today is soon going to be, if it is not already, obsolete information.  

  

"For the Word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of the soul and the spirit and the joints and the marrow, and is the perfect critic of the thoughts and intentions of the mind."  

Heb 4:12  

To wrap ones mind around the fact of "all-knowing" is to accept that all events have occurred, all days have come to an end, all life as we know it has ceased to be, and that the universe in which we live has ground to a stop in every sense of further development that we can express. To be at such a vantage point in the history of our world would certainly require one possessing properties and attributes beyond anything measurable within the realm of human experience. Yet Scripture, that amazing record of Judean-Christian development, declares that God is "all-knowing". There is no thing that He, the creator, does not know of fact, event, thought, or intention of heart. This is stunning! How can we possibly comprehend this extraordinary statement that "He knows all, past, present, and future"?   

  

This vastness of His knowledge of all creation rests in large part on His presence in all of creation. It is not simply that God "knows" what will happen in the future. It is rather that with God there is no such thing as the future. There is only time, the single event, which stretches from the instant of creation to the ultimate, final nanosecond of dissolution. His eternal nature means that all of earth history is before Him in one single act of creation. Each decision and responsibility delegated to the crown of His creation, man, is accommodated and worked out through His sovereign will.  

  

God does not simply know what will happen, based upon His divine foreknowledge of the future. Rather, there is no future separated from the present with God. All is one and the same--What we view as Past, Present, and Future are just one single event! While we are seeing it unfold, as a map of time and history might be unfolded and displayed for us to examine, God is viewing the whole of time as an accomplished fact. One fact! He does not stand at any given place and view it as all past, all future or even all present--He stands outside of it all and views it as one event.  

  

How is this possible? Stephen W. Hawking stated:   

  

"Both Aristotle and Newton believed in absolute time. That is, they believed that one could unambiguously measure the interval of time between two events, and that this time would be the same whoever measured it, provided they used a good clock. Time was completely separate from and independent of space. This is what most people would take to be the common sense view."  

  

Most Christians today would certainly fall within that category of thinkers. Time is a linear action of events and space defines the place where events occur. Hawking continues...  

  

"However, we have had to change our ideas about space and time. Although our apparently common sense notions work well when dealing with things like apples, or planets that travel comparatively slowly, they don't work at all for things moving at or near the speed of light."  

  

Speed of light? "And this is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all." ( Joh 1:5 ) Scripture tells us clearly, and beyond any hope of John, the writer, having any physiological understanding of the depth of truth he was espousing, that God is the essence of that which defines time and space in this cosmos.  

  

This is very, very hard for us to envision. The following chart may help to make it a bit clearer.  

    GOD   

    ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????  

    Eternity Creation Eternity  

    Past One Single Event Future  

      

    ????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????   

Eden Fall Flood Babel Law Church Tribulation 1000 Great  

of Age White  

Man Throne  

  

  

  

    Omnipresence  

  

The Nature of Omnipresence--  

  

"I am the Alpha and the Omega" says the Lord God, "Who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty"..."Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades." Rev 1:8,17,18  

Omnipresence is a big word. It is an even bigger concept. Think about this--it means more than simply being in all places. It must include the idea of being in all places at all times. Try to visualize it this way--We hold within our brain cells, the memory of places we have been. Those memories are always associated with the times we came to know or experience them. We have been privileged to visit some very interesting places--New Orleans at Mardi Gras, San Francisco during the rainy season, Tahoe in the snow, Miami in July, Atlanta in the Spring, New York in a winter storm. Each of these places is remembered within the context of conditions that prevailed when we were there. But, each of these places has an ongoing experience apart from our own time there. They are not always in the same condition in which we experienced them. However, to us those places are always viewed in light of our memory of them. Or, to put it another way; those places are always stored in our memory of the light of them. It's the light that makes up our perception of reality and experience.   

When we consider the concept of Omnipresence, the idea of time necessarily comes in with it and comes in a manner totally foreign to any capacity we might have to experience it. Can you imagine going to sleep and waking up yesterday? Can you imagine seeing something that is going to happen and being able to step through a door into the past with enough time to prepare for or prevent that event?   

  

For one to become Omnipresent, time would have to cease to be a restraining concept. Time would be compressed into one event, linear action becoming completely irrelevant. So it is with light. So it is with God. Linear action is only relevant to those captured within the sphere of time, space and history. So it is with Man! No wonder His ways are not our ways.  

  

The Scope of Omnipresence--  

  

The very nature of Omnipresence establishes "foreknowledge". God "knows" the events we have yet ahead of us because they are in His present. He is right now precisely where they are occurring. Furthermore, He is also at the very moment of creation, declaring every single happening to be consonant with His eternal and divine will. Does that mean that God just "goes along with" each decision made by man? No, for the nature of man is to oppose truth and reject righteousness. God does intervene in the affairs of man and in man's decisions according to the dictates of His own Sovereign Will. He does this in order to infuse this created world with displays of His absolute values and perfect character, and He has chosen man as the vessel through which to do that.  

  

Free Will, the "Right" to Choose.  

  

God has given limited freedom of choice to man. You may choose to be offended that He did not leave it all up to you. Or, you may choose to be delighted. Personally, I am delighted. I think that most of our choices revolve around obedience to the truth as God reveals it to us individually. Sometimes though, He reveals truth to all mankind for a specific purpose. He does so in order that every man might be judged by his own response. With freedom, comes responsibility! We say it to our teenaged children. I often wonder if we really understand that the principle does not change with age or station in life.  

  

It is also in the realm of common human experience that we will encounter God's truth repeatedly during our lifetime. When we do, we are then held accountable for our responses to Him, just like the servants given the talents while the Master of the house was on a journey. A principle emerges from this that states:   

    "WITH KNOWLEDGE,  

    COMES RESPONSIBILITY"  

  

As the Apostle points out, it is the love of God that is the source of all that is in store for those who are among the elect. From His loving choice, we are "adopted" (placed as adult sons) and given the civil status of Sons of the Father.  

  

  

  

Combined Bible: Eph 1:6

"Grace" speaks of God's provision for us in time as well as in eternity. We are not left to struggle here on the basis of our own human ingenuity or physical resources. Neither does He leave us at the mercy of our own mental abilities, skills or lack of talent. He empowers us for life with an infusion by the Holy Spirit of the life of the Son. It is His life, which we now live in anticipation of His coming to claim His Bride. That provision includes the means by which we live moment-to-moment and the means by which we will occupy ourselves for all eternity. Our adoption into His family, by being joined to His Son, is for the express purpose of displaying "praise", honor rightfully demonstrated, "of His glorious grace". In other words, we are to be trophies before all the heavenly host of angelic beings, of His loving provision for His creation, elected to that position "freely". There is no cost exacted from us, all having been made available to "the One He loves", the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we rest. Apart from Christ, we are but animal creation. In Christ, we are lifted out from among mankind and set apart in that special realm of humanity in union to deity. To the unregenerate mind, this is the ultimate presumption. To the regenerate spirit in redeemed man, this is ultimate grace.  

  

  

  

Combined Bible: Eph 1:7

"Redemption" means "reclaimed at a price." In the richer and fuller sense of use, it refers to a property once owned, then lost, and now discovered in the market for sale and "repurchased" to become again the property of the original owner.  

  

When Christ died, His blood paid the price for the Sin of the whole world. No one is condemned to eternity in hell as a result of Sin, for that has been removed judicially. One is lost based on their own rejection of the price paid on their behalf.   

Every child is born into the world in innocence and is the property of God the Father, the giver of life. At some point, that small person will reach an age and stage of development that enables him/her to exercise the freedom of will granted to mankind by the Father. At that point, they may choose to reject God and His claim on their life. Then that man, woman, or child can become lost to God by their own rejection of His offer to claim them as His on the basis of the sacrifice of His own Son. When His presence and provision are rejected and any other reason for living is grasped, that person is then cast into enslavement to Sin and the inner nature of rebellion is unleashed. Finding oneself in the Slave Market of Sin, he/she eventually must come to consider (even though they may not all understand) that there is but one way out, through Christ the "door".  

  

"We will never be able to understand Scripture till we see sharply and clearly the distinction between Israel, the chosen earthly nation, and the Church, the Body of Christ. Paul is the apostle of the latter. And, as such, he is the apostle of a totally new thing." Wm R. Newell  

"His blood" is the price paid for our redemption and "the forgiveness of sins" the result of our having been redeemed. Because He made that payment on our behalf, without requirement to do so on His part, the redemptive act was entirely "of God's grace...lavished on us" without measure and with clear "understanding" of our utter lostness. "Wisdom" is information about God and His character accumulated in practical terms, facts. Examples include: His power, unmatched by any force known to man or angel. His authority, unequaled by any created being, earthly or spiritual. He has given us an abundance of such information regarding who He is through direct revelation to the prophets, apostles and disciples. Paul tells the believers in Rome that God also revealed Himself through the natural world (Romans chapter 1). "Wisdom" includes the expression of our reasonable expectations based on what we know of God. "Understanding", is knowledge gained through experience and testing of what we have learned. He orders our pathway in such a manner that our experience gives us opportunities by which to "prove" that the revelations are true and valid. What He did for us and is doing in us we could in no way do for ourselves. "Understanding" also includes our conclusions based on the application of our personal assumptions (expectations) to our experience.  

  

  

Maclaren: Eph 1:1

Saints And Faithful

The saints which are at Ephesus and the faithful in Christ Jesus.'--Eph. 1:1

THAT is Paul's way of describing a church. There were plenty of very imperfect Christians in the community at Ephesus and in the other Asiatic churches to which this letter went. As we know, there were heretics amongst them, and many others to whom the designation of holy' seemed inapplicable. But Paul classes them all under one category, and describes the whole body of believing people by these two words, which must always go together if either of them is truly applied, saints' and faithful.'

Now I think that from this simple designation we may gather two or three very obvious indeed, and very familiar and old-fashioned, but also very important, thoughts.

I. A Christian Is A Saint.

We are accustomed to confine the word to persons who tower above their brethren in holiness and manifest godliness and devoutness. The New Testament never does anything like that. Some people fancy that nobody can be a saint unless he wears a special uniform of certain conventional sanctities. The New Testament does not take that point of view at all, but regards all true believers in Jesus Christ as being, therein and thereby, saints.

Now; what does it mean by that? The word at bottom simply signifies separation. Whatever is told off from a mass for a specific purpose would be called, if it were a thing, holy.' But there is one special kind of separation which makes a person a saint, and that is separation to God, for His uses, in obedience to His commandment, that He may employ the man as He will. So in the Old Testament the designation holy' was applied quite as much to the high priest's mitre or to the sacrificial vessels of the Temple as it was to the people who used them. It did not imply originally, and in the first place, moral qualities at all, but simply that this person or that thing belonged to God. But then you cannot belong to God unless you are like Him. There can be no consecration to God except the heart is being purified. So the ordinary meaning of holiness, as moral purity and cleanness from sin, necessarily comes from the original meaning, separation and devotion to the service of God.

Thus we get the whole significance of Christian holiness. We are to belong to God, and to know that we do belong to Him. We are to be separated from the mass of people and things that have no consciousness of ownership and do not yield themselves up to Him for His use. But we cannot belong to Him, and be devoted to His service, unless we are being made day by day pure in heart, and like Him to whom we say that we belong. A human being can only be God's by the surrender of heart and will, and through the continual appropriation into his own character and life, of righteousness and purity like that which belongs to God. Holiness is God's stamp upon a man, His mark,' by which He says--This man belongs to Me. As you write your name in a book, so God writes His name on His property, and the name that He writes is the likeness of His own character.

Note, again, that in God's church there is no aristocracy of sanctity, nor does the name of saint belong only to those who live high above the ordinary tumults of life and the secularities of daily duty. You may be as true a saint in a factory--ay! and a far truer one--than in a hermitage. You do not need to cultivate a mediaeval or Roman Catholic type of ascetic piety in order to be called saints. You do not need to be amongst the select few to whom it is given here upon earth, but not given without their own effort, to rise to the highest summits of holy conformity with the divine will. But down amongst all the troubles and difficulties and engrossing occupations of our secular work, you may be living saintly lives; for the one condition of being holy is that we should know whose we are and whom we serve, and we can carry the consciousness of belonging to Him into every corner of the poorest, most crowded, and most distracted life, recognising His presence and seeking to do His will. The saint is the man who says, O Lord, truly I am Thy servant; Thou hast loosed my bonds.' Because He has loosed my bonds, the bonds that held me to my sins, He has therein fastened me with far more stringent bonds of love to the sweet and free service of His redeeming love. All His children are His saints.

The Old Testament ritual had one sacrifice which carried this truth in it. It is the first prescribed in the Book of Leviticus, the ceremonial book--namely, the burnt offering. Its especial meaning was this, that the whole man is to be laid upon God's altar and there consumed in the fire of a divine love. It began with expiation, as all sacrifices must, and on the footing of expiation there followed the transformation, by the fire of God, from gross earthliness into vapour and odour which went up in wreaths of fragrance acceptable to God. So we are to be laid upon the divine altar. So, because we have been accepted in the Beloved, and have received the atonement for our sins through His great sacrifice, we are to be consecrated to His service and, touched by the fire which He sends down, we are to be changed into a sweet odour acceptable to Him as were the saints which are in Ephesus.'

II. Further, Christian Men Are Saints Because They Are Believers.

The saints' and the faithful' are not two sets of people, but one. The Apostle starts, as it were, on the surface, and goes down; takes off the uppermost layer and lets us see what is below it; begins with the flowers or the fruit, and then carries us to the root. The saints are saints because they are first of all faithful. Faithful' here, of course, does not mean, as it usually does in our ordinary language, true' and trusty," reliable' and keeping our word,' but it means simply believing'; having faith, not in the sense of fidelity, but in the sense of trust.

So, then, here is Paul's notion--and it is not only Paul's notion, it is God's truth--that the only way by which a man ever comes to realise that he belongs to God, and to yield himself in glad surrender to His uses, and so to become pure and holy like Him whom He loves and aspires to, is by humble faith in Jesus Christ. If you want to talk in theological terminology, sanctification follows upon faith. It is when we believe and trust in Jesus Christ that all the great motives begin to tell upon life and heart, which deliver us from our selfishness, which bind us to God, which make it a joy to do anything for His service, which kindle in our hearts the flame of fructifying and consecrating and transforming love. Faith, the simple reliance of a desperate and therefore trusting heart upon Jesus Christ for all that it needs, is the foundation of the loftiest elevation and attainment of the Christian character. We begin down there that we may set the shining topstone of Holiness to the Lord' upon the heaven-pointing summit of our lives.

Note how here Paul sets forth the object of our faith and the blessedness of it. I do not think I am forcing too much meaning into his words when I ask you to notice with what distinct emphasis and intentional fulness he employs the double name of our Lord here to describe the object upon which our faith fixes, Faithful in Christ Jesus.' We must lay hold of the Manhood, and we must lay hold of the office. We must rest our soul's salvation on Him as our brother, Jesus who was incarnate in sinful flesh for us; and we must also rest it on Him as God's anointed, who came in human flesh to fulfil the divine loving-kindness and purposes, and in that flesh to die. A faith in a Jesus who was not a Christ would not sanctify; a faith in a Christ who is not Jesus would be impalpable and impotent. We must take the two together, believing and feeling that we lay hold upon a loving Man, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh'; and also upon Him who in His very humanity is the Messenger and Angel of God's covenant; the Christ for whom the way has been being prepared from the beginning, and who has come to fulfil all the purposes of the divine heart.

And notice, too, how there is suggested here also, the blessedness of that faith, inasmuch as it is a faith in Christ. The New Testament speaks in diverse ways about the relation between the believing soul and Jesus Christ. It sometimes speaks of faith as being towards Him, and that suggests the going out of a hand that, as it were, stretches towards what it would lay hold of. It sometimes speaks of faith as being on Him, which suggests the idea of a building on its foundation, or a hand leaning on a support. And it sometimes speaks, as here, of faith being in Him,' which suggests the folded wings of the dove that has found its nest, the repose of faith, the quiet rest in the Lord, and waiting patiently for Him.' Such trust so directed is the one condition of such tranquillity. Then, again, note a Christian is all that he is because he is in Christ.' That phrase in Him' is in some sense the keynote of this Epistle to the Ephesians. If you will look over the letter, and pick out all the connections in which the expression in Him' occurs, I think you will be astonished to see how rich and full are its uses, and how manifold the blessings of which it is the condition. But the use which Paul makes of it here is just this--everything in our Christian life depends upon our being rooted and grafted in Jesus. Dear brethren, the main weakness, I believe, of what is called Evangelical Christianity has been that it has not always kept true to the proportionate prominence which the New Testament gives to the two thoughts, Christ for us,' and Christ in us.' For one sermon that you have heard which has dwelt earnestly and believingly on the thought of the indwelling Christ and the Christian indwelling in Him, you have heard a hundred about the Sacrifice on the Cross for sins, and the great atonement that was made by it. Those of you, who have listened to me from Sunday to Sunday, know that I am not to be charged with minimising or neglecting that truth, but I want to lay upon all your hearts this earnest conviction, that a gospel which throws into enormous prominence Christ for us,' and into very small prominence Christ in us,' is lame of one foot, is lopsided, untrue to the symmetry and proportion of the Gospel as it is revealed in the New Testament, and will never avail for the nourishment and maturity of Christian souls. Christ for us' by all means, and for evermore, but Christ in us,' or else He will not be for us.'

III. Lastly, A Christian May Be A Saint, And A Believer, And In Christ Jesus, Though He Is In Ephesus.

Many of you know that probably the words in Ephesus' are no part of the original text of this epistle, which was apparently a circular letter, in which the designation of the various churches to which it was sent was left blank, to be filled in with the name of each little community to which Paul's messenger from Rome carried it. The copy from which our text was taken had probably been delivered at Ephesus; and, at any rate, one of the copies would go there. What was Ephesus? Satan's very headquarters and seat in Asia Minor, a focus of idolatry, superstition, wealth, luxury springing from commerce, and moral corruption. Great is Diana of the Ephesians.' The books of Ephesus were a synonym for magical books. Many of us know how rotten to the core the society of that great city was. And there, on the dunghill, was this little garden of fragrant and flowering plants. They were saints in Christ Jesus,' though they were saints in Ephesus.'

Never mind about surroundings. It is possible for us to keep ourselves in the love of God, and in the fellowship of His Son wherever we are, and whatever may lie around us. You and I have too to live in a big wicked city, and to work out our religion in a society honeycombed with corruption, because of commerce and other influences. Do not let us forget that these people whom Paul called saints' and faithful' had a harder fight to wage than we have, with less to hearten and strengthen them in it. Only remember if the saints in Ephesus' are to be in Christ,' they need to keep themselves very straight up. The carbonic acid gas is heavy and goes down to the bottom of the cave, and if a man will walk bolt upright, he will keep his nostrils above it; but if he stoops, he will get down into it. Walk straight up, with your head erect, looking to the Master, and your respiratory organs will be above the poison. If we are to be in Christ when we are in Ephesus, we need to keep ourselves separate and faithful, and to keep ourselves in Christ. If the diver comes out of the diving-bell he is drowned. If he keeps inside its crystal walls he may be on the bottom of the ocean, but he is dry and safe. Keep in the fortress by loyal faith, by humble realisation of His presence, by continual effort, and nothing shall by any means harm you,' but your lives shall be holy, being hid with Christ in God.'

Maclaren: Eph 1:3

All Spiritual Blessings'

Blessed be God who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.'--Eph. 1:3.

IT is very characteristic of Paul's impetuous fervour and exuberant faith that he begins this letter with a doxology, and plunges at once into the very heart of his theme. Colder natures reach such heights by slow degrees. He gains them at a bound, or rather, he dwells there always. Put a pen into his hand, and it is like tapping a blast furnace; and out rushes a fiery stream at white heat. But there is a great deal more than fervour in the words. In the rush of his thoughts there is depth and method. We come slowly after, and try by analysing and meditation to recover some of the fervour and the fire of such utterances as this.

Notice that buoyant, joyous, emphatic reiteration: Blessed,' blest,' blessings.' That is more than the fascination exercised over a man's mind by a word; it covers very deep thoughts and goes very far into the centre of the Christian life. God blesses us by gifts; we bless Him by words. The aim of His act of blessing is to evoke in our hearts the love that praises. We receive first, and then, moved by His mercies, we give. Our highest response to His most precious gifts is that we shall take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord,' and in the depth of thankful and recipient hearts shall say, Blessed be God who hath blessed us.'

Now I think that I shall best bring out the deep meaning of these words if I simply follow them as they lie before us. I do not wish to say anything about our echo in blessing God. I wish to speak about the original sweet sound, His blessing to us.

I. And I Note, First Of All, The Character And The Extent Of These Blessings Which Are The Constituents Of The Christian Life.

All spiritual blessings,' says the Apostle. Now, I am not going to weary you with mere exegetical remarks, but I do want to lay stress upon this, that, when the Apostle speaks about spiritual blessings,' he does not merely use that word spiritual' as defining the region in us in which the blessings are given though that is also implied; but rather as pointing to the medium by which they are conferred. That is to say, he calls them spiritual,' not because they are, unlike material and outward blessings, gifts for the inner man, the true self, but because they are imparted to the waiting spirit by that Divine Spirit who communicates to men all the most precious things of God. They are spiritual' because the Holy Spirit is the medium of communication by which they reach men's spirits.

And I may just pause for one moment--and it shall only be for a moment--to point out to you how inwoven into the very texture of the writer's thoughts, and all the more emphatic because quite incidental, and needing to be looked for to be found, is here the evidence of his believing that the name of God was God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For it is the Father who is the Giver, the Son who is the Reservoir, the Spirit who is the Communicator, of these spiritual gifts. And I do not think that any man could have written these words of my text, the main purpose of which is altogether different to setting forth the mystery of the divine nature, unless he had believed in God the Father, Son, and Holy' Ghost.

But, apart altogether from that, let me remind you in one sentence of how the gifts which thus come to men by that Divine Spirit derive their characteristic quality from their very medium of communication. There are many other blessings for which we have to say, Blessed be God'; for all the gifts that come from the Father of Lights' are light, and everything that the Fountain of sweetness bestows upon mankind is sweet, but earthly blessings are but the shadow of blessing. They remain without us, and they pass. And if they were all for which we had to praise God, our praises had need to be often checked by sobs and tears, and often very doubtful and questioning. If there were none other but such, and if this poor life were all, then I do not think it would be true that it is

better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.'

It is but a quavering voice of praise, with many a sob between, that goes up to bless God for anything but spiritual blessings. Though it is true that all which comes from the Father of Lights is light, the sorrows and troubles that He sends have the light terribly muffled in darkness, and it needs strong faith and insight to pierce through the cloud to see the gleam of anything bright beneath. But when we turn to this other region, and think of what comes to every poor, tremulous, human heart, that likes to take it through that Divine Spirit--the forgiveness of sins, the rectification of errors, the purification of lusts and passions, the gleams of hope on the future, and the access with confidence into the standing and place of children; oh, then surely we can say,' Blessed be God for spiritual blessings.'

But if the word which defines may thus seem to limit, the other word which accompanies it sweeps away every limit; for it calls upon us to bless God for all spiritual blessings. That is to say, there is no gap in His gift. It is rounded and complete and perfect. Whatever a man's needs may require, whatever his hopes can dream, whatever his wishes can stretch out towards, it is all here, compacted and complete. The spiritual gifts are encyclopaediacal and all-sufficient.

They are not segments, but completed circles. When God gives He gives amply.

II. So Much, Then, For The First Point; Now, In The Second Place, Note The One Divine Act By Which All These Blessings Have Been Bestowed.

Blessed be God who has given'; or, still more definitely, pointing to some one specific moment and deed in which the benefaction was completed, Blessed be God who gave.'

When? Well, ideally in the depths of His own eternal mind the gift was complete or ever the recipients were created to receive it, and historically the gift was complete in the act of redemption when He spared not His Own Son, but gave Him up unto the death for us all. A man may destine an estate for the benefit of some community which for generations long may continue to enjoy its benefits, but the gift is complete when he signs the deed that makes it over. Humphrey Chetham gave the boys in his school to-day their education when, centuries ago, he assigned his property to that beneficent purpose. So, away back in the mists of Eternity the gift was completed, and the signature was put to the deed when Jesus Christ was born, and the seal was added when Jesus Christ died. Blessed be God who hath given.'

So, then, we may not only draw the conclusion which the Apostle drew, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?' but we can draw an even grander one, Has He not with Him also freely given us all things?' And we possess them all to-day if our hearts are resting on Jesus Christ. The limit of the gift is only in ourselves. All has been given, but the question remains how much has been taken.

Oh, Christian men and women, there is nothing that we require more than to have what we have, to possess what is ours, to make our own what has been bestowed. You sometimes hear of some beggar, or private soldier, or farm labourer, who has come all at once into an estate that was his, years before he knew anything about it. There is such a boundless wealth belonging by right, and by the Giver's gift, to every Christian soul; and yet, here are we, many of us, like the paupers who sometimes turn up in workhouses, all in rags, and with deposit-receipts for £200 or £300 stitched into the rags, that they get no good out of. Here are we, with all that wealth, paupers still. Be sure that you have what you have. Do you remember the exhortation to a valiant effort in one of the stories in the Old Testament--Know ye that Ramoth-gilead is ours, and we take it not?' And that is exactly what is true about hosts of professing Christians who have not, in any real sense, the possession of what God has given them. It is well to ask, for our desires are the measures of our capacities. It is well to ask, but we very often ask when what is wanted is not that we should get more, but that we should utilise what we have. And we make mistakes therein, as if God needed to be besought to give, when all the while it is we who need to be stirred up to grasp and keep the things that are freely given to us of God.

III. In The Next Place, Notice The One Place Where All These Blessings Are Kept.

Blessed be God who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places.' In heavenly places.' Now that does not merely define the region of origin, the locality where they originated or whence they come. It does do that, but it does a great deal more. It does not merely tell us, as we often are disposed to think that it does, that every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down, though that is perfectly true, but it means much rather that in order to get the gift we must go up. They are in the heavenly places, and they cannot live anywhere else. They have been sticking shrubs in tubs outside our public buildings this last week. How long will they keep their leaves and their freshness? How soon will they need to be shifted and taken back again to the sweeter air, where they can flourish? God's spiritual gifts cannot grow in smoke and dirt and a polluted atmosphere. And if a professing Christian man lives his life on the low levels he will have very few of the heavenly gifts coming down to him there. And that is the reason--the reason above all others--why, with such a large provision made for all possible necessities and longings of all sorts, people who call themselves Christians go up and down the world feeble and poor, and with little enjoyment of their religion, and having verified scarcely anything of the great promises which God has given them.

Brother, according to the old word with which the Mass used to begin, Sursum corda'--up with your hearts! The blessings are in the heavens, and if we want them we must go where they are. It is not enough to drink sparing draughts from the stream as it flows through the plain. Travel up to the headwaters, where the great pure fountain is, that gushes out abundant and inexhaustible. The gifts are heavenly, and there they abide, and thither we must mount if we would possess them.

Now that this understanding of the words is correct I think is clearly shown by a verse in the next chapter, where we find the very same phrase employed. In this connection the Apostle says that God hath raised us up together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.' That is to say, the true ideal of the Christian life is that, even here and now, it is a life of such intimate union and incorporation with Jesus Christ as that where He is we are, and that even whilst we tabernacle upon earth and move about amongst its illusions and changing scenes, in the depth of our true being we may be fixed, and sit at rest with Christ where He is.

Do not dismiss that as mere pulpit rhetoric. Do not say that it is mystical and incomprehensible, and cannot be reduced into practice amidst the distractions of daily life. Brethren, it is not so! Jesus Christ Himself said about Himself that He came down from heaven, and that though He did, even whilst He wore the likeness of the flesh, and was one of us, He was the Son of Man which is in Heaven,' when He lay in the manger, when He worked at the carpenter's bench in Nazareth, when He walked with weary feet those blessed acres, when He hung, for our advantage, on the bitter Cross. And that was no incommunicable property of His mysterious nature, but it was the typical example of what it is possible for manhood to be. And you and I, if we are to possess in any measure corresponding with the gift of Christ the spiritual blessing which God bestows, must have our lives hid with Christ in God,' and sit together with Him in the heavenly places.

IV. Lastly, Note The One Person In Whom All Spiritual Blessings Are Enshrined.

In the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.' You cannot separate between Him and His gifts, neither in the way of getting Him without them, nor in the way of getting them without Him. They are Himself, and in the deepest analysis all spiritual blessings are reducible to one--viz, that the Spirit of Jesus Christ Himself shall dwell with us.

Now, that union by which it is possible for poor, empty, sinful creatures to be filled with His fulness, animated with His life, strengthened with His omnipotence, and sanctified by His indwelling--that union is the very kernel of this Epistle to the Ephesians.

I dare say I have often drawn your attention to the singular emphasis and repetition with which that phrase in Christ' occurs throughout the letter. Just take the two or three instances of it that I gather as I speak. In this first chapter we read, the faithful in Jesus Christ.' Then comes our text, blessings in heavenly places in Christ.' Then, in the very next verse, we read, chosen us in Him.' Then, a verse or two after, we have accepted in the Beloved,' which is immediately followed by, in whom we have redemption through His blood.' Then, again, that He might gather together in one all things in Christ, in whom also we have obtained the inheritance.' I need not make other quotations, but throughout the letter every blessing that can gladden or sanctify the human spirit is regarded by the Apostle as being stored and shrined in Jesus Christ: inseparable from Him, and therefore to be found by us only in union with Him.

And that is the point of all which I want to say--viz. that, inasmuch as all spiritual blessings that a soul can need are hived in Him in whom is all sweetness, the way, and the only way, to get them is that we, too, should pass into Him and dwell in Jesus Christ. It is His own teaching: I am the Vine, ye are the branches. Abide in Me. Separate from Me ye can do nothing,' and get nothing, and are nothing.

Oh, brethren! it is well that all our treasures should be in one place. It is better that they should all be in One Person. And if only we will lay our poor emptiness by the side of His fulness there will pass over from that infinite abundance and sufficiency everything that we can require.

We abide in Him by faith, by meditation, by love, by submission, by practical obedience, and, if we are wise, the effort of our lives will be to keep close to that Lord. As long as we keep touch with Him we have all and abound. Break the connection by wandering away, in thought and desire, by indulgence in sin, by letting earthly passions surge in and separate us from Him--break the connection by rebellion, by making ourselves our own ends and lords, and it is like switching off the electricity. Everything falls dead. You cannot have Christ's blessing unless you take Christ.

And so, dear brethren, abide in Me and I in you." There is nothing else that will make us blessed; there is nothing else that will meet all the circumference of our necessities; there is nothing else that will quiet our hearts, will sanctify our understandings. Christ is yours if ye are Christ's.' Of His fulness have all we received,' for it all became ours when we became His, and Christian growth on earth and heaven is but the unfolding of the folded graces that are contained in Him. We possess the whole Christ, but eternity is needed to disclose all the unsearchable riches of our inheritance in Him.

Maclaren: Eph 1:5-7

According To' I.

According to the good pleasure of His will, According to the riches of His grace.'--Eph. 1:5-7.

THAT phrase, according to,' is one of the key-words of this profound epistle, which occurs over and over again, like a refrain. I reckon twelve instances of it in three chapters of the letter, and they all introduce one or other of the two thoughts which appear in the two fragments that I have taken for my text. They either point out how the great blessings of Christ's mission have underlying them the divine purpose, or they point out how the process of the Christian life in the individual has for its source and measure the abundances, the wealth of the grace and the power of God. So in both aspects the facts of earth are traced up to, and declared to be, the outcome of the heavenly depths, and that gives solemnity, grandeur, elevation, to this epistle all its own. We are carried, as it were, away up into the recesses of the mountains of God, and we look down upon the unruffled, mysterious, deep lake, from which come the rivers that water all the plains beneath.

Now of these two types of reference to the divine will and the divine wealth, I should like to gather together the instances, as they occur in this letter, in so far as I can, in the course of a sermon, touching them, it must be, very imperfectly. But I fear that it is impossible to deal with both the phases of this according to,' in one discourse. So I confine myself to that which is suggested by the first of our two texts, in the hope that Some other day we may be able to overtake the other. So then, we have set before us here the Christian thought of the divine will which underlies, and therefore is manifest by, the work of Jesus Christ, in its whole sweep and breadth. And I just take up the various instances in which this expression occurs in a great variety of forms, but all retaining substantially the same meaning.

I. Note That That Divine Will Which Underlies Is Operative.

Note that that divine will which underlies and is operative in, and therefore is certified to us by the whole work of Jesus Christ, in its facts and its consequences, is a good pleasure.'

Now there are few thoughts which the history of the world has shown to be more productive of iron and steel in the human character than that of the sovereign will of God. That made Islam, and is the secret of its power to-day, amidst its many corruptions. Because these wild desert tribes were all stiffened, or I might say inflamed, by that profound conviction, the sovereign will of God, they came down like a hammer upon that corrupt so-called Christian Church, and swept it off the face of the earth, as it deserved to be swept. And the same thought of the sovereign will, of which we are but instruments--pawns on its chess-board--made the grand seventeenth century Puritanism in England, and its sister type of men and of religion in Holland. For this is a historically proved thesis, that there is nothing which so contributes to the formation, and valuation of, and the readiness to die for, civil liberty, as the firm grasp of that thought of the divine sovereignty. Just because a man realises that the will of God is supreme over all the earth, he rebels against all forms of human despotism.

But with all the good that is in that great thought --and the Christianity of this day sorely wants the strength that might be given it by the exhibition of that steel medicine--it wants another, the good pleasure of His will.' And that word, good pleasure, does not express, as I think, in Paul's usage of it, the simple notion of sovereignty, but always the notion of a benevolent sovereignty. It is the good pleasure'-as it is put in another place by the same Apostle--of His goodness.' And that thought, let in upon the solemnity and severity of the other one, is all that it needs in order to make the man who grasps it not only a hero in conflict, and a patient martyr in endurance, but a child in his Father's house, rejoicing in the love of his Father everywhere and always.

Paul would have us believe that if we will take the work of Jesus Christ in the facts of His life, and its results upon humanity, as our horn-book and lesson, we shall draw from that some conceptions of the great thing that underlies it, the good pleasure of His will.' We stand in front of this complex universe, and some of us say: Law'; and some of us say: A Lawgiver behind the law; a Person at the heart of all things'; but unless we can say: And in the heart of the Person a will, which is the expression of a steadfast, omnipotent love,' then the world seems to me to be a place of unsolvable riddles and a torture-house. There goes the great steam-roller along the road. Everybody can see that it crushes down, and makes its own path. Who drives it? The steam in the boiler, or is there a hand on the lever? And what drives the hand? Christianity answers, and answers with unfaltering lip, rising clear above contradictions apparent and difficulties real, The good pleasure of His will,' and there men can rest.

Then there is another step. Another form in which this according to' appears in this letter is, if we adopt the rendering, which I am disposed to do in the present case, of the Authorised Version rather than of the Revised, according to His good pleasure … which He hath purposed in Himself.' The Revised Version says, Which He hath purposed in Him,' and that is a perfectly possible rendering. But to me the old one is not only more eloquent, but more in accordance with the connection. So I venture to accept it without further ado--His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself.'

That brings us into the presence of that same great thought, which in another aspect is expressed in saying His name is Jehovah,' and in yet another aspect is expressed in saying God is love,' viz. the thought which sounds familiar, but which has in it depths of strength and illumination and joy, if we rightly ponder it, that, to use human words, the motive of the divine action is all found within the divine nature.

We love one another because we discern, or think we discern, lovable qualities in the being on whom our love falls. God loves because He is God. That great artesian fountain wells up from the depths, by its own sweet impulse, and pours itself out; and the good pleasure of His goodness' has no other explanation than that it is His nature and property to be merciful. And so, dear brethren, we get clean past what has sometimes been the misapprehension of good people, and has oftener been the caricatured representation of Evangelical truth which its enemies have put forth-that God was made to love and pity by reason of the sacrifice of the Son, whereas the very opposite is the case. God loves, therefore He sent His Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life,' and the notion of the Cross of Christ as changing the divine heart is as far away from Evangelical truth as it is from the natural conceptions that men form of the divine nature. We shake hands with our so-called antagonists and say, Yes! we believe as much as you do that God does not love us because Christ died, but we believe what perhaps you do not, that Christ died because God loves us, and would save us.' The good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself.'

Then, still further, there is another aspect of this same divine will brought out in other parts of this letter, of which this is a specimen, Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fulness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ,' which, being turned into more modern phraseology, is just this--that the great aim of that divine sovereign will, self-originated, full of loving-kindness to the world, is to manifest to all men what God is, that all men may know Him for what He is, and thereby be drawn back again, and grouped in peaceful unity round His Son, Jesus Christ. That is the intention which is deepest in the divine heart, the desire which God has most for every one of us. And when the Old Testament tells us that the great motive of the divine action is for My own Name's sake,' that expression might be so regarded as to disclose an ugly despot, who only wants to be reverenced by abject and submissive subjects. But what it really means is this, that the divine love which hovers over its poor, prodigal children because it is love, and, therefore, lovingly delights in a loving recognition and response, desires most of all that all the wanderers should see the light, and that every soul of man should be able to whisper, with loving heart, the name, Abba! Father!' Is not that an uplifting thought as being the dominant motive which puts in action the whole of the divine activity P God created in order that He might fling His light upon creatures, who should thereby be glad. And God has redeemed in order that in Jesus Christ we might see Him, and, seeing Him, be at rest, and begin to grow like Him. This is the aim, That they might know Thee, the only true God … whom to know is eternal life.' And so self-communication and self-revelation is the very central mystery of the will.

But that is not all. Another of the forms in which this phrase occurs tells us that that great purpose, the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord, was that, Now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known' by the Church' the manifold wisdom of God.' And so we get another thought, that that whole work of redemption, operated by the Incarnation, and culminating in the Crucifixion and Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ, stands as being the means by which other orders of creatures, besides ourselves, learn to know the manifold wisdom of God.' According to the grand old saying, at Creation the morning stars sang together for joy.' All spiritual creatures, be they higher' or lower,' can only know God by the observation of His acts.

Twas great to speak a world from nought, Tis greater to redeem,'

and the same angelic lips that sang these praises on the morning of Creation have learnt a new song that they sing: Glory and honour and dominion and power be unto the Lamb that was slain.'

Thus to principalities and powers, a diviner height in the loftiness, and a diviner depth in the condescension, and a diviner tenderness in the love, and a diviner energy in the power, of the redeeming God have been made known, and this is the thought of His eternal purpose. And that brings me to another point which is involved in the words that I have just quoted, which stand in connection with those that I have previously referred to. The phrase eternal purpose literally rendered is, the purpose of the ages,' and that, no doubt, may mean eternal' in the sense of running on through all the ages; or it may mean, perhaps, that which we usually attach to the word eternal,' viz. unbeginning and unending. I take the former meaning as the more probable one, that the Apostle contemplates that great will of God which culminates in Jesus Christ, as coming solemnly sweeping through all the epochs of time from the beginning. In a deeper sense than the poet meant it, Through the ages an increasing purpose runs,' and that binds the epochs of humanity together--the purpose of God in Christ Jesus.' The philosophy of history lies there, and it is a true instinct that makes the cradle at Bethlehem the pivot around which the world's chronology revolves. For the deepest thing about all the ages on the further side of it is that they are Before Christ,' and the formative fact for all the ages after it is that they are Anne Domini.

And now the last thing that is suggested by yet another of these eloquent expressions is deduced from another part of the same phrase. The purpose of the ages is described as that which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Now the word purposed' literally is made.' And it may be a question whether purposed or accomplished' is the special meaning to be attached to the general word made.' Either is legitimate. I take it that what the Apostle means here is that the purpose of God, which we have thus seen as sovereign, self-originated, having for its great aim the communication to all His creatures of the knowledge of Himself, and running through the ages, and binding them into a unity, reaches its entire accomplishment in the Cradle, and the Cross, and the Throne of Jesus Christ our Lord.

He fulfils the divine intention. There is that one life, and in that life alone of humanity you have a character which is in entire sympathy with the divine mind, which is in full possession of the divine truth, which never diverges or deviates by a hair's-breadth from the divine will, which is the complete and perfect exponent to man of the divine heart and character; and that Christ is the fulfilment of all that God desired in the depths of eternity, and the abysses of His being. Did He will that men should know Him? Christ has declared Him. Did He will that men should be drawn back to Him? Christ lifted on the Cross draws all men unto Him. Was it according to the good pleasure of His goodness' that we men should attain to the adoption of sons? By that Son we too became sons. Was it the purpose of His will that we should obtain an inheritance'? We obtain it in Jesus Christ, being heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.' All that God willed to do is done. And when we look, on the one hand, up to that infinite purpose, and on the or, her, to the Cross, we hear from the dying lips, It is finished!' The purpose of the ages is accomplished in Christ Jesus.

Is it accomplished with you? I have been speaking about the divine counsel which is a good pleasure,' which runs through the whole history of mankind. But it is a divine purpose that you can thwart as far as you are concerned. How often would I have gathered … and ye would not,' and your would not' neutralises His would.' Do not stand in the way of the steam-roller. You cannot stop it, but it can crush you. Do not have Him say about you, In vain have I smitten, in vain have I loved.' Bow, accept, recognise that all God's armoury is brought to bear upon each of us in that great Cross and Passion, in that great Incarnation and human life. And I beseech you, in your hearts, let the will of God be done even as for a world it has been done by the sacrifice of Calvary.

Maclaren: Eph 1:7

According To'--II.

According to the riches of His grace.'--Eph. 1:7.

WE have seen, in a previous sermon, that a characteristic note of this letter is the frequent occurrence of that phrase according to.' I also then pointed out that it was employed in two different directions. One class of passages, with which I then tried to deal, used it to compare the divine purpose in our salvation with the historical process of the salvation. The type of that class of reference is found in a verse just before my text, according to the good pleasure of His will.' There is a second class of passages to which our text belongs, where the comparison is not between the purpose and its realisation, but between the stores of the divine riches and the experiences of the Christian life. The one set of passages suggests the ground of our salvation in the deep purpose of God; the other suggests the measure of the power which is working out that salvation.

The instances of this second use of the phrase, besides the one in my text, according to the riches of His grace,' are such as these: According to the riches of His glory'; According to the power that worketh in us'; According to the measure of the gift of Christ'; According to the energy of the might of His power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead.'

Now it is clear that all these are varying forms of the same thing. They vary in form, they are identical in substance. What a Jew calls a cubit' an Englishman calls a foot,' but the result is pretty nearly the same. Shillings, marks, francs, are various standards; they all come to substantially the same result. These varying measures of the divine gift which is at work in man's salvation, have this in common, that they all run out into God's immeasurable, unlimited power, boundless wealth. And so, if we gather them together, and try to focus them in a few words, they may help to widen our conceptions of what we ought to expect from God, to bow us in contrition as to the small use that we have made of it, and to open our desires wide, that they may be filled.

I only aspire, then, to deal with these four forms which I have already suggested.

I. The Measure Of Our Possible Attainments Is The Whole Wealth Of God.

According to the riches of His grace.' Another angle at which the same thought is viewed appears in another part of the letter, where we have this variation in the expression, According to the riches of His glory.' Grace' and Glory' are generally opposed antithetically; in this epistle they are united, for in the verse before my text I read: To the praise of the glory of His grace.' So the first thought is, the whole wealth of God is available for every Christian soul.

Now it seems to me that there are very few things that the popular Christianity of this day needs more than a furnishing up of the familiar old Christian terminology, which has largely lost the freshness and the power that it once had. They tell us that these incandescent burners, that we are using nowadays, are very much more bright when they are first fixed than after the mantle gets a little worn. So it is with the terminology of Christianity. It needs to be re-stated, not in such a way as to take the pith out of it, which is what a great deal of the modern craze for re-statement means, but in such a way as to brighten it up again, and to invest it with something of the' celestial light' with which it was apparelled' when it first came. Now that word grace,' I have no doubt, sounds to you hard, theological, remote. But what does it mean? It gathers into one burning point the whole of the rays of that conception of God, with which it is the glory of Christianity to have flooded and drenched the world. It tells us that at the heart of the universe there is a heart; that God is Love, that that love is the motive-spring of His activity, that it comes and bends over the lowliest with a smile of amity on its lips, with healing and help in its hands, with forgiveness for all sins against itself, with boundless wealth for the poorest, and that the wealth of His self-communicating love is the measure of the wealth that each of us may possess.

God gives according to the riches of His grace.' You do not expect a millionaire to give half-a-crown to a subscription fund; and God gives royally, divinely, measuring His bestowments by the abundance of His treasures, and handing over with an open palm large gifts of coined money, because there are infinite chests of uncirculated bullion in the deep storehouses. How great is Thy goodness which Thou hast manifested before the sons of men for them that fear Thee. How much greater is Thy goodness which Thou hast laid up in store.' But whilst He gives all, the question comes to be: What do I receive? The measure of His gift is His measureless grace; the measure of my reception is my, alas! easily-measured faith. What about the unearned increment? What about the unrealised wealth? Too many of us are like some man who has a great estate in another land. He knows nothing about it, and is living in grimy poverty in a back street. For you have all God's riches waiting for you, and' the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice' at your beck and call, and yet you are but poorly realising your possible riches. Alas, that when we might have so much we do have so little. According to the riches of His grace' He gives. But another according to' comes in. According to thy faith be it unto thee.' So we have to take these two measures together, and the working limit of our possession of God's riches comes out of the combination of them both.

Let me remind you, before I pass on, of what I have already suggested is but another phase of this same thought. Paul says in this epistle that God gives not only according to the riches of His grace,' but according to the riches of His glory,' and that the latter expression is substantially identical with the former, is plain from the combination of the two in an earlier verse of this chapter: To the praise of the glory of His grace.' Thus we come to the blessed thought that the glory of God is essentially the revelation of that stooping, pitying, pardoning, enriching love. Not in the physical attributes, not in the characteristics of the divine nature which part Him off from men, and make Him remote, both from their conceptions and their affections, but in the love that bends to them is the true glory of God. All these other things are but the fringes; the centre of glory is the Love, which is the mightiest and the divinest thing in the Might Divine. The sunshine is far stronger than the lightning, and there is more force developed in the rain than in an earthquake. That truth is what Christianity has made the common possession of the world. It has thereby broken the chains of dread; it has bridged over the infinite distance. It has given us a God that can love and be loved, can stoop and can lift, can pardon and can purify. According to the good pleasure of His goodness,'--there is the foundation of our salvation. According to the riches of His grace,'--there is the measure of our salvation.

II. Verses Which Speak Of The Present Working Of God's Power.

We have another form of the same measure in another set of verses which speak of the present working of God's power.

The Apostle speaks in regard to his own apostolic commission of its being given according to the working of His power'; and he speaks of all Christian men as receiving gifts according to the power that worketh in us.' So there we have a standard that comes, as it were, a little closer to ourselves. We do not need to travel up into the dim abysses above, or think of the sanctities and the secrecies of that divine heart in the light which is inaccessible, but we have the measure in ourselves.

The standards of length are kept at Greenwich, the standards of capacity are kept in the Tower; but there are local standards distributed throughout the land to which men may go and have their measures corrected. And so besides all these lofty thoughts about the grace and the glory which measures His gift, we can turn within, if we are Christian people, and say, According to the power that worketh in us.'

Ah, brethren! there are few things that we want more than to revive and deepen the conviction that in every Christian man, by virtue of his faith, and in proportion to his faith, there is in operation an actual, superhuman, divine power moulding his nature, guiding, quickening, ennobling, lifting, confirming, and hallowing and shaping him into conformity with Jesus Christ. I would that we all believed not as a dogma, but realised as a personal experience, that irrefragable truth,' Know ye not that the Spirit of Christ dwelleth in you, except ye be reprobate?' The life of self is evil; the life of Christ in self is good, and only good. And if you are Christian men, and in the proportion, as I have said, in which you are living by faith, you have working in your spirits the very Spirit of Christ Himself.

And that power is the measure of your possibilities. Obviously the power that worketh in us' is able to do a great deal more than it is doing in any of us. And so with deep significance the Apostle, side by side with his adducing of this power as being the measure of our possible attainments, speaks about God as being able to do for us, exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think.' The power that works in us' transcends in its possibilities our present experience, it transcends our conceptions, it transcends our desires. It is able to do everything; it actually does--well, you know what it does in you. And the responsibility of hampering and hindering that power from working out its only adequately corresponding results lies at our own doors. A rushing, mighty wind'--yes; and in myself a scarcely perceptible breathing, and often a dead calm, stagnant as in the latitudes on either side of the Equator, where, for long, dreary days, no freshening motion in the atmosphere is perceptible. A fire?' --yes; then why is my grate full of grey, cold ashes, and one little spark in the corner? A fountain springing into everlasting life?'--yes; then why in my basin is there so much scum and ooze, mud and defilement, and so little of the flashing and brilliant water? The power that works in us' is sorely hindered by the weakness in which it works.

III. In The Third Place Another Form Of This Measure Is Stated By The Apostle, According To The Measure Of The Gift Of Christ.'

That means, of course, the gift which Christ bestows. It is substantially the same idea as I have just been dealing with, only looked at from rather a different point of view. Therefore, I need not dwell upon its parallelism with what has just been occupying our attention, but rather ask you simply to consider one point in reference to it, and that is that, side by side with the reference to the gift of Christ as being the measure of our possible attainments, the Apostle enlarges on the Infinite variety of the shapes which that one gift takes in different people. He gave some apostles, some prophets,' etc.; one man receiving according to this fashion, and another according to that, and to each of us the distribution is made according to the measure of the gift of Christ.' That is to say, it takes us all, the collective goodness and beauty of the whole community of saints, to approximate to the fulness of that gift, and all are needed in their different types and forms of excellence, sanctity and beauty, in order to set forth, even imperfectly, the richness and the manifoldness of His great gift. And so we all come' --there is a multiplicity--unto the perfect man, the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ '--there is a unity in which the multiplicity inheres.

So try to get a little more of some different type of excellence than that to which you are naturally inclined. Seek, and consciously endeavour, to appropriate into your character uncongenial excellences, and be very charitable in your judgments of the different types of Christian conformity to Christ our Lord. The crystals that are set round a light do not quarrel with each other as to whether green, or yellow, or blue, or red, or violet is the true colour to reflect. We need all the seven prismatic tints to make the perfect white light. The gift of Christ is many-sided; try not to be one-sided in your reception of it.

IV. He Raised Him From The Dead.

And now the last form of this measure is according to the energy of the might of His power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead.'

When we gazed upon the riches of God's grace, they Were high above us, when we looked upon the power that worketh in us,' we saw it working amidst many hindrances and hamperings, but here there is presented to us in a concrete example, close beside us, of what God can make of a man when the man is wholly pliable to His will, and the recipient of His influences. And so there stands before us the guarantee and the pattern of immortal life, the Christ whose Manhood died and lives, who is clothed with a spiritual body, who wields royal authority in the Kingdom of the Most High. And that is the measure of what God can do with me, and wishes to do with me, if I will let Him. Christ is my pattern, and the measure of my own possibilities.

To be with Him, where and what He is, is the only adequate result of the power that works in us, and of the process that is already begun in us, if we are Christian people. You are sometimes--there is one eminent example of it in that great Medicean Chapel at Florence, a statue exquisitely finished in all its limbs, but one part left in the rough. That is the best that Christian people come to here. Shall it always be so? Do not the very imperfections prophesy completion, and is it not certain that the half-finished torso will be carried to the upper workshop, and be there disengaged from the dead marble and made to stand out in perfect beauty and fullest completeness? Christ is the object of our hopes, and no hopes of the Christian life are adequate to the power that works in us, or to the progress already made, which do not see in the energy of the might of the power' which wrought in Christ, the example and the guarantee of the exceeding greatness of His power which is to usward.'

And now, one last word. Besides all these passages which have been occupying us, there is another use of this same phrase in this letter which presents a very solemn and grim contrast. I can do no better with it than simply read it: Ye were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh '--mark the allusion to the other words that we have been referring to--in the children of disobedience.' So there you have the alternative, either dead in trespasses and sins,' whilst living the physical and the intellectual life, or partaking of the life of Him who was dead, and is alive for ever more'; either walking according to the course of this world,' which is disobedience' and wrath,' or walking according to the power that worketh in us'; either putting on,' or rather continuing to wear, the old man which is corrupt according to the lusts which deceive,' or' putting on the new man, which according to God is created in righteousness and holiness and truth.' The choice is before us. May God help us to choose aright!

MHCC: Eph 1:1-2

All Christians must be saints; if they come not under that character on earth, they will never be saints in glory. Those are not saints, who are not faithful, believing in Christ, and true to the profession they make of relation to their Lord. By grace, understand the free and undeserved love and favour of God, and those graces of the Spirit which come from it; by peace, all other blessings, spiritual and temporal, the fruits of the former. No peace without grace. No peace, nor grace, but from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ; and the best saints need fresh supplies of the graces of the Spirit, and desire to grow.

MHCC: Eph 1:3-8

Spiritual and heavenly blessings are the best blessings; with which we cannot be miserable, and without which we cannot but be so. This was from the choice of them in Christ, before the foundation of the world, that they should be made holy by separation from sin, being set apart to God, and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, in consequence of their election in Christ. All who are chosen to happiness as the end, are chosen to holiness as the means. In love they were predestinated, or fore-ordained, to be adopted as children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, and to be openly admitted to the privileges of that high relation to himself. The reconciled and adopted believer, the pardoned sinner, gives all the praise of his salvation to his gracious Father. His love appointed this method of redemption, spared not his own Son, and brought believers to hear and embrace this salvation. It was rich grace to provide such a surety as his own Son, and freely to deliver him up. This method of grace gives no encouragement to evil, but shows sin in all its hatefulness, and how it deserves vengeance. The believer's actions, as well as his words, declare the praises of Divine mercy.

Matthew Henry: Eph 1:1-2

Here is, 1. The title St. Paul takes to himself, as belonging to him - Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, etc. He reckoned it a great honour to be employed by Christ, as one of his messengers to the sons of men. The apostles were prime officers in the Christian church, being extraordinary ministers appointed for a time only. They were furnished by their great Lord with extraordinary gifts and the immediate assistance of the Spirit, that they might be fitted for publishing and spreading the gospel and for governing the church in its infant state. Such a one Paul was, and that not by the will of man conferring that office upon him, nor by his own intrusion into it; but by the will of God, very expressly and plainly intimated to him, he being immediately called (as the other apostles were) by Christ himself to the work. Every faithful minister of Christ (though his call and office are not of so extraordinary a nature) may, with our apostle, reflect on it as an honour and comfort to himself that he is what he is by the will of God. 2. The persons to whom this epistle is sent: To the saints who are at Ephesus, that is, to the Christians who were members of the church at Ephesus, the metropolis of Asia. He calls them saints, for such they were in profession, such they were bound to be in truth and reality, and many of them were such. All Christians must be saints; and, if they come not under that character on earth, they will never be saints in glory. He calls them the faithful in Christ Jesus, believers in him, and firm and constant in their adherence to him and to his truths and ways. Those are not saints who are not faithful, believing in Christ, firmly adhering to him, and true to the profession they make of relation to their Lord. Note, It is the honour not only of ministers, but of private Christians too, to have obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. - In Christ Jesus, from whom they derive all their grace and spiritual strength, and in whom their persons, and all that they perform, are made accepted. 3. The apostolical benediction: Grace be to you, etc. This is the token in every epistle; and it expresses the apostle's good-will to his friends, and a real desire of their welfare. By grace we are to understand the free and undeserved love and favour of God, and those graces of the Spirit which proceed from it; by peace all other blessings, spiritual and temporal, the fruits and product of the former. No peace without grace. No peace, nor grace, but from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. These peculiar blessings proceed from God, not as a Creator, but as a Father by special relation: and they come from our Lord Jesus Christ, who, having purchased them for his people, has a right to bestow them upon them. Indeed the saints, and the faithful in Christ Jesus, had already received grace and peace; but the increase of these is very desirable, and the best saints stand in need of fresh supplies of the graces of the Spirit, and cannot but desire to improve and grow: and therefore they should pray, each one for himself and all for one another, that such blessings may still abound unto them.

After this short introduction he comes to the matter and body of the epistle; and, though it may seem somewhat peculiar in a letter, yet the Spirit of God saw fit that his discourse of divine things in this chapter should be cast into prayers and praises, which, as they are solemn addresses to God, so they convey weighty instructions to others. Prayer may preach; and praise may do so too.

Matthew Henry: Eph 1:3-14

He begins with thanksgivings and praise, and enlarges with a great deal of fluency and copiousness of affection upon the exceedingly great and precious benefits which we enjoy by Jesus Christ. For the great privileges of our religion are very aptly recounted and enlarged upon in our praises to God.

I. In general he blesses God for spiritual blessings, Eph 1:3, where he styles him the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; for, as Mediator, the Father was his God; as God, and the second person in the blessed Trinity, God was his Father. It bespeaks the mystical union between Christ and believers, that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is their God and Father, and that in and through him. All blessings come from God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. No good can be expected from a righteous and holy God to sinful creatures, but by his mediation. He hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings. Note, Spiritual blessings are the best blessings with which God blesses us, and for which we are to bless him. He blesses us by bestowing such things upon us as make us really blessed. We cannot thus bless God again; but must do it by praising, and magnifying, and speaking well of him on that account. Those whom God blesses with some he blesses with all spiritual blessings; to whom he gives Christ, he freely gives all these things. It is not so with temporal blessings; some are favoured with health, and not with riches; some with riches, and not with health, etc. But, where God blesses with spiritual blessings, he blesses with all. They are spiritual blessings in heavenly places; that is, say some, in the church, distinguished from the world, and called out of it. Or it may be read, in heavenly things, such as come from heaven, and are designed to prepare men for it, and to secure their reception into it. We should hence learn to mind spiritual and heavenly things as the principal things, spiritual and heavenly blessings as the best blessings, with which we cannot be miserable and without which we cannot but be so. Set not your affections on things on the earth, but on those things which are above. These we are blessed with in Christ; for, as all our services ascend to God through Christ, so all our blessings are conveyed to us in the same way, he being the Mediator between God and us.

II. The particular spiritual blessings with which we are blessed in Christ, and for which we ought to bless God, are (many of them) here enumerated and enlarged upon. 1. Election and predestination, which are the secret springs whence the others flow, Eph 1:4, Eph 1:5, Eph 1:11. Election, or choice, respects that lump or mass of mankind out of which some are chosen, from which they are separated and distinguished. Predestination has respect to the blessings they are designed for; particularly the adoption of children, it being the purpose of God that in due time we should become his adopted children, and so have a right to all the privileges and to the inheritance of children. We have here the date of this act of love: it was before the foundation of the world; not only before God's people had a being, but before the world had a beginning; for they were chosen in the counsel of God from all eternity. It magnifies these blessings to a high degree that they are the products of eternal counsel. The alms which you give to beggars at your doors proceed from a sudden resolve; but the provision which a parent makes for his children is the result of many thoughts, and is put into his last will and testament with a great deal of solemnity. And, as this magnifies divine love, so it secures the blessings to God's elect; for the purpose of God according to election shall stand. He acts in pursuance of his eternal purpose in bestowing spiritual blessings upon his people. He hath blessed us - according as he hath chosen us in him, in Christ the great head of the election, who is emphatically called God's elect, his chosen; and in the chosen Redeemer an eye of favour was cast upon them. Observe here one great end and design of this choice: chosen - that we should be holy; not because he foresaw they would be holy, but because he determined to make them so. All who are chosen to happiness as the end are chosen to holiness as the means. Their sanctification, as well as their salvation, is the result of the counsels of divine love. - And without blame before him - that their holiness might not be merely external and in outward appearance, so as to prevent blame from men, but internal and real, and what God himself, who looketh at the heart, will account such, such holiness as proceeds from love to God and to our fellow-creatures, this charity being the principle of all true holiness. The original word signifies such an innocence as no man can carp at; and therefore some understand it of that perfect holiness which the saints shall attain in the life to come, which will be eminently before God, they being in his immediate presence for ever. Here is also the rule and the fontal cause of God's election: it is according to the good pleasure of his will (Eph 1:5), not for the sake of any thing in them foreseen, but because it was his sovereign will, and a thing highly pleasing to him. It is according to the purpose, the fixed and unalterable will, of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will (Eph 1:11), who powerfully accomplishes whatever concerns his elect, as he has wisely and freely fore-ordained and decreed, the last and great end and design of all which is his own glory: To the praise of the glory of his grace (Eph 1:6), that we should be to the praise of his glory (Eph 1:12), that is, that we should live and behave ourselves in such a manner that his rich grace might be magnified, and appear glorious, and worthy of the highest praise. All is of God, and from him, and through him, and therefore all must be to him, and centre in his praise. Note, The glory of God is his own end, and it should be ours in all that we do. This passage has been understood by some in a very different sense, and with a special reference to the conversion of these Ephesians to Christianity. Those who have a mind to see what is said to this purpose may consult Mr. Locke, and other well-known writers, on the place. 2. The next spiritual blessing the apostle takes notice of is acceptance with God through Jesus Christ: Wherein, or by which grace, he hath made us accepted in the beloved, Eph 1:6. Jesus Christ is the beloved of his Father (Mat 3:17), as well as of angels and saints. It is our great privilege to be accepted of God, which implies his love to us and his taking us under his care and into his family. We cannot be thus accepted of God, but in and through Jesus Christ. He loves his people for the sake of the beloved. 3. Remission of sins, and redemption through the blood of Jesus, Eph 1:7. No remission without redemption. It was by reason of sin that we were captivated, and we cannot be released from our captivity but by the remission of our sins. This redemption we have in Christ, and this remission through his blood. The guilt and the stain of sin could be no otherwise removed than by the blood of Jesus. All our spiritual blessings flow down to us in that stream. This great benefit, which comes freely to us, was dearly bought and paid for by our blessed Lord; and yet it is according to the riches of God's grace. Christ's satisfaction and God's rich grace are very consistent in the great affair of man's redemption. God was satisfied by Christ as our substitute and surety; but it was rich grace that would accept of a surety, when he might have executed the severity of the law upon the transgressor, and it was rich grace to provide such a surety as his own Son, and freely to deliver him up, when nothing of that nature could have entered into our thoughts, nor have been any otherwise found out for us. In this instance he has not only manifested riches of grace, but has abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence (Eph 1:8), wisdom in contriving the dispensation, and prudence in executing the counsel of his will, as he has done. How illustrious have the divine wisdom and prudence rendered themselves, in so happily adjusting the matter between justice and mercy in this grand affair, in securing the honour of God and his law, at the same time that the recovery of sinners and their salvation are ascertained and made sure! 4. Another privilege which the apostle here blesses God for is divine revelation - that God hath made known to us the mystery of his will (Eph 1:9), that is, so much of his good-will to men, which had been concealed for a long time, and is still concealed from so great a part of the world: this we owe to Christ, who, having lain in the bosom of the Father from eternity, came to declare his will to the children of men. According to his good pleasure, his secret counsels concerning man's redemption, which he had purposed, or resolved upon, merely in and from himself, and not for any thing in them. In this revelation, and in his making known unto us the mystery of his will, the wisdom and the prudence of God do abundantly shine forth. It is described (Eph 1:13) as the word of truth, and the gospel of our salvation. Every word of it is true. It contains and instructs us in the most weighty and important truths, and it is confirmed and sealed by the very oath of God, whence we should learn to betake ourselves to it in all our searches after divine truth. It is the gospel of our salvation: it publishes the glad tidings of salvation, and contains the offer of it: it points out the way that leads to it; and the blessed Spirit renders the reading and the ministration of it effectual to the salvation of souls. O, how ought we to prize this glorious gospel and to bless God for it! This is the light shining in a dark place, for which we have reason to be thankful, and to which we should take heed. 5. Union in and with Christ is a great privilege, a spiritual blessing, and the foundation of many others. He gathers together in one all things in Christ, Eph 1:10. All the lines of divine revelation meet in Christ; all religion centres in him. Jews and Gentiles were united to each other by being both united to Christ. Things in heaven and things on earth are gathered together in him; peace made, correspondence settled, between heaven and earth, through him. The innumerable company of angels become one with the church through Christ: this God purposed in himself, and it was his design in that dispensation which was to be accomplished by his sending Christ in the fulness of time, at the exact time that God had prefixed and settled. 6. The eternal inheritance is the great blessing with which we are blessed in Christ: In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, Eph 1:11. Heaven is the inheritance, the happiness of which is a sufficient portion for a soul: it is conveyed in the way of an inheritance, being the gift of a Father to his children. If children, then heirs. All the blessings that we have in hand are but small if compared with the inheritance. What is laid out upon an heir in his minority is nothing to what is reserved for him when he comes to age. Christians are said to have obtained this inheritance, as they have a present right to it, and even actual possession of it, in Christ their head and representative. 7. The seal and earnest of the Spirit are of the number of these blessings. We are said to be sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, Eph 1:13. The blessed Spirit is holy himself, and he makes us holy. He is called the Spirit of promise, as he is the promised Spirit. By him believers are sealed; that is, separated and set apart for God, and distinguished and marked as belonging to him. The Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, Eph 1:14. The earnest is part of payment, and it secures the full sum: so is the gift of the Holy Ghost; all his influences and operations, both as a sanctifier and a comforter, are heaven begun, glory in the seed and bud. The Spirit's illumination is an earnest of everlasting light; sanctification is an earnest of perfect holiness; and his comforts are earnests of everlasting joys. He is said to be the earnest, until the redemption of the purchased possession. It may be called here the possession, because this earnest makes it as sure to the heirs as though they were already possessed of it; and it is purchased for them by the blood of Christ. The redemption of it is mentioned because it was mortgaged and forfeited by sin; and Christ restores it to us, and so is said to redeem it, in allusion to the law of redemption. Observe, from all this, what a gracious promise that is which secures the gift of the Holy Ghost to those who ask him.

The apostle mentions the great end and design of God in bestowing all these spiritual privileges, that we should be to the praise of his glory who first trusted in Christ - we to whom the gospel was first preached, and who were first converted to the faith of Christ, and to the placing of our hope and trust in him. Note, Seniority in grace is a preferment: Who were in Christ before me, says the apostle (Rom 16:7); those who have for a longer time experienced the grace of Christ are under more special obligations to glorify God. They should be strong in faith, and more eminently glorify him; but this should be the common end of all. For this we were made, and for this we were redeemed; this is the great design of our Christianity, and of God in all that he has done for us: unto the praise of his glory, Eph 1:14. He intends that his grace and power and other perfection should by this means become conspicuous and illustrious, and that the sons of men should magnify him.

Barclay: Eph 1:1-2

Paul begins his letter with the only two claim's to fame which he possessed. (i) He is an apostle of Christ. When Paul said that there were three things in his mind. (a) He meant that he belonged to Christ. His life was not his own to do with as he liked; he was the possession of Jesus Christ, and he must always live as Jesus Christ wanted him to live. (b) He meant that he was sent out by Jesus Christ. The word apostolos (652) comes from the verb apostellein (649), which means to send out. It can be used, for instance, of a naval squadron sent out on an expedition; it can be used of an ambassador sent out by his native country. It describes a man who is sent out with some special task to do. The Christian all through life sees himself as a member of the task force of Christ. He is a man with a mission, the mission of serving Christ within this world. © He meant that any power he possessed as a delegated power. The Sanhedrin was the supreme court of the Jews. In matters of religion the Sanhedrin had authority over every Jew throughout the world. When the Sanhedrin came to a decision, that decision was given to an apostolos (652) to convey it to the persons whom it concerned and to see that it was carried out. When such an apostolos (652) went out, behind him and in him lay the authority of the Sanhedrin, whose representative he was. The Christian is the representative of Christ within the world, but he is not left to carry out that task in his own strength and power; the strength and power of Jesus Christ are with him.

(ii) Paul goes on to say that he is an apostle through the will of God. The accent in his voice here is not that of pride but of sheer amazement. To the end of the day Paul was amazed that God could have chosen a man like him to do his work.

"How Thou canst think so well of us,

And be the God Thou art,

Is darkness to my intellect,

But sunshine to my heart."

A Christian must never be filled with pride in any task that God gives him to do; he must be filled with wonder that God thought him worthy of a share in his work.

Paul goes on to address his letter to the people who live in Ephesus and who are faithful in Jesus Christ. The Christian is a man who always lives a double life. Paul's friends were people who lived in Ephesus and in Christ. Every Christian has a human address and a divine address; and that is precisely the secret of the Christian life. Alister MacLean tells of a lady in the West Highlands who lived a hard life, yet one of perpetual serenity. When asked the secret of it, she answered: "My secret is to sail the seas, and always to keep my heart in port." Wherever the Christian is, he is still in Christ.

Paul begins with his usual greeting. "Grace to you," he says, "and peace." Here are the two great words of the Christian faith.

Grace has always two main ideas in it. The Greek word is charis (5485) which could mean charm. There must be a certain loveliness in the Christian life. A Christianity which is unattractive is no real Christianity. Grace always describes a gift; and a gift which it would have been impossible for a man to procure for himself, and which he never earned and in no way deserved. Whenever we mention the word grace, we must think of the sheer loveliness of the Christian life and the sheer undeserved generosity of the heart of God.

When we think of the word peace In connection with the Christian life we must be careful. In Greek the word is eirene (1515), but it translates the Hebrew word shalowm (07965). In the Bible peace is never a purely negative word; it never describes simply the absence of trouble. Shalowm (07965) means everything which makes for a man's highest good. Christian peace is something quite independent of outward circumstances. A man might live in ease and luxury and on the fat of the land, he might have the finest of houses and the biggest of bank accounts, and yet not have peace; on the other hand, a man might be starving in prison, or dying at the stake, or living a life from which all comfort had fled, and be at perfect peace. The explanation is that there is only one source of peace in all the world, and that is doing the will of God. When we are doing something which we know we ought not to do or are evading something that we know we ought to do, there is always a haunting dispeace at the back of our minds; but if we are doing something very difficult, even something we do not want to do, so long as we know that it is the right thing there is a certain contentment in our hearts. "In his will is our peace."

Barclay: Eph 1:3-4

In the Greek the long passage from Eph 1:3-14is one sentence. It is so long and complicated because it represents not so much a reasoned statement as a lyrical song of praise. Paul's mind goes on and on, not because he is thinking in logical stages, but because gift after gift and wonder after wonder from God pass before his eyes. To understand it we must break it up and take it in short sections.

In this section Paul is thinking of the Christians as the chosen people of God, and his mind runs along three lines.

(i) He thinks of the fact of God's choice. Paul never thought of himself as having chosen to do God's work. He always thought of God as having chosen him. Jesus said to his disciples: "You did not choose me, but I chose you" (Joh 15:16). Here precisely lies the wonder. It would not be so wonderful that man should choose God; the wonder is that God should choose man.

(ii) Paul thinks of the bounty of God's choice. God chose us to bless us with the blessings which are to be found only in heaven. There are certain things which a man can discover for himself; but there are others which are beyond his obtaining. A man by himself can acquire a certain skill, can achieve a certain position, can amass a certain amount of this world's goods; but by himself he can never attain to goodness or to peace of mind. God chose us to give us those things which he alone can give.

(iii) Paul thinks of the purpose of God's choice. God chose us that we should be holy and blameless. Here are two great words. Holy is the Greek word hagios (40), which always has in it the idea of difference and of separation. A temple is holy because it is different from other buildings; a priest is holy because he is different from ordinary men; a victim is holy because it is different from other animals; God is supremely holy because he is different from men; the Sabbath is holy because it is different from other days. So, then, God chose the Christian that he should be different from other men.

Here is the challenge that the modern Church has been very slow to face. In the early Church the Christian never had any doubt that he must be different from the world; he, in fact, knew that he must be so different that the probability was that the world would kill him and the certainty was that the world would hate him. But the tendency in the modern Church has been to play down the difference between the Church and the world. We have, in effect, often said to people: "So long as you live a decent, respectable life, it is quite all right to become a Church member and to call yourself a Christian. You don't need to be so very different from other people." In fact a Christian should be identifiable in the world.

It must always be remembered that this difference on which Christ insists is not one which takes a man out of the world; it makes him different within the world. It should be possible to identify the Christian in the school, the shop, the factory, the office, the hospital ward, everywhere. And the difference is that the Christian behaves not as any human laws compel him to do but as the law of Christ compels him to do. A Christian teacher is out to satisfy the regulations not of an education authority or a headmaster but of Christ; and that will almost certainly mean a very different attitude to the pupils under his charge. A Christian workman is out to satisfy the regulations not of a Trades Union but of Jesus Christ; and that will certainly make him a very different kind of workman, which may well end in him being so different that he is expelled from his union. A Christian doctor will never regard a sick person as a case, but always as a person. A Christian employer will be concerned with far more than the payment of minimum wages or the creation of minimum working conditions. It is the simple fact of the matter that if enough Christians became hagios (40), different, they would revolutionize society.

Blameless is the Greek word amomos (299). Its interest lies in the fact that it is a sacrificial word. Under Jewish law before an animal could be offered as a sacrifice it must be inspected, and if any blemish was found it must be rejected as unfit for an offering to God. Only the best was fit to offer to God. Amomos (299) thinks of the whole man as an offering to God. It thinks of taking every part of our life, work, pleasure, sport, home life, personal relationships, and making them all such that they can be offered to God. This word does not mean that the Christian must be respectable; it means that he must be perfect. To say that the Christian must be amomos (299) is to banish contentment with second bests; it means that the Christian standard is nothing less than perfection.

Barclay: Eph 1:5-6

In this passage Paul speaks to us of the plan of God. One of the pictures that he more than once uses of what God does for men is that of adoption (compare Rom 8:23; Gal 4:5). God adopted us as sons into his family.

In the ancient world, where Roman law prevailed, this would be an even more meaningful picture than it is to us. For there the family was based on what was called the patria potestas, the father's power. A father had absolute power over his children so long as he and they lived. He could sell his child as a slave or even kill him. Dion Cassius tells us that "the law of the Romans gives a father absolute authority over his son, and that for the son's whole life. It gives him authority, if he so chooses, to imprison him, to scourge him, to make him work on his estate as a slave in fetters, even to kill him. That right still continues to exist even if the son is old enough to play an active part in political affairs, even if he has been judged worthy to occupy the magistrate's office, and even if he is held in honour by all men." It is quite true that, when a father was judging his son, he was supposed to call the adult male members of the family into consultation, but it was not necessary that he should do so.

There are actual instances of a father condemning his son to death. Sallust (The Catiline Conspiracy, 39) tells how Aulus Fulvius joined the rebel Catiline. He was arrested on the journey and brought back. And his father ordered that he should be put to death. The father did this on his own private authority, giving as his reason that "he had begotten him, not for Catiline against his country, but for his country against Catiline."

Under Roman law a child could not possess anything; and any inheritance willed to him, or any gift given to him, became the property of his father. It did not matter how old the son was, or to what honours and responsibility he had risen, he was absolutely in his father's power.

In circumstances like that it is obvious that adoption was a very serious step. It was, however, not uncommon, for children were often adopted to ensure that some family should not become extinct. The ritual of adoption must have been very impressive. It was carried out by a symbolic sale in which copper and scales were used. Twice the real father sold his son, and twice he symbolically bought him back; finally he sold him a third time, and at the third sale he did not buy him back. After this the adopting father had to go to the praetor, one of the principal Roman magistrates, and plead the case for the adoption. Only after all this had been gone through was the adoption complete.

When the adoption was complete it was complete indeed. The person who had been adopted had all the rights of a legitimate son in his new family and completely lost all rights in his old family. In the eyes of the law he was a new person. So new was he that even all debts and obligations connected with his previous family were abolished as if they had never existed.

That is what Paul says that God has done for us. We were absolutely in the power of sin and of the world; God, through Jesus, took us out of that power into his; and that adoption wipes out the past and makes us new.

Barclay: Eph 1:7-8

In this short section we come face to face with three of the great conceptions of the Christian faith.

(i) There is deliverance. The word used is apolutrosis (629). It comes from the verb lutroun (3083), which means to ransom. It is the word used for ransoming a man who is a prisoner of war or a slave; for freeing a man from the penalty of death; for God's deliverance of the children of Israel from their slavery in Egypt; for God's continual rescuing of his people in the time of their trouble. In every case the conception is the delivering of a man from a situation from which he was powerless to liberate himself or from a penalty which he himself could never have paid.

So, then, first of all Paul says that God delivered men from a situation from which they could never have delivered themselves. That is precisely what Christianity did do for men. When Christianity came into this world men were haunted by the sense of their own powerlessness. They knew the wrongness of the life which they were living; and also that they were powerless to do anything about it.

Seneca is full of this kind of feeling of helpless frustration. Men, he said, were overwhelmingly conscious of their inefficiency in necessary things. He said of himself that he was a homo non tolerabilis, a man not to be tolerated. Men, he said with a kind of despair, love their vices and hate them at the same time. What men need, he cried, is a hand let down to lift them up. The highest thinkers in the pagan world knew that they were in the grip of something from which they were helpless to deliver themselves. They needed liberation.

It was just that liberation which Jesus Christ brought. It is still true that he can liberate men from helpless slavery to the things which attract and disgust them at one and the same time. To put it at its simplest, Jesus can still make bad men good.

(ii) There is forgiveness. The ancient world was haunted by the sense of sin. It might well be said that the whole Old Testament is an expansion of the saying, "The soul that sins shall die" (Eze 18:4). Men were conscious of their own guilt and stood in terror of their god or gods. It is sometimes said that the Greeks had no sense of sin. Nothing could be further from the truth. "Men," said Hesiod, "delight their souls in cherishing that which is their bane." All the plays of Aeschylus are founded on one text--"The doer shall suffer." Once a man had done an evil thing Nemesis was on his heels; and punishment followed sin as certainly as night followed day. As Shakespeare had it in Richard the Third,

"My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,

And every tongue brings in a several tale,

And every tale condemns me for a villain."

If there was one thing which men knew it was the sense of sin and the dread of God. Jesus changed all that. He taught men, not of the hate, but of the love of God. Because Jesus came into the world, men, even in their sin, discovered God's love.

(iii) There is wisdom and sound sense. The two words in Greek are sophia (4678) and phronesis (5428), and Christ brought both of them to us. This is very interesting. The Greeks wrote much about these two words; if a man had both, he was perfectly equipped for life.

Aristotle defined sophia (4678) as knowledge of the most precious things. Cicero defined it as knowledge of things both human and divine. Sophia (4678) was a thing of the searching intellect. Sophia (4678) was the answer to the eternal problems of life and death, and God and man, and time and eternity.

Aristotle defined phronesis (5428) as the knowledge of human affairs and of the things in which planning is necessary. Plutarch defined it as practical knowledge of the things which concern us. Cicero defined it as knowledge of the things which are to be sought and the things which are to be avoided. Plato defined it as the disposition of mind which enables us to judge what things are to be done and what things are not to be done. In other words, phronesis (5428) is the sound sense which enables men to meet and to solve the practical problems of everyday life and living.

It is Paul's claim that Jesus brought us sophia (4678), the intellectual knowledge which satisfies the mind, and phronesis (5428), the practical knowledge which enables us to handle the day to day problems of practical life and living. There is a certain completeness in the Christian character. There is a type of person who is at home in the study, who moves familiarly amidst the theological and philosophical problems, and who is yet helpless and impractical in the ordinary everyday affairs of life. There is another kind of person who claims that he is a practical man, so engaged with the business of living that he has no time to concern himself with the ultimate things. In the light of the gifts of God through Christ, both of these characters are imperfect. Christ brings to us the solution of the problems both of eternity and time.

Constable: Eph 1:1-2

I. SALUTATION 1:1-2

In most of his epistles Paul began by setting forth foundational truth and then concluded by applying that truth to the lives of his readers. This pattern is very obvious in Ephesians where the first three chapters deal with doctrine (teaching) and the last three with practice (application). Of course, there is some doctrine in the last three chapters and some application in the first three, but generally this is how Paul organized his material.⁵

The salutation contains Paul's introduction of himself to the original recipients of this letter and his greeting to them.

1:1 Paul referred to himself by name as the writer of this book twice (cf. 3:1). Even though some critics have denied the Pauline authorship of Ephesians, largely because of the vocabulary, style, and doctrine it contains, the early church accepted it without dispute.⁶

"Ephesians, then, was unhesitatingly assigned to Paul from the time when the New Testament corpus began to be recognized as such in the mid-second century. Since Clement of Rome reflected its language when he wrote to Corinth in A.D. 95, it is likely that this attestation runs back to the first century."⁷

The New Testament writers used the word "apostle" (lit. "sent one") in a general and in a particular sense. Sometimes it refers generally to anyone sent out as a representative of Jesus Christ (Acts 14:4, 14; 2 Cor. 8:23; Phil. 2:25). Usually it refers to one of the 12 apostles or Paul who saw the risen Christ, as here. The Lord Jesus commissioned and sent Paul out with the gospel message. He received his apostleship on the Damascus road because of God's "will" or decision, not his own choosing (Acts 26:16-18).

The original recipients of this epistle were "saints" (Gr. hagiois, holy ones), people set apart by God for His use. They lived in Ephesus, the capitol of the Roman province of Asia, where Paul had ministered for three years during his third missionary journey (Acts 20:31).

The words "at Ephesus" or "in Ephesus" do not appear in three early Alexandrian (Egyptian) manuscripts. This omission has led some scholars to conclude that Paul originally sent this epistle to several undesignated local churches probably in the province of Asia for the recipients to circulate among them. Advocates of this view have pointed to the absence of any reference to individuals as evidence that Paul meant it to go to several churches rather than just to the Ephesian church. However it seems best to regard the Ephesian church as the original audience for the following reasons. Most ancient manuscripts do contain the words "at Ephesus" or "in Ephesus." Moreover no manuscript contains the name of any other city or even the words "at" or "in." Furthermore all of Paul's other inspired epistles mention the recipients.

Perhaps Paul omitted personal names of Ephesian believers because he felt no need to greet them since this letter would circulate to other churches. Another possible reason may be that if he had named believers he would have had to mention many since he knew so many in the Ephesian church.

It is quite possible that Paul intended Ephesians to be an encyclical letter. All the New Testament writings circulated among the churches, and Paul may have written Ephesians with this in view (cf. Col. 4:16). Since Ephesus was a strategic city in both the Roman Empire and in Paul's ministry, it would have been natural for him to send this letter to that city first.

Not all saints are "faithful," but the Ephesian believers were. They had been holding fast to the teaching they had received when Paul wrote this epistle (cf. Acts 20:28-32; Rev. 2:1-7).

"In Christ" describes all who are saints. Every believer occupies a location in space. These saints were in Ephesus. However every Christian saint also lives within the sphere of God's family because of Jesus' work, which Paul spoke of as being "in Christ." This phrase was a favorite of Paul's. He used it nine times in 1:1-14 and about 25 times in this epistle. It occurs approximately 130 times in the New Testament. Much of what follows in chapters 1-3 is an explanation of what it means to be "in Christ."

"Thus our being in Christ means that the Lord Jesus surrounds and embraces the believer in His own life, and separates him at the same time from all outside and hostile influences. He protects the believer from all perils and foes, and supplies him with all that is necessary. In Ephesians the meaning of this being in Christ' reaches its highest thought. The peculiar truth in Ephesians is the heavenly nature and divine fullness of this sphere of our new life."⁸

"That phrase in Christ strikes the keynote of the entire Epistle; from that prolific germ ramifies the branching oak of the forest."⁹

1:2 Paul greeted his readers by wishing God's grace and peace on them, as he did in all of his other epistles. Grace (Gr. charis) expresses God's unmerited favor and divine enablement, which are the portion of every saint. Peace (Gr. eirene, which translates the Hebrew shalom) is our condition resulting from God's grace to us. We have peace with God and we can experience the peace of God, the fullness of His blessing, because of His grace.

Constable: Eph 1:3--4:1

II. THE CHRISTIAN'S CALLING 1:3--3:21

". . . the first three chapters are one long prayer, culminating in the great doxology at the end of chapter 3. There is in fact nothing like this in all Paul's letters. This is the language of lyrical prayer, not the language of argument, and controversy, and rebuke."¹⁰

Constable: Eph 1:3--2:11

A. Individual calling 1:3-2:10

Paul began the body of his letter by revealing the spiritual blessings that God has planned for believers in His Son.

Constable: Eph 1:3-14

1. The purpose: glory 1:3-14

In the Greek text verses 3-14 are one sentence. The Holy Spirit carried Paul along in his thinking as he contemplated God's provision so that he moved quickly from one blessing to the next. It is as though he was ecstatically opening a treasure chest, lifting its jewels with his hands, letting them cascade through his fingers, and marvelling briefly at them as they caught his eye.

". . . Ephesians 1:3-14 is one of the longest psalms of the New Testament, and it is a praise psalm in its form."¹¹

Constable: Eph 1:3

The believer's position in Christ 1:3

Christians should bless or praise (Gr. eulogetos, speak well of) God the Father for bestowing these blessings. Paul was thinking of God as both the Father of believers (v. 2) and the Father of His Son (v. 3). God has already blessed believers in the ways the apostle proceeded to identify. This blessing happened before creation as will become evident in the following verses. "Spiritual" blessings are benefits that relate to our spiritual life in contrast to our physical life. Since God has already given us these things, we do not need to ask for them but should appropriate them by faith and give thanks for them.

"When you were born again into God's family, you were born rich."¹²

"In the heavenly places" or "realms" refers to the sphere in which these blessings operate. The heavenly realms are where Paul spoke of the believer as being presently in his or her spiritual life. Whereas physically we are on the earth, spiritually we are already with Christ in the heavens (cf. v. 20; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12). God has united us with Jesus Christ so we are in that sense with Him where He is now. When we die, our immaterial part will go into Christ's presence (2 Cor. 5:6-8). When God resurrects our bodies they will go into His presence and unite with our immaterial part. Presently our lives are already with the Lord in the heavenly realms spiritually. We are there because of our present union with Christ. We are "in Christ." Union with Christ by saving faith places us in the heavenly realms.¹³

"The key thought of Ephesians is the gathering together of all things in Jesus Christ."¹⁴

"Ephesians 1:3 tells much about God's blessings on believers: (a) when: eternity past; (b): with what: every spiritual [not material] blessing; (c): where: in the heavenly realms; (d): how: in Christ."¹⁵

"Ephesus was considered the bank of Asia. One of the seven wonders of the world, the great temple of Diana, was in Ephesus, and was not only a center for idolatrous worship, but also a depository for wealth. . . .

"Paul's letter to the Ephesians is as carefully structured as that great temple of Diana, and it contains greater beauty and wealth!"¹⁶

Constable: Eph 1:4-6

The selection of the Father 1:4-6

The spiritual blessings that have come to us are the work of all three members of the Trinity. God Himself is the basis of these blessings.

1:4 The first blessing is election. God has sovereignly chosen some people for salvation (cf. v. 11; Rom. 8:30; 1 Thess. 1:4; 2 Thess. 2:13; Titus 1:1). Salvation is ultimately God's doing, not man's (Eph. 12:8-9). Salvation comes to the elect when they trust in Jesus Christ (v. 13; 2 Thess. 2:13).

Belief in divine election is probably the most fundamental tenet of Calvinistic theology. Someone who denies it is not a Calvinist.

God chose us "in Him" (Christ, v. 3) in the sense that He is our representative. When we trust Christ, we become a member of the redeemed race within mankind of which Jesus Christ is the Head (vv. 10, 22; Rom. 5:12-21; Col. 1:18). God has ordained that all the elect should be under Christ's authority. Some interpreters have concluded that God chose Jesus and that all who believe in Him become elect by their faith. However this verse states that God chose "us" to be in Christ.

"Here is a vast host of people hurrying down the broad road with their minds fixed upon their sins, and one stands calling attention to yonder door, the entrance into the narrow way that leads to life eternal. On it is plainly depicted the text, Whosoever will, let him come.' Every man is invited, no one need hesitate. Some may say, Well, I may not be of the elect, and so it would be useless for me to endeavor to come, for the door will not open for me.' But God's invitation is absolutely sincere; it is addressed to every man, Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely' (Rev. 22:17). If men refuse to come, if they pursue their own godless way down to the pit, whom can they blame but themselves for their eternal judgment? The messenger addressed himself to all, the call came to all, the door could be entered by all, but many refused to come and perished in their sins. Such men can never blame God for their eternal destruction. The door was open, the invitation was given, they refused, and He says to them sorrowfully, Ye will not come unto Me, that ye might have life.' But see, as the invitation goes forth, every minute or two some one stops and says, What is that?' The way to life,' is the reply. Ah, that I might find the way to life! I have found no satisfaction in this poor world.' We read, She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.' I should like to know how to be free from my sin, how to be made fit for the presence of God.' And such an one draws near and listens, and the Spirit of God impresses the message upon his heart and conscience and he says, I am going inside: I will accept the invitation; I will enter that door,' and he presses his way in and it shuts behind him. As he turns about he finds written on the inside of the door the words, Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.' What!' he says, had God His heart fixed on me before ever the world came into being?' Yes, but he could not find it out until he got inside. You see, you can pass the door if you will, you can trample the love of God beneath your feet, you can spurn His grace if you are determined to do it, but you will go down to the pit and you will be responsible for your own doom."¹⁷

The time of our individual election was before God created the world. The purpose for which God chose us was two-fold. First, it was that we should be "holy" (Gr. hagious; cf. hagiois, "saints," v. 1), which means different and set apart to God. Second, it was that we should be "blameless" (Gr. anomous), which means without blemish (cf. 5:27; Phil. 2:15; Col. 1:22; Heb. 9:14; 1 Pet. 1:19; 2 Pet. 3:14; Rev. 14:5).

"In love" probably modifies "to be holy and blameless in His sight" rather than "He predestined us" (v. 5). Normally the modifying phrases follow the action words in this context (cf. vv. 3, 6, 8-10). Also the other occurrences of the phrase "in love" in Ephesians refer to human rather than divine love (cf. 3:17; 4:2, 15-16; 5:2). Furthermore love is appropriate to connect with holiness and blamelessness since it provides a balance. Our duty is to love God as well as to be pure.

". . . the freer the Lord's paramount choice, the deeper the debt of the chosen to live divine."¹⁸

1:5 Predestination is the basis for election (cf. Rom 8:30). Having marked us out beforehand (the meaning of proorisas, translated "predestined") God chose us. Predestination looks more at the "what" than at the "who" of election. Election refers to people and predestination to purposes (cf. v. 11; Acts 4:25-28; Rom. 8:29-30). God predetermined the final destiny of the elect, namely that He would adopt us as His full-fledged sons (cf. Rom. 8:15, 23; Gal. 4:4-7). Jesus Christ was the agent who made that adoption possible by His death. Sons adopted in Greek culture received the same rights and privileges as children born into the family. Likewise our adoption does not imply an inferior status in relation to God. God predestined us to adoption because He delighted to bless us in this way.

"You do not get into God's family by adoption. You get into His family by regeneration, the new birth (John 3:1-18; 1 Peter 1:22-25). Adoption is the act of God by which He gives His born ones' an adult standing in the family. Why does He do this? So that we might immediately begin to claim our inheritance and enjoy our spiritual wealth!"¹⁹

Some Calvinistic interpreters have concluded that since God predetermined the final destiny of those He chose for salvation it is only logical that he also predetermined the damnation of the non-elect. It is therefore unnecessary, they say, for us to concern ourselves with the salvation of individuals since God has predetermined this. This view, called "double predestination," goes beyond the teaching of Scripture. The Scriptures never state that God has predetermined the fate of the non-elect. The emphasis of Scripture, on the other hand, is on the possibility, from the human viewpoint, of anyone trusting in Jesus Christ and receiving salvation (John 3:16, et al.).²⁰

"We should not see predestination as a grim process whereby God condemns great numbers of people to eternal loss. Rather, it is the outworking of a loving purpose whereby he delivers great numbers of people for salvation."²¹

1:6 The ultimate goal of predestination and election is that believers will contribute to the praise of the magnificence of God's undeserved favor that He has shown toward humankind (cf. vv. 12, 14). This grace was "freely bestowed" or "given" in the sense that the elect need do nothing to merit it. It comes to us through Jesus Christ described here as the Beloved of the Father (cf. Col. 1:13). Since God loves His Son, believers who are in Christ can rejoice that we too are the objects of God's love.

Constable: Eph 1:7-12

The sacrifice of the Son 1:7-12

1:7 The "Him" in view is the beloved Son (v. 6).

Redemption (Gr. apolytrosin) means release from slavery (cf. v. 14; 4:30; Luke 21:28; Rom. 3:24; 8:23; 1 Cor. 1:30; Col. 1:14; Heb. 9:15; 11:35). It involves buying back and setting free by paying a ransom price. Jesus Christ has redeemed us from sin (Heb. 9:15), namely set us free from slavery to it. The blood, representative of the life, of the perfect Sacrifice had to flow out of Him for this to happen (Rom. 3:24-25; cf. Heb. 9:22).

New Testament Words for Redemption22
Greek Words	English Meanings	References
agorazo (verb)	To buy, to purchase in the market (or slave market)	1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23; 2 Pet. 2:1; Rev. 5:9; 14:3-4
exagorazo (verb)	To buy out, to purchase out of the market (or slave market)	Gal. 3:13; 4:5; Eph. 5:16; Col. 4:5
lytron (noun)	Ransom, price of release	Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45
lytroomai (verb)	To ransom, to free by paying a ransom price	Luke 24:21; Titus 2:14; 1 Pet. 1:18
lytrosis (noun)	Act of freeing by paying a ransom price	Luke 1:68; 2:38; Heb. 9:12
apolytrosis (noun)	A buying back, a setting free by paying a ransom price	Luke 21:28; Rom. 3:24; 8:23; 1 Cor. 1:30; Eph. 1:7, 14; 4:30; Col. 1:14; Heb. 9:15; 11:35

The immediate result of our liberation from sin's slavery is that God has forgiven our sins (Gr. paraptoma, false steps, transgressions).

Jesus Christ's death affected our redemption. This was the extent to which God was willing to go for us. God's grace was that great. The gift of Jesus Christ did not exhaust the supply of God's grace, however (cf. Phil. 4:19). Rather that gift is an evidence of the extent of God's favor to us (cf. v. 5).

1:8 God has given abundant grace to us, not just the bare essential amount needed. This reference hints at many other benefits of Christ's death that Paul did not enumerate here.²³

"Wisdom" (Gr. sophia) is what is highest and noblest, and "insight" or "understanding" (Gr. phronesei) is the means by which we perceive it.²⁴ Again we have to decide whether the last part of this verse modifies the first part of verse 8 or the first part of verse 9 (cf. v. 4). As I pointed out above, normally the modifying phrases follow the action words in this passage. Paul's idea therefore seems to have been that God lavished His grace on us in His infinite wisdom knowing how we would respond to it. The wisdom and insight are God's, not ours.

1:9 This verse probably begins a new thought, as the NIV suggests by putting a period at the end of verse 8. The New Testament uses the term "mystery" to refer to a truth previously hidden but now made known by divine revelation (cf. Matt. 13:11; Luke 8:10; Rom. 11:25; 16:25-26; et al.).²⁵ The mystery revealed here is God's purpose to bring everything into submission to Jesus Christ in the future (v. 10). God's "kind intention" (NASB) is His "good pleasure" (NIV, cf. v. 5). "In Him" (NASB) means "in Christ" (NIV).

1:10 The Greek word translated "administration" in the NASB (oikonomia), and not translated in the NIV, means dispensation, arrangement, or administration. The main idea in this word is that of managing or administering the affairs of a household.²⁶ The dispensation in view is the millennial reign of Christ on earth during which everything will be under His rule (1 Cor. 15:27; Col. 1:20). Even though in one sense everything is under Christ's authority now, Jesus Christ will be the head of all things in a more direct way in the messianic kingdom. Everyone and everything will acknowledge and respond to His authority then (cf. Isa. 2:2-4; 11:1-10).

1:11 "In Him" (v. 10) probably begins the thought continued in this verse, as the NIV indicates.

For the first time in this epistle Paul made a distinction among believers. Until now he spoke of all believers, but here he contrasted "we" and "you" (v. 13). The "we" evidently refers to Jewish Christians and the "you" to Gentile believers, as the context suggests (vv. 12-13). Note the presence of "also" in both verses 11 and 13 that provides continuity as well as marking discontinuity.

Some translators who rendered the Greek word eklerothemen "obtained an inheritance" (NASB) introduced the idea of the believer's inheritance. The word really means "chosen" (NIV, lit. appointed or obtained by lot). God has chosen Jewish believers for salvation because He predestined them to have a part in His sovereign plan. Paul would say later that God's plan for the present involves the church, which consists of both Jewish and Gentile believers (2:14-22). However, God chose the Jews first (cf. Acts 3:26; Rom. 1:16).

This verse contains one of the strongest statements in Scripture that God is sovereign (cf. Ps. 115:3; Prov. 16:9, 33; Dan. 4:34-35). God is sovereign over all things. This includes the election of some people to salvation. "Purpose" (Gr. prothesin) refers to the goal God intends to accomplish. "Counsel"(Gr. boule) refers to God's purpose or deliberation. "Will" (Gr. thelema) denotes willingness. The idea contained in this verse is that God chose a plan after deliberating on the wisest course of action to accomplish his purpose.²⁷

How does God carry out His plan? He accomplishes some things directly and exclusively Himself without using other agents. He accomplishes other purposes through the agency of others, secondary causes, which include angels and humans. Unquestionably God is absolutely sovereign (i.e., the ultimate authority over all things). How He carries out His plans--working with secondary causes, giving people freedom to choose, and then justly holding them responsible for their choices--is difficult to explain.²⁸

Personally I believe the solution to this puzzle lies beyond the ability of human beings to understand and explain fully. However, Scripture clearly teaches both divine sovereignty and human responsibility.²⁹

1:12 God chose Jews to be believers for the praise of His glory (cf. v. 6). This verse shows that the Jews are the "we" in view in verse 11. The Jews were the first to put their trust in Jesus Christ (cf. Acts 1:8; 13:46; 28:25; Rom. 1:16; 2:9-10).

The work of the Son in salvation was setting the sinner free from his or her sin and revealing God's plan to head up all things in Christ at the end of the ages. This includes the salvation of Jewish believers.

College: Eph 1:1-23

EPHESIANS 1

I. DOCTRINE:

GOD'S PLAN FOR SALVATION (1:1-3:21)

A. GOD'S BLESSINGS (1:1-23)

1. Salutation (1:1-2)

¹ Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints in Ephesus, ^a the faithful ^b in Christ Jesus: ² Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

^a 1 Some early manuscripts do not have in Ephesus. ^b 1 Or believers who are

1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus

Using the formula typical of ancient letter writing, and typical of his own epistles as well, Paul identifies himself by name and position. As in Romans and the Pastoral Epistles, he does not name any other associate with himself.

As "an apostle" (ajpovstolo" , apostolos ) of Christ Jesus, Paul had been "sent forth" (ajpostevllw , apostellô ) to carry the message of his master. Paul's repeated use of this title shows his awareness of the official authority of his position and the importance of his epistles. It was, in fact, in carrying out his commission that he brought the gospel to Ephesus and the surrounding province.

"Christ" is from the Greek word for "anointed," and is the equivalent of the Hebrew word "messiah." In the Old Testament reference is made to the anointing of prophets (Isa 61:1), priests (Exod 29:7), and kings (1 Sam 15:1). The long-awaited Messiah or Christ was anointed by the Father as our great Prophet, Priest, and King. By decree of the angel, the human name given to this Anointed One was "Jesus" (Luke 1:31). It is the same as the O.T. name Joshua, and means "Yahweh is salvation."

by the will of God,

As in 1 and 2 Corinthians, Colossians, and 2 Timothy, Paul's apostleship is "by the will of God." While the specific commission came from Jesus, the underlying cause was the Father's will. This pattern, the will of the Father enacted by the work of the Son, is seen throughout Ephesians. While Paul is aware of the importance of his apostleship, he is also keenly conscious of the fact that he did not become an apostle by his own merit.

To the saints in Ephesus,

The "saints" are the "holy ones," the people consecrated to the Lord. They are "holy," as Paul will point out, because God chose them to be that way (1:4) and because Christ has cleansed them (5:26-27). Their further identity, however, poses a problem. The oldest surviving copies of Ephesians do not include the words "in Ephesus." It is probable that Paul intended this epistle for a much larger audience than just the church in Ephesus. He likely did send the epistle first to Ephesus, and from there copies were to be sent throughout the churches of Asia. If the epistle had been intended for Ephesus alone, where Paul had spent three years of ministry, it is surprising that there are no personal greetings and no mention of local problems. Paul seems to have deliberately kept his focus on the more universal aspect of the church.

the faithful in Christ Jesus:

In the manuscripts which leave out the words "in Ephesus," the Greek reads, "to the saints, the ones being also faithful in Christ Jesus." Those who are "faithful" have put their trust and commitment in Christ Jesus as the object of their faith. Paul's audience, then, is not an elite faction of the church, but all Christians.

1:2 Grace and peace to you

F. F. Bruce suggests that the salutation "grace and peace be yours" probably had its origin in the language of public worship and was taken over by Paul and others in their letters. More likely, however, is that the early church learned its forms of speech from the apostles (Acts 2:42). Certainly Paul himself had ample reason to rejoice in the theme of God's grace. Grace is the goodwill, favor, and lovingkindness of God - directed toward people who do not deserve it. Grace means that although we are unworthy, God likes us anyway!

Peace is best defined as "well-being of the soul." As Christians we have this inner peace because we have been saved by grace through faith, not by our own worthiness. Jesus himself is our peace (2:14), having reconciled men to God and to one another through the cross (2:15-17).

It has often been noted that "grace" (cavri" , charis ) is very similar to the usual Greek greeting (caivrein , chairein ). Also, "peace" was the usual Jewish greeting (Hebrew shalom ). Since so much of Paul's ministry involved bringing Jews and Greeks together into one body (3:4-6), it seems somehow appropriate that this Greek-Jew greeting should begin each of his epistles.

from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is strong emphasis in Ephesians on the fatherhood of God. At least once each chapter we are reminded of this important fact. The unity of the church is built upon it. Since there is one Father - only one (Eph 4:6) - all who are his children are automatically brothers and sisters in one family.

It is also the Father who gave Jesus Christ his authority as head (1:22) and Lord (4:5). At least once each chapter there is the reminder that Jesus is Lord. The title "Lord" (kuvrio" , kyrios ) has an interesting background. Originally it was used for the owner of a piece of property. Later it was applied to the master who owned slaves and had the authority to demand their obedience. Then it came to be used as a common title for the gods of the mystery religions. Last of all, shortly before the coming of Jesus, the word "Lord" became the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" in the Septuagint version of the Scriptures. All the implications of the term apply to Jesus: he is our owner and master; he is God.

2. Present Blessings in Christ (1:3-14)

3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. ⁴ For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵ he ^a predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will - ⁶ to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. ⁷ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace ⁸ that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. ⁹ And he ^b made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, ¹⁰ to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment - to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. ¹¹ In him we were also chosen, ^c having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, ¹² in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. ¹³ And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, ¹⁴ who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession - to the praise of his glory.

^a 4,5 Or sight in love. ⁵ He ^b 8,9 Or us. With all wisdom and understanding, ⁹ he ^c 11 Or were made heirs

1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

In the original Greek verses 3 to 14 constitute one grand sentence. Characteristic of the more elaborate style of writing in Ephesians, these verses outline seven spiritual blessings which all of God's children share:

1 - We are chosen (v. 4)

2 - We are predestined to be adopted (v. 5)

3 - We are given grace (v. 6)

4 - We are redeemed (v. 7)

5 - We are told the secret of his will (v. 9)

6 - We are made a heritage (v. 11)

7 - We are sealed with the Spirit (vv. 13-14)

"Praise be" (literally "blessed be") echoes a Hebrew liturgical phrase (see 2 Cor 1:3; 1 Pet 1:3) common in Jewish synagogue worship. When we "bless" God we acknowledge his grace, praise his glory, and worship him. We cannot bless him in the sense that he blesses us, but we can admit that his greatness and goodness de- serve all praise and glory. While some scholars have attempted to demonstrate that vv. 3-14 were originally a hymn which Paul borrowed, their evidence is unconvincing.

who has blessed us in the heavenly realms

God's blessings for his children are located "in the heavenly realms" (literally, "in the heavenlies"). The adjective "heavenly" occurs several times in the N.T., but this unique phrase occurs only in Ephesians. The heavenly realms are:

Where our blessings are (1:3).

Where Christ sits at God's right hand (1:20).

Where we now sit with Christ (2:6).

Where rulers and authorities observe God's wisdom (3:10).

Where spiritual forces of evil oppose us (6:12).

The heavenly realms cannot be identified simply as "the church" or as "heaven" itself, for neither will fit every usage. It must refer to a realm that is more real than our mortal earth, which will endure even after the sky "disappears with a roar and the elements are destroyed by fire" (2 Pet 3:10). This realm already exists all around us, and through the church we are participants in this grander drama (2:6). It is "in the heavenly realms" that we are right now wrestling against Satan and his hosts (6:12).

with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

While it is true that material blessings are also from God (Deut 28:1-14; James 1:17), his spiritual blessings are more to be desired. These blessings are "spiritual" because they are received by our spiritual nature. It may be a good index of our own spirituality to consider for which kind of blessings we are more likely to cry out, "Praise the Lord!"

It must not be overlooked that each of the seven blessings is available "in Christ," "in him," or "in the Beloved." Some variation of this phrase occurs eleven times in the first fourteen verses. Similar expressions occur throughout Ephesians, almost twice as many times as the average for Paul's letters. For Paul, to be "in Christ" is to be incorporated into his body, the church.

1:4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world

God chose us. We were not forced upon him - he wanted us! Neither was this a last-minute concession on his part - he made this choice before the world was even created.

However, this verse is sometimes wrongly understood to mean that God chooses some people to go to heaven and other people to go to hell. Regardless of a person's own choice, it is said, his destiny has already been predetermined. Such a view ignores the fact that throughout the N.T. people are told to repent and are offered salvation - and their destiny depends upon their response. (See Luke 13:5; John 3:16-18; Acts 2:38; 17:30; Rev 22:17.) Similarly, Jesus taught that to be included among the "chosen," people must not only be invited - they must also accept the invitation (Matt 22:1-14).

What did God choose? He chose to receive all those who are "in Christ." Just as we were created "in him" (Col 1:16), so are we chosen "in him." God chose a class of people - the people who accept Christ as Lord and Savior. Many will not accept Christ, but those who do accept him are given the privilege to become sons of God (John 1:12).

to be holy and blameless in his sight.

Even though we were totally unworthy, God received us when we accepted Christ. God's choice for us now is that we should become holy (set apart for him) and blameless (without blemish). God did not accept us because we were good; he accepted us in Christ in order that we might become good.

In love 1:5 he predestined us

God's loving plan of salvation called for all those who accept Christ to be received as sons. God did not predestine which people would accept Christ; he predestined that whoever did accept him would be adopted into the family.

The word "predestine" (proorivzw , proorizô ) means literally "to set out boundaries in advance." God staked out the boundaries for the group he would adopt. By his sovereign decree, all those "in Christ" will be in the group. Whether a person is in God's group, then, depends on what that person has done with Jesus.

By contrast, strict Calvinism teaches that God makes all the choices himself. Every event of life, including our own decision about Jesus, is actually decided by God. Edwin Palmer states his views in this way:

Foreordination means God's sovereign plan, whereby He decides all that is to happen in the entire universe. Nothing in this world happens by chance. God is in back of everything. He decides and causes all things to happen that do happen. He is not sitting on the sidelines wondering and perhaps fearing what is going to happen next. No, He has foreordained everything "after the counsel of his will" (Eph 1:11): the moving of a finger, the beating of a heart, the laughter of a girl, the mistake of a typist - even sin.

to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ,

The legal process of adoption was apparently unknown in the Hebrew society, but common in Graeco-Roman law. "A well-to-do but childless adult who wanted an heir would adopt a male, usually at an age other than in infancy and frequently a slave, to be his son." Since adoption was often combined with the making of a will which included the duty to care for the aged "parent," adoption was practiced as a way of providing for one's old age. But what is God's reason for adopting us? The answer: he does it in love, in accordance with his pleasure and will.

in accordance with his pleasure and will -

God wants people to be saved. It is not his will that anyone should perish, but that all should repent and be saved (2 Pet 3:9). When men do repent, God gladly accepts them with a divine attitude of good pleasure (eujdokiva , eudokia ). God is not merely willing to save us - he is delighted to do so!

1:6 to the praise of his glorious grace,

Literally, "to the praise of glory of his grace." But it is not his glory that is in view here; it is his grace. The NIV has correctly interpreted the words "of glory" as a Hebraic qualifying phrase (as in Col 1:11 and 27). Thus, the "glory of his grace" is his loving goodwill, fully manifested in all its excellence. This phrase becomes a joyous refrain, repeated in vv. 6, 12, and 14.

which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

God's grace has been "graciously bestowed" or "freely given" (caritovw , charitoô ). God's grace is given free of charge, but only to those who are in the Beloved. God's love for the Son is so great that he gladly embraces us for Jesus' sake. When Jesus was baptized the Father spoke from heaven, calling him "my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt 3:17). Those who unite themselves with Christ (Rom 6:5) will share in the Father's good pleasure.

1:7 In him we have redemption through his blood,

In Christ - and only in Christ - we have redemption (ajpoluvtrwsi" , apolytrôsis ). In the ancient world to "redeem" was to pay the necessary ransom to set free a prisoner of war, a captive, or a debtor who was sold into slavery. Our self-incurred debt was slavery to sin (Rom 6:16). The rightful consequences were the wrath of God (Eph 5:6) and the death of the sinner (Rom 6:23). The price to rescue us was the blood of Jesus (1 Pet 1:18-19), a concept God began teaching from mankind's beginning (Gen 4:1-5) and codified in the law of Moses (Lev 17:11).

If Jesus' blood was the price for our ransom, to whom was the price paid? Some of the early Fathers held that the ransom was paid to Satan; other writers held that the ransom was paid to God himself. The first view would erroneously give Satan the upper hand over God; the second view would have God paying himself off. It is better to see the price as paid to satisfy divine justice. When God "redeemed" his people from their oppressor in Egypt (Ps 78:42-43), he did not "pay off" the pharaoh or anyone else. He simply did what was necessary to secure the release of his people.

the forgiveness of sins,

Literally, the "dismissing of acts of transgression." God's forgiveness through Christ's blood is not a mere covering up of our sins; it totally erases, removes, and sends them away. The word for "sins" is not the generic word aJmartiva ( hamartia ) (which is used in every other N.T. reference to the forgiveness of sins), but the plural of the specific word paravptwma (paraptôma ). These "sins" are our transgressions, all the times we have deviated from the path of truth and righteousness.

in accordance with the riches of God's grace

While our failures called for the wrath of God, instead we get forgiveness. And lest we think we may exhaust his supply, Paul says it is drawn from the "wealth" of his grace. This is a theme Paul, the former persecutor of God's people, cannot keep from repeating. Notice "wealth of his grace" (2:7), "wealth of his glory" (1:8 and 3:16), and "wealth of his kindness" (Rom 2:4).

1:8 that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.

God spared no expense in providing for his children. His grace was lavished ("poured out overflowingly") upon us. "Where sin abounded, grace was more exceedingly multiplied" (Rom 5:20). Accompanying the generous gift there was even more: wisdom and insight into the secret plan. We can understand God's plan and live in the light of it.

1:9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will

One of the ways God has lavished his grace upon us is by revealing his plan of salvation. For all earlier ages this plan had been kept secret (Eph 3:9), but now it has been revealed. The word "mystery" (musthvrion , mystçrion ) in the Bible does not mean something that is complicated, obscure, and difficult to understand. It means something that was kept secret until God chose to reveal it. No man could have guessed in advance that God would save the world by the death of his Son, but once God announced it, it was plain and marvelously simple.

according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ,

God's "good pleasure" (eujdokiva , eudokia ) is the same word used in v. 5. It was not just God's plan to save the world - it was his pleasure to do so! All this, like each of the other spiritual blessings, is set forth in Christ.

1:10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment

Literally, "a plan for administration in the fullness of the times." The NIV "put into effect" represents a Greek word that depicts the wise governing or administration over a household. This masterplan was to go into effect on God's timetable, the "fullness of time" when Christ would be born into the world (Gal 4:4).

- to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

God's great plan is to make Christ head over all things and to bring all things together in subjection under his feet (1:22). The primary focus of this act is Christ's headship: all things must be reconciled to God through him (Col 1:20). A secondary result of this plan is that men are also reconciled to each other.

Universalists have taken this verse to mean that all men will eventually be saved and all the universe will be in final harmony. However, this ignores the plain warning of Jesus himself that many men will go to destruction (Matt 7:13). Like the other spiritual blessings, this part of God's plan is only for those who are in Christ and submit to his lordship.

1:11 In him we were also chosen,

Translations of this verse differ widely. The word "chosen" (ejklhrwvqhmen , eklçrôthçmen ) means "to be appointed by lot." In the O.T. it has special reference to dividing the land by lot for inheritance (Num 26:55-56). Based on this usage the American Standard Version (1901) has well translated the passage, "in whom also we were made a heritage." The point is that we ourselves are apportioned and designated as the inheritance of God. This understanding of the text fits well with Deut 32:9, which says:

The Lord's portion is his people;

Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

In Christ we are admitted to the ranks of the chosen people, the special possession of God. We get heaven - and God gets us!

having been predestined

Using the same word as v. 5 (proorivzw , proorizô ), Paul again emphasizes that God has established the boundaries for his chosen people: those who have yielded to Christ as Lord. God did not predetermine who would be in this group, but he did predetermine what he was going to do with that group.

according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,

God is in control. The flow of human history moves inexorably in the direction God has chosen. The "purpose" (boulhv , boulç ) of his will has been well thought out and masterfully executed. But lest we rush into predestination at this point in the text, let us remember what the all-sovereign God has decreed: that men are given a choice whether or not to come to Jesus. Free will is part of the divine decree.

1:12 in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ,

God's purpose is for those who put their hope in Jesus Christ. First to put their hope in the promised messiah were the Jews ("we who were the first"). They are set in contrast to the Gentiles of v. 13 ("you also who have heard"). First the Jew, then the Gentile (Rom 1:16), all men are offered the opportunity to become a part of God's designated inheritance.

might be for the praise of his glory.

Our worship - in fact, our very existence - becomes a paean of praise to the splendor of God's grace. (See vv. 6 and 14.)

1:13 And you also were included in Christ

"You also" is a dominant theme of Ephesians. The Gentiles were formerly excluded, but are now part of God's family (2:11-22). They are fellow members of the body (3:6) bound together in the unity of the Spirit (4:3).

when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.

When Paul taught daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus, Luke reports that "all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord" (Acts 19:10). The Gentiles were not introduced to God by an accident of birth, but by hearing the good news about Jesus. Paul knows this message to be the "word of truth," the means by which men are saved. It is called the truth "because it reveals man's true condition, proclaims and advocates the only true way of escape, and admonishes saved sinners to show true gratitude in their lives."

Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal,

Those who heard, believed. This was not merely a mental acceptance of a theological proposition. It was putting their trust and commitment in Christ. In response to their decision, God marked them with an official seal. This seal, the presence of the Holy Spirit, proved they belonged to God. To seal (sfragivzw , sphragizô ), as with the brand marking the ownership of cattle and slaves, had nothing to do with preservation.

While the coming of the Holy Spirit is sometimes connected with baptism in Scripture (Acts 2:38-39; 5:32; 1 Cor 12:13), other passages base his coming on our faith. (In addition to this verse, see Acts 19:2; Gal 3:2, 14; Eph 3:17). One must conclude that either half of the above verses are in error, or that baptism and faith are meant to go together.

the promised Holy Spirit,

As Peter reminded his Jewish hearers at Pentecost (Acts 2:17), God had promised a time when he would "pour out his Spirit on all flesh" (both Jew and Gentile). As Peter reminded the Jewish believers at the Jerusalem Conference, the coming of the Spirit on Cornelius was proof that the centurion had been accepted by God. While that event was special and spectacular, all believers have the confirming presence of the Spirit in their lives.

1:14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance

The "deposit" (ajrrabwvn , arrabôn , "earnest money") which guarantees our inheritance is like the down payment that is made on a real estate transaction. In the early days of trade it was "a commercial word denoting a pledge - some object handed over by a buyer to a seller until the purchase price was paid in full." The arrabôn guarantees that a person is in earnest about his intentions. Often the deposit is a first installment of similar payments to be made in the future. The presence of the Spirit is thus a foretaste of heaven!

Also interesting is the fact that arrabôn is the word in modern Greek for an engagement ring. It is a lovely parallel that the church, the bride of Christ, should now wear the token of his promise. We have this guarantee of heaven, that we shall share in the wedding feast of the Lamb (Rev 19:7-9).

until the redemption of those who are God's possession

Literally, "unto the redemption of the possession." While the RSV has "until we acquire possession of it," the NIV and NASB focus on God redeeming and possessing his people. God's Spirit in our lives is thus God's promise that he will finally claim us for his own and take us home to heaven.

- to the praise of his glory.

How we should praise God for his spiritual blessings! This phrase, now proclaimed for the third time, echoes the words of God in Isaiah 43:20-21,

. . . my people, my chosen,

the people I formed for myself

that they may proclaim my praise.

3. Potential Blessings in Christ (1:15-23)

15For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, ¹⁶ I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. ¹⁷ I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit ^a of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. ¹⁸ I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, ¹⁹ and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, ²⁰ which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, ²¹ far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. ²² And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, ²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

^a 17 Or a spirit

1:15 For this reason,

Because God has blessed his people spiritually and put his own Spirit in them, Paul is moved to write a prayer of thanksgiving and encouragement. The prayer will have numerous digressions of thought, finally reaching its climax at the end of chapter three. Paul resumes the prayer twice with similar words (3:1, 14).

ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints,

There are two reasons Paul says "I heard about your faith" even though he himself had spent three years in Ephesus. First, some years have passed since his stay in Ephesus, and he is rejoicing to hear of their continued faith (cf. Philemon 4-5 and 1 Thess 3:6). Second, this epistle is intended to reach all of Asia Minor and many of these believers are people Paul has never met.

Faith in Jesus and love for the saints seem to be the qualifying marks of a Christian (see also Col 1:4; 1 Thess 1:3; 2 Thess 1:3; Phlm 4). The two necessarily go together. It is impossible to be in a right relationship with the head, while being cut off from all the rest of the body. Love for one another is an identifying characteristic of those who believe and follow Jesus (John 13:35).

1:16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

Paul had left Ephesus for the last time around A.D. 57. As he writes this epistle from Roman imprisonment, five or six years have gone by. Still, he is faithfully lifting up the Ephesian saints in his daily prayers. (See also Rom 1:8; 1 Cor 1:4; Phil 1:3; Col 1:3; 1 Thess 1:2; 2 Thess 1:3; Phlm 4.) This is how Paul lived out his admonition, "Pray without stopping" (1 Thess 5:17).

1:17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,

"The God" of our Lord Jesus is the one Jesus came to reveal (John 1:18). He is the one Jesus called, "My God" (Matt 27:46; John 20:17). He is the one to whom both Jesus and Paul addressed their prayers.

the glorious Father,

Literally, "the father of glory," a Hebraic qualifying phrase as in 1:6. The Father stands unchallenged in the magnitude of his glory. That glory is his shining radiance and splendor, his majesty, honor, and power.

may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation,

Because the Greek text does not say "the" Spirit, the RSV and NASB have "a spirit," referring to an inner disposition or attitude. This would also be the sense of "spirit" in 4:23, the inner self where renewal takes place. On the other hand, the NIV has good reasons for having "the Spirit." (1) The Spirit is the giver of revelation in 3:5. (2) In the parallel in Col 1:9 the word "spiritual" is about the Spirit and the wisdom he imparts. (3) The "Spirit of sonship" in Rom 8:15 is grammatically similar (having no definite article), and refers to the Holy Spirit.

so that you may know him better.

A Christian must have more than just raw enthusiasm. Unless he is grounded in truth and wisdom, his faith may be as short-lived as the froth whipped up by ocean waves. But the center and focus of his knowledge must be God himself. This knowledge (ejpivgnwsi" , epignôsis ) is the clear perception of who God really is, and an intimate personal relationship with him.

1:18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened

God can sharpen our spiritual eyesight, and that is the goal of Paul's prayer. In particular there are three spiritual realities which we must not overlook. Like the servant of Elisha, we need to have the Lord open our eyes to see the wonderful truth.

in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you,

The word for "know" (oida , oida ) typically refers to the kind of knowledge that is perceived in the mind, even when it cannot be experienced with the senses of sight, hearing, or touch. The specific items which Paul will mention cannot be tested or measured by the skeptic. They must be perceived by those who walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor 5:7).

The first such thing is the "hope" of our calling. This is the "one hope" (Eph 4:4) shared by all Christians, the upward calling by which God summons us to join him in heaven. Hope is not just the emotion, but also the content and object of what is hoped for. If we could more clearly perceive the glorious destiny awaiting us, we could live more victoriously here below.

the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,

The second reality Christians need to see more clearly is that God has a rich inheritance in his people. This is not the inheritance God has for his people; that was the previous reality, heaven. This is what God has in his people, his own inheritance which consists in his people. To say, as in v. 11, that "we get heaven and God gets us" initially causes one to think that God is being short-changed. But if we could really see the church as God sees it, like a beautiful bride (Eph 5:27), we would understand how highly God values his inheritance.

1:19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

The third reality which might be otherwise missed by many Christians is God's incomparable power, which is available to work in us. The intensity of Paul's thought is shown in his words, the greatest collection of "power" and "greatness" words found anywhere in the Bible. "Incomparably" (uJperbavllon , hyperballon , found only in Paul in the N.T.) means "going far beyond; exceeding." "Great" (mevgeqo" , megethos ) has a stem recognizable in English as "truly large and great." "Power" (duvnami" , dynamis ) means great force and might, often even used to describe the power of Jesus' miracles. (This same word was well suited to name the explosive invention, dynamite.)

This power was first worked in each of us when God raised us from spiritual death through faith in Christ. It is power "for us who believe." But Paul is praying here that even after we have been raised to life, our eyes may be opened to see what we would otherwise miss: power at work in our service.

That power is like the working of his mighty strength,

This power is a dynamic "working" (ejnergeiva , energeia , "working on the inside"). This word is always used in Scripture of supernatural rather than human power. "Mighty" (kravto" , kratos ) is a term for authoritative power which overcomes whatever stands in the way, and "strength" (ijscuv" , ischys ) is the personal exercise of strength and power. Paul virtually exhausts the resources of the Greek language to describe something of the magnitude of divine might.

1:20 which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead

The greatest demonstration of this dynamic power was the resurrection of Christ. Death had been the one force that men were unable to resist, but its strength yielded to the greater power exerted (ejnergevw , energeô ) by God in Christ.

When Paul finally finishes this prayer at the end of chapter three, he refers again to this incredible divine power. By the "power that is at work (energeô ) within us," God is able to do more than all we ask or imagine - in the church, in all generations (3:20-21).

and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,

God not only raised Jesus from the tomb, but raised him still higher to the throne. To sit "at his right hand" meant to share in the authority which controls all things in heaven and earth. When Christ took his seat with the Father, a prophecy was fulfilled which God had made long ago through David (Ps 110:1):

The Lord says to my Lord:

"Sit at my right hand,

Until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet."

These events, the resurrection and exaltation of Christ, are the core of Christian preaching (Acts 2:22-36; 17:31; Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 15:3; 1 Thess 1:10; 4:14) and the ground of the believer's hope (1 Cor 15:16-19; 1 Pet 1:3-4).

1:21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion,

The "heavenly realms" (as in v. 3) are the sphere in which both good and evil compete. When Christ took his seat of authority he was exalted not only above all human ranks, but also above all the angel ranks: "rule and authority, power and dominion."

and every title that can be given,

Paul is not interested in identifying specific ranks of rulers and authorities, whether on earth or in heaven. His point is that no matter who they are, on whatever level they exist, Jesus is higher.

not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

Christ's exaltation to the throne is not temporary or partial. Though Satan is called "the god of this age" (2 Cor 4:4) and "the ruler of this world" (John 12:31), Jesus outranks him. "This (present) age" is always viewed negatively in Scripture, because it sits in contrast to heaven, the age to come.

1:22 And God placed all things under his feet

God has "placed under" (uJpotavssw , hypotassô, as in 5:21) or "subjected" all things beneath the feet of Jesus. He stands above them and rules over them. The Son of Man has achieved all that God intended for man (Gen 1:26; Ps 8:6; Heb 2:5-9); the Son of God is enthroned with his Father.

and appointed him to be head over everything for the church,

The figure of the head/body relationship of Christ and the church is found only in Ephesians and its sister epistle, Colossians. What Paul wrote to the Corinthians (1 Cor 12) about parts of the body, for instance, did not include Christ as head. While the human nervous system was not well understood at that time, the "head" was still known to exercise control over the body. Paul is using a bold new image to describe Christ and his church.

The church (ejkklhsiva , ekklçsia ) is named here for the first time in Ephesians. Literally the "called out assembly," the ekklçsia almost always refers to the local congregation in Scripture. Here, however, as in Matt 16:18, the universal church as a worldwide body of all God's children is in view.

1:23 which is his body,

Just as surely as a physical frame of flesh and blood was once the body of Jesus, so the church is now his body. While his physical body never got more than 200 miles from Jerusalem, his body of believers reaches around the world. While his body of flesh was subject to exhaustion and death, his body of believers cannot be stopped. The more the early martyrs were killed, the stronger the body became!

the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

This puzzling phrase seems to imply a contradiction. How can the One who "fills everything in every way" need to be filled himself? How can the church provide "fullness" to Jesus? The answer lies in the context of the preceding verses. God plans to work through the church. He will empower us and direct us to accomplish his will. The Father has chosen for the Son to function as a head that is dependent on its body. We are the hands and feet of the body of Christ. He chooses to be incomplete without us; we complete his fullness.

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

Commentary -- Other

Evidence: Eph 1:1

Sainthood . There are those who believe that someone must be dead for many years, and have performed miracles, before he can be "exalted" to sainthood. Not so. Paul is writing to living people and, as he often begins his letters, he refers to them as "saints." The word "saint" comes from the same Hebrew root as "sanctified" and "holy," which mean "set apart." The moment we are born again, God sets us apart from the world (sanctifies us) for His use. In addressing the Corinthian church, Paul writes: "to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord" ( 1Co 1:2 ). A saint is not someone who has lived a "holy" life, but a forgiven sinner who has called upon the name of Jesus and been made righteous by the grace of God.

Evidence: Eph 1:7

QUESTIONS & OBJECTIONS

" I know I’m a sinner, but I confess my sins to God daily. I tell Him that I’m sorry and I won’t sin again."

If you find yourself in court with a $50,000 fine, will a judge let you go simply because you say you’re sorry and you won’t commit the crime again? Of course not. You should be sorry for breaking the law and, of course, you shouldn’t commit the crime again. But only when someone pays your $50,000 fine will you be free from the demands of the law.

God will not forgive a sinner on the basis that he is sorry. Of course we should be sorry for sin—we have a conscience to tell us that adultery, rape, lust, murder, hatred, lying, stealing, etc., are wrong. And of course we shouldn’t sin again. However, God will only release us from the demands for eternal justice on the basis that someone else paid our fine. Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for the sins of the world. His words on the cross were, " It is finished!" In other words, the debt has been paid in full. All who repent and trust in Him receive forgiveness of sins. Their case is dismissed on the basis of His suffering death.

Introduction / Outline

Robertson: Ephesians (Book Introduction)

The Epistle to the Ephesians

From Rome a.d. 63

By Way of Introduction

There are some problems of a special nature that confront us about the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians.

The Authorship

It is not admitted by all that Paul wrote it, though no other adequate explanation of its origin has ever been given. So far as subject matter and vocabulary and style are concerned, if Colossians is Pauline, there is little or nothing to be said against the Pauline authorship of this Epistle.

Relation to Colossians

As we have seen, the two Epistles were sent at the same time, but clearly Colossians was composed first. Ephesians bears much the same relation to Colossians that Romans does to Galatians, a fuller treatment of the same general theme in a more detached and impersonal manner.

The Destination

The oldest documents (Aleph and B) do not have the words en Ephesōi (in Ephesus) in Eph_1:1 (inserted by a later hand). Origen did not have them in his copy. Marcion calls it the Epistle to the Laodiceans. We have only to put here Col_4:16 " the letter from Laodicea" to find the probable explanation. After writing the stirring Epistle to the Colossians Paul dictated this so-called Epistle to the Ephesians as a general or circular letter for the churches in Asia (Roman province). Perhaps the original copy had no name in Eph_1:1 as seen in Aleph and B and Origen, but only a blank space. Marcion was familiar with the copy in Laodicea. Basil in the fourth century mentions some MSS. with no name in the address. Most MSS. were copies from the one in Ephesus and so it came to be called the Epistle to the Ephesians. The general nature of the letter explains also the absence of names in it, though Paul lived three years in Ephesus.

The Date

The same date must be assigned as for Philemon and Colossians, probably a.d. 63.

The Place of Writing

This would also be the same, that is Rome, though Deissmann and Duncan argue for Ephesus itself as the place of writing. Some scholars even suggest Caesarea.

The Character of the Epistle

The same Gnostic heresy is met as in Colossians, but with this difference. In Colossians the emphasis is on the Dignity of Christ as the Head of the Church, while in Ephesians chief stress is placed upon the Dignity of the Church as the Body of Christ the Head. Paul has written nothing more profound than chapters Ephesians 1-3 of Ephesians. Stalker termed them the profoundest thing ever written. He sounds the depths of truth and reaches the heights. Since Ephesians covers the same ground so largely as Colossians, only the words in Ephesians that differ or are additional will call for discussion.

Vincent: Ephesians (Book Introduction)

The Epistle to the Ephesians

For Ephesus, see on Rev 2:1.

The church in Ephesus was founded during Paul's long residence there (Act 19:10; Act 20:31). He left the city immediately after the great riot (Acts 19), and never returned. His last personal contact with the church was when he met its elders at Miletus (Act 20:18, Act 20:35).

There has been much dissension as to the destination of the epistle. The principal views are three: 1. That it was addressed to the church at Ephesus. 2. To the church at Laodicaea. 3. That it was an encyclical or circular epistle, intended for the church at Ephesus along with a body of neighboring churches. Some also have regarded it as designed for the churches of Ephesus and Laodicaea, and others for the Laodicaean church along with a circle of churches.

I regard the epistle as addressed to the Church at Ephesus. Such was the general opinion of the early church. The words " in Ephesus" (Eph 1:1), though omitted in two important manuscripts, are found in the majority of manuscripts and in all the old versions. The Laodicaean theory was started by Marcion, who was severely taken to task by Tertullian for altering the title to " the Epistle to the Laodicaeans." Marcion himself inserted the epistle in his canon as " the Epistle to the Ephesians;" and it is significant that no manuscript which omits " in Ephesus" substitutes " in Laodicaea." The encyclical theory rests mainly on internal grounds, such as the general tenor of the epistle, and the absence of personal reminiscences, appeals and greetings, and of local references. But when addressing a circle of churches, Paul is wont to specify the fact, as in First and Second Corinthians and Galatians. If the words " in Ephesus" be rejected, the epistle is entirely without local designation, and is catholic rather than encyclical. Moreover, whenever Paul, in the address of an epistle, uses τοῖς οὖσιν which are , he follows these with the name of a place, as at Rome," " at Philippi," " at Corinth."

The Ephesian church, so far as is indicated by the letter, furnished no special reason for its composition. It contains no references to the dangers which Paul predicted at Miletus, no allusions to his personal relations with the church, and no salutations to individuals. Its theme is the Church of Christ , founded in the will of the Father , developed by the work of the Son , and united in him through the indwelling and energy of the Holy Spirit .

The body of believers is chosen of God: their privilege is adoption: the motive of adoption is grace, its medium Jesus Christ, its element love, its end holiness and the glorification of divine grace (Eph 1:3-6).

The work of the Son in this scheme is redemption, remission of sins, and the gift of wisdom and discernment. His central position in the divine plan will appear in the consummation, which will consist in the summing up of all things in Him (Eph 1:7-12).

The agent and earnest of this inheritance of believers is the Holy Spirit (Eph 1:13-14).

Hence the prayer that the operation of the Spirit may appear in the bestowment of wisdom and revelation (compare Eph 1:8), and of quickened spiritual discernment; so that believers may recognize the divine call, and experience the hope which it engenders, the riches of the inheritance which it assures (compare Eph 1:11), and the efficiency of the divine power which is exhibited and pledged to them in the resurrection and exaltation of Christ (Eph 1:15-22).

The election, the call, the redemptive work, the adoption, the personal holiness, the knowledge and discernment - all find their embodiment in the Church the body of Christ, in which the divine fullness dwells (Eph 1:22, Eph 1:23).

The scope of this plan is universal, including both Jews and Gentiles. Its operation is illustrated in the turning of the Gentiles from their sins, and in the destruction of the national and religious barriers between them and the Jews, making of the two one Church in Christ, the dwelling-place of the Spirit, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ as the corner-stone (2:1-22).

The inclusion of the Gentiles in the divine covenant is a mystery of which Paul has been made the minister. The intent of this mystery is to manifest through the Church to the heavenly powers the manifold wisdom of God (Eph 3:2-10).

Thus far the theme, the Church, is struck at Eph 1:22, Eph 1:23; Eph 2:19-22; Eph 3:10.

The prayer (Eph 3:14-21) includes the points already touched - the universal fatherhood of God; the sonship of Christ; the work of the Spirit in believers; the indwelling of Christ by faith; love as the element of christian life; knowledge of the deep things of God - and returns to the main theme, the Church.

The key-note of the practical portion of the epistle is given in Eph 4:1 : " Walk worthy of your calling." The practical exhortations contemplate individuals in their relation to the Church. The fundamental duty is unity through the one informing Spirit (Eph 4:3, Eph 4:4). The great factors of church fellowship are specified: " One Lord" (Christ); one principle of " faith," uniting to Christ; one formal sign, " baptism," marking admission to the body of Christ; one universal " Father," ruling, pervading, and dwelling in all (Eph 4:5, Eph 4:6).

This unity of the Church includes and is furthered by various manifestations of the Spirit in the form of different gifts; and the authority of Christ to confer and distribute these gifts is indicated by His descent to earth and Hades, and His ascent to the glory of the Father (Eph 4:7-16). In the thought that the purpose of these gifts is the edifying of the body of Christ, the theme - the Church - is again sounded.

Practical exhortations follow, to spiritual renewal, truthfulness, peace, honesty, purity of speech and life, love, godly caution, temperance, holy meditation and christian interchange, gratitude, and the reciprocal duties of husband and wife, in which last the church-theme is once more enunciated in typifying by the marriage-rite Christ's love for the Church (4:7-5:33).

The Church includes the household. The exhortations to fidelity in household relations are continued (Eph 6:1-9) The ideal of the Church and of individual character is realized only through conflict with the evil world and the powers of darkness, in which the power of God alone can insure victory. Hence the Christian is urged to clothe himself with the divine panoply (Eph 6:10-18).

The authenticity of the epistle has been challenged on the ground of dissimilarity to the other writings of Paul, unusual words and phrases, and a general un-Pauline character in doctrine and diction. As regards doctrine, the charge is beneath notice. As to diction, the argument from unusual expressions would bear equally against the genuineness of some of the best attested epistles. While there are forty-two unique words in this letter, there are thirty-eight in Colossians, above a hundred in Romans, and two hundred and thirty in First Corinthians; while the well-known peculiarities of Paul's style are as evident in this as in the other epistles.

The epistle has also been assailed as " a mere verbose expansion" of the Colossian letter. There are, indeed, marked resemblances between the two both in matter and form, and sometimes literal correspondences, as might be expected in two epistles written about the same time; but both the subject and the treatment of the two epistles present too many differences to bear out this charge of amplification. On the contrary, the same subject is sometimes treated more concisely in Ephesians than in Colossians (Eph 1:15-17; Col 1:3-6; Eph 4:32; Col 3:12-14). Ephesians, moreover, contains matter not found in Colossians (Eph 1:13-14; Eph 4:8-15; Eph 5:7-14, Eph 5:23-31; Eph 6:10-17).

The polemic element in Colossians is wanting in Ephesians. The Christology of Colossians is more metaphysical than that of Ephesians, while the predestinarianism of Ephesians does not appear in Colossians.

This epistle presents peculiar difficulties to the student. Dean Alford says: " The difficulties lie altogether beneath the surface; are not discernible by the cursory reader, who finds all very straightforward and simple. But when we begin to inquire why thought succeeds to thought, and one cumbrous parenthesis to another - depths under depths disclose themselves, wonderful systems of parallel allusion, frequent and complicated underplots - every word, the more we search, approves itself as set in its exact logical place; we see every phrase contributing by its own similar organization and articulation to the carrying out of the organic whole. But this result is not won without much labor of thought, without repeated and minute laying together of portions and expressions, without bestowing on single words and phrases, and their succession and arrangement, as much study as would suffice for whole sections of more exoteric epistles."

While the diction is marked by a peculiar sonorousness and depth of tone, it does not surpass in variety and picturesqueness that of some other epistles, Second Corinthians, for instance. The shorter epistle to the Colossians contains thirty-eight unique words to forty-two in Ephesians. But no writing of Paul equals this in the liturgical majesty of its movement. The Epistle to the Romans is the ever-deepening flow of a stately river; Second Corinthians is the rush of a rapid; Ephesians is the solemn swell of a calm sea. Not a familiar and personal letter like Philippians and Philemon, it is, equally with these, devoid of official stateliness. Its dignity is that of the seer rather than of the bishop and teacher. It rises at times to the height of apocalypse. The impression of a teacher expounding his theme is largely merged in the impression of a great mind and an adoring soul mastered and swept onward by the theme.

The figure of a cathedral, into which Professor Longfellow has so finely cast his general conception of the " Divina Commedia," equally well, perhaps, even better, suits the Ephesian letter. If the expression may be allowed, that epistle is the veritable high-Gothic of sacred literature; every line and detail carrying the eye upward, and the whole combining in one great upreach, irradiated with the rich hues Of a the many-tinted wisdom of God." Even as St. Ouen mirrors its lines in the font at the portal, the whole magnificent ideal of the Church of Christ condenses itself into the inscription round the baptismal layer - " one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism." Every window is blazoned with its story, but in each the central figure is the same - now the Victim of the cross, now the Conqueror with his train of captives, now the King ascended and throned in light. No partition with its rigid lines sunders the band of worshippers. Jew and Gentile kneel side by side, every face turned toward the cross. On the very threshold the ear is greeted with a burst of choral thunder. The vast aisles throb with praise, crossed with the minor chords of penitent rehearsal, and the deep sighs of tempted souls struggling with the powers of darkness; while from the side-chapels float the words of admonition to the newly-wedded, and of homely precept for the children and servants; and over all the sweet, sad, triumphant tumult is heard the voice of the great apostle, rising with the incense-cloud from before the altar in that wondrous prayer, never surpassed save by the intercessions of Jesus Himself - " That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled unto all the fullness of God."

JFB: Ephesians (Book Introduction)

THE headings (Eph 1:1, and Eph 3:1, show that this Epistle claims to be that of Paul. This claim is confirmed by the testimonies of IRENÆUS, [Against Heresies, 5.2,3; 1.8,5]; CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, [Miscellanies, 4, P. 65, and The Instructor, 1.8]; ORIGEN, [Against Celsus, 4,211]. It is quoted by VALENTINUS, A.D. 120, namely, Eph 3:14-18, as we know from HIPPOLYTUS [The Refutation of All Heresies, p. 193]. POLYCARP [Epistle to the Philippians, 12], testifies to its canonicity. So TERTULLIAN [Against Marcion, 5,17]. IGNATIUS [Epistle to the Ephesians, 12], which alludes to the frequent and affectionate mention made by Paul of the Christian state, privileges, and persons of the Ephesians in his Epistle.

Two theories, besides the ordinary one, have been held on the question, to whom the Epistle is addressed. GROTIUS, after the heretic Marcion, maintains that it was addressed to the Church at Laodicea, and that it is the Epistle to which Paul refers in Col 4:16. But the Epistle to the Colossians was probably written before that to the Ephesians, as appears from the parallel passages in Ephesians bearing marks of being expanded from those in Colossians; and Marcion seems to have drawn his notion, as to our Epistle, from Paul's allusion (Col 4:16) to an Epistle addressed by him to the Laodiceans. ORIGEN and CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, and even TERTULLIAN, who refers to Marcion, give no sanction to his notion. No single manuscript contains the heading, "to the saints that are at Laodicea." The very resemblance of the Epistle to the Ephesians, to that to the Colossians, is against the theory; for if the former were really the one addressed to Laodicea (Col 4:16), Paul would not have deemed it necessary that the churches of Colosse and Laodicea should interchange Epistles. The greetings, moreover (Col 4:15), which he sends through the Colossians to the Laodiceans, are quite incompatible with the idea that Paul wrote an Epistle to the Laodiceans at the same time, and by the same bearer, Tychicus (the bearer of our Epistle to the Ephesians, as well as of that to Colosse, Eph 6:21; Col 4:7); for who, under such circumstances, would not send the greetings directly in the letter to the party saluted? The letter to Laodicea was evidently written some time before that to Colosse, Archbishop USHER has advanced the second theory: That it was an encyclical letter headed, as in Manuscript B., "to the saints that are . . . and to the faithful," the name of each Church being inserted in the copy sent to it; and that its being sent to Ephesus first, occasioned its being entitled, as now, the Epistle to the Ephesians. ALFORD makes the following objections to this theory: (1) It is at variance with the spirit of the Epistle, which is clearly addressed to one set of persons throughout, co-existing in one place, and as one body, and under the same circumstances. (2) The improbability that the apostle, who in two of his Epistles (Second Corinthians and Galatians) has so plainly specified their encyclical character, should have here omitted such specification. (3) The still greater improbability that he should have, as on this hypothesis must be assumed, written a circular Epistle to a district, of which Ephesus was the commercial capital, addressed to various churches within that district, yet from its very contents (as by the opponents' hypothesis) not admitting of application to the Church of that metropolis, in which he had spent so long a time, and to which he was so affectionately bound. (4) The inconsistency of this hypothesis with the address of the Epistle, and the universal testimony of the ancient Church. The absence of personal greetings is not an argument for either of the two theories; for similarly there are none in Galatians, Philippians, First and Second Thessalonians, First Timothy. The better he knows the parties addressed, and the more general and solemn the subject, the less he seems to give of these individual notices. Writing, as he does in this Epistle, on the constitution and prospects of Christ's universal Church, he refers the Ephesians, as to personal matters, to the bearer of the Epistle, Tychicus (Eph 6:21-22). As to the omission of "which are at Ephesus" (Eph 1:1), in Manuscript B., so "in Rome" (Rom 1:7) is omitted in some old manuscripts: it was probably done by churches among whom it was read, in order to generalize the reference of its contents, and especially where the subject of the Epistle is catholic. The words are found in the margin of Manuscript B, from a first hand; and are found in all the oldest manuscripts and versions.

Paul's first visit to Ephesus (on the seacoast of Lydia, near the river Cayster) is related in Act 18:19-21. The work, begun by his disputations with the Jews in his short visit, was carried on by Apollos (Act 18:24-26), and Aquila and Priscilla (Act 18:26). At his second visit, after his journey to Jerusalem, and thence to the east regions of Asia Minor, he remained at Ephesus "three years" (Act 19:10, the "two years" in which verse are only part of the time, and Act 20:31); so that the founding and rearing of this Church occupied an unusually large portion of the apostle's time and care; whence his language in this Epistle shows a warmth of feeling, and a free outpouring of thought, and a union in spiritual privileges and hope between him and them (Eph 1:3, &c.), such as are natural from one so long and so intimately associated with those whom he addresses. On his last journey to Jerusalem, he sailed by Ephesus and summoned the elders of the Ephesian Church to meet him at Miletus, where he delivered his remarkable farewell charge (Acts 20:18-35).

This Epistle was addressed to the Ephesians during the early part of his imprisonment at Rome, immediately after that to the Colossians, to which it bears a close resemblance in many passages, the apostle having in his mind generally the same great truths in writing both. It is an undesigned proof of genuineness that the two Epistles, written about the same date, and under the same circumstances, bear a closer mutual resemblance than those written at distant dates and on different occasions. Compare Eph 1:7 with Col 1:14; Eph 1:10 with Col 1:20; Eph 3:2 with Col 1:25; Eph 5:19 with Col 3:16; Eph 6:22 with Col 4:8; Eph 1:19; Eph 2:5 with Col 2:12-13; Eph 4:2-4 with Col 3:12-15; Eph 4:16 with Col 2:19; Eph 4:32 with Col 3:13; Eph 4:22-24 with Col 3:9-10; Eph 5:6-8 with Col 3:6-8; Eph 5:15-16 with Col 4:5; Eph 6:19-20 with Col 4:3-4; Eph 5:22-33; Eph 6:1-9 with Col 3:18; Eph 4:24-25 with Col 3:9; Eph 5:20-22 with Col 3:17-18. Tychicus and Onesimus were being sent to Colosse, the former bearing the two Epistles to the two churches respectively, the latter furnished with a letter of recommendation to Philemon, his former master, residing at Colosse. The date was probably about four years after his parting with the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts 20:6-38), about A.D. 62, before his imprisonment had become of the more severe kind, which appears in his Epistle to the Philippians. From Eph 6:19-20 it is plain he had at the time, though a prisoner, some degree of freedom in preaching, which accords with Act 28:23, Act 28:30-31, where he is represented as receiving at his lodgings all inquirers. His imprisonment began in February A.D. 61 and lasted "two whole years" (Act 28:30) at least, and perhaps longer.

The Church of Ephesus was made up of converts partly from the Jews and partly from the Gentiles (Act 19:8-10). Accordingly, the Epistle so addresses a Church constituted (Eph 2:14-22). Ephesus was famed for its idol temple of Artemis or Diana, which, after its having been burnt down by Herostratus on the night that Alexander the Great was born (355 B.C.), was rebuilt at enormous cost and was one of the wonders of the world. Hence, perhaps, have arisen his images in this Epistle drawn from a beautiful temple: the Church being in true inner beauty that which the temple of the idol tried to realize in outward show (Eph 2:19-22). The Epistle (Eph 4:17; Eph 5:1-13) implies the profligacy for which the Ephesian heathen were notorious. Many of the same expressions occur in the Epistle as in Paul's address to the Ephesian elders. Compare Eph 1:6-7; Eph 2:7, as to "grace," with Act 20:24, Act 20:32 : this may well be called "the Epistle of the grace of God" [ALFORD]. Also, as to his "bonds," Eph 3:1, and Eph 4:1 with Act 20:22-23. Also Eph 1:11, as to "the counsel of God," with Act 20:27. Also Eph 1:14, as to "the redemption of the purchased possession," with Act 20:28. Also Eph 1:14, Eph 1:18; Eph 2:20; Eph 5:5, as to "building up" the "inheritance," with Act 20:32.

The object of the Epistle is "to set forth the ground, the course, and the aim and end of THE CHURCH OF THE FAITHFUL IN CHRIST. He speaks to the Ephesians as a type or sample of the Church universal" [ALFORD]. Hence, "the Church" throughout the Epistle is spoken of in the singular, not in the plural, "churches." The Church's foundation, its course, and its end, are his theme alike in the larger and smaller divisions of the whole Epistle. "Everywhere the foundation of the Church is in the will of the Father; the course of the Church is by the satisfaction of the Son; the end of the Church is the life in the Holy Spirit" [ALFORD]. Compare respectively Eph 1:11; Eph 2:5; Eph 3:16. This having been laid down as a matter of doctrine (this part closing with a sublime doxology, Eph 3:14-21), is then made the ground of practical exhortations. In these latter also (from Eph 4:1, onward), the same threefold division prevails, for the Church is represented as founded on the counsel of "God the Father, who is above all, through all, and in all," reared by the "one Lord," Jesus Christ, through the "one Spirit" (Eph 4:4-6, &c.), who give their respective graces to the several members. These last are therefore to exercise all these graces in the several relations of life, as husbands, wives, servants, children, &c. The conclusion is that we must put on "the whole armor of God" (Eph 6:13).

The sublimity of the STYLE and LANGUAGE corresponds to the sublimity of the subjects and exceeds almost that of any part of his Epistles. It is appropriate that those to whom he so wrote were Christians long grounded in the faith. The very sublimity is the cause of the difficulty of the style, and of the presence of peculiar expressions occurring, not found elsewhere.

JFB: Ephesians (Outline)

• INSCRIPTION: ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH IN THE FATHER'S ETERNAL COUNSEL, AND THE SON'S BLOODSHEDDING: THE SEALING OF IT BY THE SPIRIT. THANKSGIVING AND PRAYER THAT THEY MAY FULLY KNOW GOD'S GRACIOUS POWER IN CHRIST TOWARDS THE SAINTS. (Eph. 1:1-23)
• GOD'S LOVE AND GRACE IN QUICKENING US, ONCE DEAD, THROUGH CHRIST. HIS PURPOSE IN DOING SO: EXHORTATION BASED ON OUR PRIVILEGES AS BUILT TOGETHER, AN HOLY TEMPLE, IN CHRIST, THROUGH THE SPIRIT. (Eph. 2:1-22)
• HIS APOSTOLIC OFFICE TO MAKE KNOWN THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST REVEALED BY THE SPIRIT: PRAYER THAT BY THE SAME SPIRIT THEY MAY COMPREHEND THE VAST LOVE OF CHRIST: DOXOLOGY ENDING THIS DIVISION OF THE EPISTLE. (Eph. 3:1-21)
• EXHORTATIONS TO CHRISTIAN DUTIES RESTING ON OUR CHRISTIAN PRIVILEGES, AS UNITED IN ONE BODY, THOUGH VARYING IN THE GRACES GIVEN TO THE SEVERAL MEMBERS, THAT WE MAY COME UNTO A PERFECT MAN IN CHRIST. (Eph. 4:1-32) Translate, according to the Greek order, "I beseech you, therefore (seeing that such is your calling of grace, the first through third chapters) I the prisoner in the Lord (that is, imprisoned in the Lord's cause)." What the world counted ignominy, he counts the highest honor, and he glories in his bonds for Christ, more than a king in his diadem [THEODORET]. His bonds, too, are an argument which should enforce his exhortation.
• EXHORTATIONS TO LOVE: AND AGAINST CARNAL LUSTS AND COMMUNICATIONS. CIRCUMSPECTION IN WALK: REDEEMING THE TIME: BEING FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT: SINGING TO THE LORD WITH THANKFULNESS: THE WIFE'S DUTY TO THE HUSBAND RESTS ON THAT OF THE CHURCH TO CHRIST. (Eph. 5:1-33)
• MUTUAL DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN: MASTERS AND SERVANTS: OUR LIFE A WARFARE: THE SPIRITUAL ARMOUR NEEDED AGAINST SPIRITUAL FOES. CONCLUSION. (Eph. 6:1-24)

TSK: Ephesians 1 (Chapter Introduction)

Overview

Eph 1:1, After the salutation, Eph 1:3, and thanksgiving for the Ephesians, Eph 1:4, he treats of our election, Eph 1:6, and adoption by grace; Eph 1:11, which is the true and proper fountain of man’s salvation; Eph 1:13, And because the height of this mystery cannot be easily attained unto, Eph 1:16. he prays that they may come to the full knowledge and possession thereof in Christ.

Poole: Ephesians 1 (Chapter Introduction)

CHAPTER 1

Ephesus was the most considerable city of the lesser Asia; famous, first for sin, witchcraft, Act 19:19 , idolatry (especially the worship of Diana, Act 19:24 ), and persecution, 1Co 15:32 1Co 16:9 ; then for piety, having received the gospel by Paul’ s preaching, Act 18:1-28 , and showed great zeal, Act 19:17,18 , &c.; Rev 2:2,3 ; but, lastly, it was noted for coolness and declining, Rev 2:4 , leaving her first love. The apostle seems to have foreseen this as like to come to pass among them by means of false teachers, grievous wolves that would not spare the flock, Act 20:29 , and some that would arise from among themselves speaking perverse things, Act 20:30 . Hereupon he not only admonished the elders of the church to look to themselves and all the flock, Act 20:28 ; but afterward, when a prisoner at Rome, out of his care of these Ephesians, and concern for them, he writes this Epistle to them, to confirm and settle them in the faith they had received, and persuade them to a holy conversation, as best suited to a holy gospel. In the Epistle there are two principal parts:

1. Doctrinal, in the first three chapters, where he lays down and commends to them the doctrine of the grace of God in election, redemption, vocation, justification, adoption, Gal 1:1-23 , illustrating it by the deplorable condition in which before their conversion they had been, Ga 2 , and assuring them of the truth of their call, by asserting, against all objectors and cavillers, his apostleship with respect to them Gentiles, and his commission from God to preach among them the unsearchable riches of Christ, Gal 3:1-21 .

2. Practical; in which he exhorts them to walk worthy of their calling in the diligent practice of Christian duties, whether more general, and which concern all believers, or special, such as belong to them in their several relations, especially economical, Eph 5:1-33 and Eph 6:1-24 .

MHCC: Ephesians (Book Introduction)

This epistle was written when St. Paul was a prisoner at Rome. The design appears to be to strengthen the Ephesians in the faith of Christ, and to give exalted views of the love of God, and of the dignity and excellence of Christ, fortifying their minds against the scandal of the cross. He shows that they were saved by grace, and that however wretched they once were, they now had equal privileges with the Jews. He encourages them to persevere in their Christian calling, and urges them to walk in a manner becoming their profession, faithfully discharging the general and common duties of religion, and the special duties of particular relations.

MHCC: Ephesians 1 (Chapter Introduction)

(Eph 1:1-8) A salutation, and an account of saving blessings, as prepared in God's eternal election, as purchased by Christ's blood.

(Eph 1:9-14) And as conveyed in effectual calling: this is applied to the believing Jews, and to the believing Gentiles.

(Eph 1:15-23) The apostle thanks God for their faith and love, and prays for the continuance of their knowledge and hope, with respect to the heavenly inheritance, and to God's powerful working in them.

Matthew Henry: Ephesians (Book Introduction)

An Exposition, with Practical Observations, of The Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians

Some think that this epistle to the Ephesians was a circular letter sent to several churches, and that the copy directed to the Ephesians happened to be taken into the canon, and so it came to bear that particular inscription. And they have been induced the rather to think this because it is the only one of all Paul's epistles that has nothing in it peculiarly adapted to the state or case of that particular church; but it has much of common concernment to all Christians, and especially to all who, having been Gentiles in times past, were converted to Christianity. But then it may be observed, on the other hand, that the epistle is expressly inscribed (Eph 1:1) to the saints which are at Ephesus; and in the close of it he tells them that he had sent Tychicus unto them, whom, in 2Ti 4:12, he says he had sent to Ephesus. It is an epistle that bears date out of a prison: and some have observed that what this apostle wrote when he was a prisoner had the greatest relish and savour in it of the things of God. When his tribulations did abound, his consolations and experiences did much more abound, whence we may observe that the afflictive exercises of God's people, and particularly of his ministers, often tend to the advantage of others as well as to their own. The apostle's design is to settle and establish the Ephesians in the truth, and further to acquaint them with the mystery of the gospel, in order to it. In the former part he represents the great privilege of the Ephesians, who, having been in time past idolatrous heathens, were now converted to Christianity and received into covenant with God, which he illustrates from a view of their deplorable state before their conversion, ch. 1-3. In the latter part (which we have in the Eph 4:1, Eph 5:1, and Eph 6:1 chapters) he instructs them in the principal duties of religion, both personal and relative, and exhorts and quickens them to the faithful discharge of them. Zanchy observes that we have here an epitome of the whole Christian doctrine, and of almost all the chief heads of divinity.

Matthew Henry: Ephesians 1 (Chapter Introduction)

In this chapter we have, I. The introduction to the whole epistle, which is much the same as in others (Eph 1:1, Eph 1:2). II. The apostle's thanksgivings and praises to God for his inestimable blessings bestowed on the believing Ephesians (Eph 1:3-14). III. His earnest prayers to God in their behalf (Eph 1:15-23). This great apostle was wont to abound in prayers and in thanksgivings to almighty God, which he generally so disposes and orders that at the same time they carry with them and convey the great and important doctrines of the Christian religion, and the most weighty instructions to all those who seriously peruse them.

Barclay: Ephesians (Book Introduction)

A GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE LETTERS OF PAUL

The Letters Of Paul

There is no more interesting body of documents in the New Testament than the letters of Paul. That is because of all forms of literature a letter is most personal. Demetrius, one of the old Greek literary critics, once wrote, "Every one reveals his own soul in his letters. In every other form of composition it is possible to discern the writercharacter, but in none so clearly as the epistolary." (Demetrius, On Style, 227.) It is just because he left us so many letters that we feel we know Paul so well. In them he opened his mind and heart to the folk he loved so much; and in them, to this day, we can see that great mind grappling with the problems of the early church and feel that great heart throbbing with love for men, even when they were misguided and mistaken.

The Difficulty Of Letters

At the same time there is often nothing so difficult to understand as a letter. Demetrius (On Style, 223) quotes a saying of Artemon, who edited the letters of Aristotle. Artemon said that a letter ought to be written in the same manner as a dialogue, because it was one of the two sides of a dialogue. In other words, to read a letter is like listening to one side of a telephone conversation. So when we read the letters of Paul we are often in a difficulty. We do not possess the letter which he was answering; we do not fully know the circumstances with which he was dealing; it is only from the letter itself that we can deduce the situation which prompted it. Before we can hope to understand fully any letter Paul wrote, we must try to reconstruct the situation which produced it.

The Ancient Letters

It is a great pity that Paulletters were ever called epistles. They are in the most literal sense letters. One of the great lights shed on the interpretation of the New Testament has been the discovery and the publication of the papyri. In the ancient world, papyrus was the substance on which most documents were written. It was composed of strips of the pith of a certain bulrush that grew on the banks of the Nile. These strips were laid one on top of the other to form a substance very like brown paper. The sands of the Egyptian desert were ideal for preservation, for papyrus, although very brittle, will last forever so long as moisture does not get at it. As a result, from the Egyptian rubbish heaps, archaeologists have rescued hundreds of documents, marriage contracts, legal agreements, government forms, and, most interesting of all, private letters. When we read these private letters we find that there was a pattern to which nearly all conformed; and we find that Paulletters reproduce exactly that pattern. Here is one of these ancient letters. It is from a soldier, called Apion, to his father Epimachus. He is writing from Misenum to tell his father that he has arrived safely after a stormy passage.

"Apion sends heartiest greetings to his father and lord Epimachus.

I pray above all that you are well and fit; and that things are

going well with you and my sister and her daughter and my brother.

I thank my Lord Serapis [his god] that he kept me safe when I was

in peril on the sea. As soon as I got to Misenum I got my journey

money from Caesar--three gold pieces. And things are going fine

with me. So I beg you, my dear father, send me a line, first to let

me know how you are, and then about my brothers, and thirdly, that

I may kiss your hand, because you brought me up well, and because

of that I hope, God willing, soon to be promoted. Give Capito my

heartiest greetings, and my brothers and Serenilla and my friends.

I sent you a little picture of myself painted by Euctemon. My

military name is Antonius Maximus. I pray for your good health.

Serenus sends good wishes, Agathos Daimonboy, and Turbo,

Galloniuson." (G. Milligan, Selections from the Greek Papyri,

36.)

Little did Apion think that we would be reading his letter to his father 1800 years after he had written it. It shows how little human nature changes. The lad is hoping for promotion quickly. Who will Serenilla be but the girl he left behind him? He sends the ancient equivalent of a photograph to the folk at home. Now that letter falls into certain sections. (i) There is a greeting. (ii) There is a prayer for the health of the recipients. (iii) There is a thanksgiving to the gods. (iv) There are the special contents. (v) Finally, there are the special salutations and the personal greetings. Practically every one of Paulletters shows exactly the same sections, as we now demonstrate.

(i) The Greeting: Rom_1:1 ; 1Co_1:1 ; 2Co_1:1 ; Gal_1:1 ; Eph_1:1 ; Phi_1:1 ; Col 2 ; 1Th_1:1 ; 2Th_1:1 .

(ii) The Prayer: in every case Paul prays for the grace of God on the people to whom he writes: Rom_1:7 ; 1Co_1:3 ; 2Co_1:2 ; Gal_1:3 ; Eph_1:2 ; Phi_1:3 ; Col_1:2 ; 1Th_1:1 ; 2Th_1:2 .

(iii) The Thanksgiving: Rom_1:8 ; 1Co_1:4 ; 2Co_1:3 ; Eph_1:3 ; Phi_1:3 ; 1Th_1:3 ; 2Th_1:3 .

(iv) The Special Contents: the main body of the letters.

(v) Special Salutations and Personal Greetings: Rom 16 ; 1Co_16:19 ; 2Co_13:13 ; Phi_4:21-22 ; Col_4:12-15 ; 1Th_5:26 .

When Paul wrote letters, he wrote them on the pattern which everyone used. Deissmann says of them, "They differ from the messages of the homely papyrus leaves of Egypt, not as letters but only as the letters of Paul." When we read Paulletters we are not reading things which were meant to be academic exercises and theological treatises, but human documents written by a friend to his friends.

The Immediate Situation

With a very few exceptions, all Paulletters were written to meet an immediate situation and not treatises which he sat down to write in the peace and silence of his study. There was some threatening situation in Corinth, or Galatia, or Philippi, or Thessalonica, and he wrote a letter to meet it. He was not in the least thinking of us when he wrote, but solely of the people to whom he was writing. Deissmann writes, "Paul had no thought of adding a few fresh compositions to the already extant Jewish epistles; still less of enriching the sacred literature of his nation.... He had no presentiment of the place his words would occupy in universal history; not so much that they would be in existence in the next generation, far less that one day people would look at them as Holy Scripture." We must always remember that a thing need not be transient because it was written to meet an immediate situation. All the great love songs of the world were written for one person, but they live on for the whole of mankind. It is just because Paulletters were written to meet a threatening danger or a clamant need that they still throb with life. And it is because human need and the human situation do not change that God speaks to us through them today.

The Spoken Word

One other thing we must note about these letters. Paul did what most people did in his day. He did not normally pen his own letters but dictated them to a secretary, and then added his own authenticating signature. (We actually know the name of one of the people who did the writing for him. In Rom_16:22 Tertius, the secretary, slips in his own greeting before the letter draws to an end.) In 1Co_16:21 Paul says, "This is my own signature, my autograph, so that you can be sure this letter comes from me" (compare Col_4:18 ; 2Th_3:17 ).

This explains a great deal. Sometimes Paul is hard to understand, because his sentences begin and never finish; his grammar breaks down and the construction becomes involved. We must not think of him sitting quietly at a desk, carefully polishing each sentence as he writes. We must think of him striding up and down some little room, pouring out a torrent of words, while his secretary races to get them down. When Paul composed his letters, he had in his mindeye a vision of the folk to whom he was writing, and he was pouring out his heart to them in words that fell over each other in his eagerness to help.

INTRODUCTION TO THE LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS

The Supreme Letter

By common consent the Letter to the Ephesians ranks very high in the devotional and theological literature of the Christian Church. It has been called "The Queen of the Epistles"--and rightly so. Many would hold that it is indeed the highest reach of New Testament thought. When John Knox was very near his end, the book that was most often read to him was John CalvinSermons on the Letter to the Ephesians. Coleridge said of Ephesians that it was "the divinest composition of man." He went on: "It embraces first, those doctrines peculiar to Christianity, and, then, those precepts common with it in natural religion." Ephesians clearly has a place all its own in the Pauline correspondence.

And yet there are certain very real problems connected with it. These problems are not the product of the minds of over-critical scholars, but are plain for all to see. When, however, these problems are solved, Ephesians becomes a greater letter than ever and shines with an even more radiant light.

The Circumstances Of The Writing Of Ephesians

Before we turn to the doubtful things, let us set down the certainties. First, Ephesians was clearly written when Paul was in prison. He calls himself "a prisoner for Christ" (Eph_3:1 ); it is as "a prisoner for the Lord" that he beseeches them (Eph_4:1 ); he is "an ambassador in chains" (Eph_6:20 ). It was in prison, and very near to the end, that Paul wrote Ephesians.

Second, Ephesians has clearly a close connection with Colossians. It would seem that Tychicus was the bearer of both these letters. In Colossians Paul says that Tychicus will tell them all about his affairs (Col_4:7 ); and in Ephesians he says that Tychicus will give them all information (Eph_6:21 ). Further, there is a close resemblance between the substance of the two letters, so close that more than 55 verses in the two letters are verbatim the same. Either, as Coleridge held, Colossians is what might be called "the overflow" of Ephesians, or Ephesians is a greater version of Colossians. We shall in the end come to see that it is this resemblance which gives us the clue to the unique place of Ephesians among the letters of Paul.

The Problem

So, then, it is certain that Ephesians was written when Paul was in prison for the faith and that it has in some way the closest possible connection with Colossians. The problem emerges when we begin to examine the question of to whom Ephesians was written.

In the ancient days letters were written on rolls of papyrus. When finished, they were tied with thread, and, if they were specially private or important, the knots in the thread were then sealed. But it was seldom that any address was written on them, for the very simple reason that, for the ordinary individual, there was no postal system. There was a government post, but it was available only for official and imperial correspondence and not for the ordinary person. Letters in those days were delivered by hand and therefore no address was necessary. So the titles of the New Testament letters are not part of the original letters at all. They were inserted afterwards when the letters were collected and published for all the Church to read.

When we study Ephesians closely, we find it in the last degree unlikely that it was written to the church at Ephesus. There are internal reasons for arriving at that conclusion.

(a) The letter was written to Gentiles. The recipients were "Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise" (Eph_2:11 ). Paul urges them "no longer to live as the Gentiles do" (Eph_4:17 ). The fact that they were Gentiles did not of itself mean that the letter could not have been written to Ephesus; but it is a fact to note.

(b) Ephesians is the most impersonal letter Paul ever wrote. It is entirely without personal greetings and without the intimate personal messages of which the other letters are so full. That is doubly surprising when we remember that Paul spent longer in Ephesus than in any other city, no less than three years (Act_20:31 ). Further, there is no more intimate and affectionate passage in the whole New Testament than Act_20:17-35 where we have Paulfarewell talk to the elders of Ephesus, before he left Miletus on his last journey. It is very difficult to believe in face of all this that Paul would have sent a letter to Ephesus which was so impersonal.

(c) The indication of the letter is that Paul and the recipients did not know each other personally and that their knowledge of each other came by hearsay. In Eph_1:15 Paul writes: "Because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus." The loyalty of the people to whom he was writing was something which had come to him by information and not by experience. In Eph_3:2 he writes to them: "Assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of Godgrace that was given to me for you." That is to say: "If you have heard that God gave me the special task and office of being the apostle to Gentiles such as you." The Churchknowledge of Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles was something of which they have heard, but not something which they knew by personal contact with him. So, then, within itself the letter bears signs that it does not fit the close and personal relationship which Paul had with the Church at Ephesus.

These facts might be explained; but there is one external fact which settles the matter. In Eph_1:1 none of the great early manuscripts of the Greek New Testament contain the words in Ephesus. They all read: "Paul...to the saints who are also faithful in Christ Jesus." And we know, from the way in which they comment on it, that that was the form in which the early Greek fathers knew the text.

Was Paul The Author?

Some scholars have gone on to find still another difficulty in Ephesians. They have doubted whether Paul was the author of the letter at all. On what grounds do they base their doubts?

They say that the vocabulary, is different from the vocabulary of Paul; and it is true that there are some seventy words in Ephesians which are not found in any other letter written by Paul. That need not trouble us, for the fact is that in Ephesians Paul was saying things which he had never said before. He was travelling a road of thought along which he had not before travelled; and naturally he needed new words to express new thoughts. It would be ridiculous to demand that a man with a mind like Paulshould never add to his vocabulary and should always express himself in the same way.

They say that the style is not the style of Paul. It is true-- we can see it even in the English, let alone in the Greek--that the style of Ephesians is different from that of the other letters. The other letters are all written to meet a definite situation. But, as A. H. McNeile has said, Ephesians is "a theological tract, or rather a religious mediation." Even the use of language is different. Moffatt puts it this way--generally speaking, Paullanguage pours out like a torrent; but in Ephesians we have "a slow, bright stream, flowing steadily along, which brims its high banks." The length of the sentences in Ephesians is astonishing. In the Greek Eph_1:3-14 ; Eph_1:15-23 ; Eph_2:1-9 ; Eph_3:1-7 are each one long, meandering sentence. McNeile very beautifully and rightly calls Ephesians "a poem in prose." All this is very unlike Paulnormal style.

What is to be said to this? There is first the general fact that no great writer always writes in the same style. Shakespeare can produce the very different styles of Hamlet, A Midsummer NightDream, The Taming of the Shrew, and the Sonnets. Any great stylist--and Paul was a great stylist--writes in a style to fit his aim and his circumstances at the time of writing. It is bad criticism to say that Paul did not write Ephesians simply because he has evolved a new vocabulary and a new style.

But there is more. Let us remember how Paul wrote most of his letters. He wrote them in the midst of a busy ministry, when, for the most part, he was on the road. He wrote them to meet a demanding problem which had to be dealt with at the moment. That is to say, in most of his letters Paul was writing against time. Now let us remember that Paul, if he wrote Ephesians, wrote it when he was in prison. That is to say, he had all the time in the world to write it. Is it any wonder that the style of Ephesians; is not the style of the earlier letters?

Moreover, this difference in style, this meditative, poetical quality is most apparent in Eph 1-3, and they are one long prayer, culminating in a great doxology. There is in fact nothing like this in all Paulletters. This is the language of lyrical prayer, not the language of argument or controversy or rebuke.

The differences are far from proving that Ephesians is not by Paul.

The Thought Of The Epistle

Certain scholars wish to go on to say that the thought of Ephesians is beyond the thought of any of the other letters of Paul. Let us see what that thought is. We have seen that Ephesians is intimately connected with Colossians whose central thought is the all-sufficiency, of Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ were hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col_2:3 ); all the fulness of God dwelt in him (Col_1:19 ); in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily (Col_2:9 ); he alone is necessary and sufficient for mansalvation (Col_1:14 ). The whole thought of Colossians is based on the complete sufficiency of Jesus Christ.

The thought of Ephesians is a development of that conception. It is summarized in two verses of the first chapter, in which Paul speaks of God as, "having made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth." (Eph_1:9-10 ).

The key thought of Ephesians is the gathering together of all things in Jesus Christ. In nature as it is without Christ there is nothing but disunity and disharmony; it is "red in tooth and claw." Mandominion has broken the social union which should exist between man and the beasts; man is divided from man; class from class; nation from nation; ideology from ideology; Gentile from Jew. What is true of the world of outer nature is true of human nature. In every man there is a tension; every man is a walking civil war, torn between the desire for good and the desire for evil; he hates his sins and loves them at one and the same time. According to both Greek and Jewish thought in the time of Paul, this disharmony extends even to the heavenly places. A cosmic battle is raging between the powers of evil and the powers of good; between God and the demons. Worst of all there is disharmony between God and man. Man, who was meant to be in fellowship with God, is estranged from him.

So, then, in this world without Christ, there is nothing but disunity. That disunity is not Godpurpose but it can become a unity only when all things are united in Christ. As E. F. Scott has it: "The innumerable broken strands were to be brought together in Christ, knotted again into one, as they had been in the beginning." The central thought of Ephesians is the realization of the disunity in the universe and the conviction that it can become unity only when everything is united in Christ.

The Origin Of PaulThought

How did Paul arrive at this great conception of the unity of all things in Jesus Christ? Most likely he came to it in two ways. It is surely the inevitable outcome of his conviction, stated so vividly in Colossians, that Christ is all-sufficient. But it may well be that there was something else which moved Paulmind in this direction. He was a Roman citizen and proud of it. In his journeys Paul had seen a great deal of the Roman Empire, and now he was in Rome, the imperial city. In the Roman Empire a new unity had come to the world. The pax Romana, the Roman peace, was a very real thing. Kingdoms and states and countries, which had struggled and warred with each other, were gathered into a new unity in the Empire which was Rome. It may well be that in his imprisonment Paul saw with new eyes how all this unity centred in Rome; and it may well have seemed to him a symbol of how all things must centre in Christ, if a disunited nature and world and humanity were ever to be gathered into a unity. Surely, so far from being a conception that was beyond his thinking, all Paulthinking and experience would lead him precisely to that.

The Function Of The Church

It is in Eph 1-3 that Paul deals with this conception of the unity in Christ. In the second three chapters he has much to say of the place of the Church in Godplan to bring about that unity. It is here that Paul strikes out one of his greatest phrases. The Church is the Body of Christ. The Church is to be hands to do Christwork, feet to run upon his errands, a mouth to speak for him. So, then, we have a double thesis in Ephesians. First, Christ is Godinstrument of reconciliation. Second, the Church is Christinstrument of reconciliation. The Church must bring Christ to the world; and it is within the Church that all the middle walls of separation must be broken down. It is through the Church that the unity of all the discordant elements must be achieved. As E. F. Scott has it: "The Church stands for that purpose of world-wide reconciliation for which Christ appeared, and in all their intercourse with one another Christians must seek to realize this formative idea of the Church."

Who But Paul?

This is the thought of Ephesians. As we have seen, there are some who, thinking of the vocabulary and the style and the thought of this letter, cannot believe that Paul wrote it. E. J. Goodspeed, the American scholar, has put forward an interesting--but unconvincing--theory. The probability is that it was in Ephesus about the year A.D. 90 that the letters of Paul were first collected and sent out to the Church at large. It is Goodspeedtheory that the man responsible for that collection, some disciple of Paul, wrote Ephesians as a kind of introduction to the whole collection. Surely that theory breaks down on one salient fact. Any imitation is inferior to the original. But so far from being inferior Ephesians might well be said to be the greatest of all the Pauline letters. If Paul did not write it himself, we have to postulate as its writer someone who was possibly greater than Paul. E. F. Scott very relevantly demands: "Can we believe that in the Church of Paulday there was an unknown teacher of this supreme excellence? The natural assumption is surely that an epistle so like the work of Paul at his best was written by no other man than by Paul himself." No man ever had a greater vision of Christ than this which sees in Christ the one centre in whom all the disunities of life are gathered into one. No man ever had a greater vision of the Church than this which sees in the Church Godinstrument in that world-wide reconciliation. And we may well believe that no man other than Paul could rise to a vision like that.

The Destination Of Ephesians

We must now return to the problem which earlier we left unsolved. If Ephesians was not written to Ephesus--to what church was it written?

The oldest suggestion is that it was written to Laodicea. In Col_4:16 Paul writes: "And when this letter has been read among you, have it read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you read also the letter from Laodicea." That sentence makes certain that a letter had gone from Paul to the church at Laodicea. We possess no such letter amongst Paulletters as they stand. Marcion was one of the first people to make a collection of Paulletters, just about the middle of the second century, and he actually calls Ephesians the Letter to the Laodiceans. So from very early times there must have been a feeling in the Church that Ephesians was actually sent in the first instance to Laodicea.

If we accept that interesting and attractive suggestion, we still have to explain how the letter lost its individual address to Laodicea and came to be connected with Ephesus. There could be two explanations.

It may be that, when Paul died, the church at Ephesus knew that the church at Laodicea possessed a wonderful letter from Paul; and wrote to Laodicea asking for a copy. A copy may have been made and sent off, omitting only the words in Laodicea in the first verse, and leaving a blank as the earliest manuscripts have a blank there. Almost thirty years later the letters of Paul were collected for general publication. Now Laodicea was in a district which was notorious for earthquakes, and it may well have been that all its archives were destroyed; and that, therefore, when the collection was made, the only copy of the Letter to the Laodiceans was that which survived in Ephesus. That letter may then have come to be known as the Letter to the Ephesians, because it was in Ephesus that the only extant copy survived.

The second suggested explanation was propounded by Harnack, the great German scholar. In the later days the church in Laodicea sadly fell from grace. In the Revelation there is a letter to Laodicea which makes sad reading (Rev_3:14-22 ). In that letter the church of Laodicea is unsparingly condemned by the Risen Christ, so much so that he says to her in that vivid phrase: "I will spew you out of my mouth" (Rev_3:16 ). Now in the ancient world there was a custom called damnatio memoriae, the condemnation of a manmemory. A man might have rendered many a signal service to the state, for which his name might occur in books, in the state annals, in inscriptions and on memorials. But if such a man ended in some base act, some utter wreck of honour, his memory was condemned. His name was erased from all books, obliterated from all inscriptions, chiselled out of all memorials. Harnack thinks it possible that the church of Laodicea underwent a damnatio memoriae so that her very name was obliterated from the Christian records. If that were so, then the copies of the Letter to Laodicea would have no address at all; and when the collection was made at Ephesus, the name of Ephesus might well have become attached to it.

The Circular Letter

Both these suggestions are possible but still another suggestion is far more likely. We believe that Ephesians was not in fact written to any one church, but was a circular letter to all PaulAsian churches. Let us look again at Col_4:16 . He writes: "And when this letter has been read among you, have it read also in the church at Laodicea; and see that you read also the letter from Laodicea." Paul does not say that the Colossians must read the epistle to Laodicea; they must read the epistle from Laodicea. It is as if Paul said: "There is a letter circulating; at the present moment it has reached Laodicea; when it is sent on to you from Laodicea be sure to read it." That sounds very like as if there was a letter circulating among the Asian churches,. and we believe that letter was Ephesians.

The Quintessence Of Paul

If this be so, Ephesians is Paulsupreme letter. We have seen that Ephesians and Colossians are very close to each other. We believe that what happened was that Paul wrote Colossians to deal with a definite situation, an outbreak of heresy. In so doing he stumbled on his great expression of the all-sufficiency of Christ. He said to himself: "This is something that I must get across to all men." So he took the matter he had used in Colossians, removed all the local and temporary and controversial aspects, and wrote a new letter to tell all men of the all-sufficient Christ. Ephesians, as we see it, is the one letter Paul sent to all the eastern churches to tell them that the destined unity of all men and of all things could never be found except in Christ, and to tell them of the supreme task of the Church that of being Christinstrument in the universal reconciliation of man to man and of man to God. That is why Ephesians is the Queen of the Epistles.

Study Method

In Ephesians Paulargument is very closely woven together. It often proceeds in long complicated sentences which are difficult to unravel. If we are really to grasp his meaning, there are passages where it will be better to read the letter, first in fairly long sections and then break down these sections into shorter passages for detailed study.

FURTHER READING

Ephesians

T. K. Abbott, Ephesians and Colossians (ICC; G)

J. Armitage Robinson, St. PaulEpistle to the Ephesians (MmC; G)

E. F. Scott, The Epistles to Colossians, Philemon and Ephesians (MC; E)

Abbreviations

ICC: International Critical Commentary

MC: Moffatt Commentary

MmC: Macmillan Commentary

NCB; New Century Bible

E: English Text

G: Greek Text

Barclay: Ephesians 1 (Chapter Introduction)

The Purpose Of God (Eph_1:1-14)

1:1-14 This is a letter from Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, through the will of God, to God's consecrated people who live in Ephesus and who are faithful in Jesus Christ. Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings which are only to be found in heaven, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and blameless before him. He determined in his love before time began to adopt us to himself through Jesus Christ, in the good purpose of his will, so that all might praise the glory of the generous gift which he freely gave us in the Beloved. For it is in him that we have a deliverance which cost his life; in him we have received the forgiveness of sins, which only the wealth of his grace could give, a grace which he gave us in abundant supply, and which conferred on us all wisdom and all sound sense. This happened because he made known to us the once hidden, but now revealed, secret of his will, for so it was his good pleasure to do. This secret was a purpose which he formed in his own mind before time began, so that the periods of time should be controlled and administered until they reached their full development, a development in which all things, in heaven and upon earth, are gathered into one in Jesus Christ. It was in Christ, in whom our portion in this scheme was also assigned to us, that it was determined, by the decision of him who controls everything according to the purpose of his will, that we, who were the first to set our hopes upon the coming of the Anointed One of God, should become the means whereby his glory should be praised. And it was in Christ that it was determined that you, too, should become the means whereby God's glory is praised, after you had heard the word which brings the truth, the good news of your salvation that good news, in which, after you had come to believe, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit, who had been promised to you, the Spirit who is the foretaste and guarantee of all that one day we will inherit, until we enter into that complete redemption which brings complete possession.

Greetings To God's People (Eph_1:1-2)

The Chosen Of God (Eph_1:3-4)

The Plan Of God (Eph_1:5-6)

The Gifts Of God (Eph_1:7-8)

The Goal Of History (Eph_1:9-10)

Jew And Gentile (Eph_1:11-14)

The Marks Of The Church (Eph_1:15-23)

Paul's Prayer For The Church (Eph_1:15-23 Continued)

The Body Of Christ (Eph_1:15-23 Continued)

Constable: Ephesians (Book Introduction)

Introduction

Historical background

Almost all Christians believed in the Pauline authorship of Ephesians until the nineteenth century when destructive biblical criticism gained influence (cf. 1:1; 3:1). The critics built a case against Pauline authorship from linguistic and stylistic features, literary comparisons chiefly with Colossians, historical evidence, and doctrinal peculiarities.

"When all the objections are carefully considered it will be seen that the weight of evidence is inadequate to overthrow the overwhelming external attestation to Pauline authorship, and the Epistle's own claims."¹

Most conservative New Testament scholars hold to the tradition that Paul wrote Ephesians along with Colossians, Philemon, and Philippians, the other "Prison Epistles," during his first Roman imprisonment, 60-62 A.D. (3:1; 4:1; 6:20; cf. Acts 28:16-31). During this time Paul was under house arrest. He lived in his own rented quarters under guard by Roman soldiers. He could have visitors and could minister without hindrance as far as his confinement permitted (Acts 28:16, 30-31). He was not chained in a prison cell at this time as he was during his second Roman imprisonment when he wrote 2 Timothy (cf. 2 Tim. 1:16). For some interpreters, the reference to Paul having recently sent Tychicus to Ephesus in 2 Timothy 4:12 seems to put the composition of Ephesians in the second imprisonment (cf. Eph. 6:21-22). However the similarities between Ephesians and Colossians have led most scholars to conclude that Paul wrote these two letters at the same time. The evidence for his having written Colossians and Philemon during the first imprisonment is strong.

Paul knew Ephesus and the church in that city well. He had ministered in Asia Minor, the Roman province of which Ephesus was the capitol, with Ephesus as his headquarters for about three years, 53-56 A.D. (Acts 19:1-20:1). It appears that he sent this epistle to the Ephesian church so the Christians there would subsequently circulate it among the other churches.² Three other New Testament books went first to Ephesus: 1 and 2 Timothy, and Revelation (cf. Rev. 2:1). Tychicus evidently delivered this epistle to the Ephesian church (Eph. 6:21-22).

Purpose

Paul's frequent references to the church as a mystery, previously unknown but now revealed, identify the apostle's main purpose in writing as having been the exposition of the mystery of the church (1:9; 3:3-4, 9; 5:32; 6:19). His emphasis on the church as Christ's body in which both Jewish and Gentile believers are one suggests that Paul wrote to promote unity in the Ephesian church and in the universal church. The emphasis on the importance of love is also strong. More than one-sixth of Paul's references to love in his 13 epistles occur in Ephesians. This also shows that he wanted to promote Christian unity in the church.

Message³

The Book of Ephesians enables us to view God's creation from an alpine altitude. When we study this book, it is as though we have climbed a high mountain peak because the book gives us that kind of perspective on what God has created. Recall the opening scenes in The Sound of Music movie where Maria Von Trapp is standing in a high meadow looking over the valleys and mountains beyond. Yet the creation Ephesians opens up to our vision is not the physical creation but the church and its position and importance in the panorama of God's program. The church is the subject of Ephesians.

One of the features of this book that distinguishes it from other Pauline epistles is its universal character. Ephesians deals with matters of perspective that are important to all churches of all ages. Ephesians is not like 1 Corinthians that concerns itself with the situation of one local congregation primarily. It is more like Romans that deals with the great revelations that transcend local church polity.

Ephesians is an exposition of one of the most important statements Jesus ever uttered during His earthly ministry. That statement is in Matthew 16:18: "I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it." Other epistles similarly expound other teachings that Jesus gave while He walked this earth. For example, the Epistle of James is really an exposition of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. John's first epistle is an exposition of Jesus' Upper Room Discourse. Likewise Ephesians explains Jesus' teaching concerning the church. All the New Testament epistles deal with the church, of course. However, Ephesians lifts us above all the other revelation on this subject and puts the church in perspective in the plan of God. Paul developed both the building of the church and the conflict of the church, suggested in Jesus' statement, here.

Paul introduced the central teaching of Ephesians in its first verse. We read, "To the saints . . . in Christ Jesus." This phrase indicates the composition of the church. It alerts us to what will follow in the epistle. The phrase "the saints" reflects the diversity and differences that exist in the church. Paul had much to say in this letter about God's individual blessing of believers (e.g., 1:3-2:10). However the phrase "in Christ Jesus" emphasizes the unification of these individuals in one united church. Paul also had much to say about the corporate calling of believers in this letter (e.g., 2:11-3:19). The church is one organism that God has created from individual believers in this age whom God has united in a vital relationship with Jesus Christ. The figure of the human body with its diverse members controlled by one head (2:14-16) is the perfect illustration of the church.

As we examine the central teaching in Ephesians we can see that it falls into two parts. First, there is revelation concerning the eternal character of the church. Second, there is teaching about the temporal conduct of the church.

Consider first the revelation concerning the eternal character of the church. Ephesians tells us three things about the character of the church.

First, it reveals its conception. The church was in the plan of God from eternity past. It was not something God devised the day Jesus Christ died because the Jews had rejected their Messiah. Some dispensational expositors have referred to the church as a parenthetical part of God's eternal plan. That does not mean the church was an after-thought by God. The church is just as much a part of God's plan for human history as the nation of Israel. God did not reveal it in the Old Testament. It is a mystery, a New Testament revelation not revealed previously. Nevertheless it was always part of God's plan. This is important for us to realize because when we see that God brought the church into existence it is easier to believe that Satan will never destroy the church.

The second thing Ephesians reveals about the eternal character of the church is its construction. Whereas God viewed the church in the past as part of His eternal plan, He is constructing it in the present by His eternal power. In Ephesians there is much emphasis on power, the tremendous power of God. Paul prayed that his readers would grow in their understanding of the eternal power of God, the power that raised Jesus from the grave (1:18-19). Paul used four different Greek words for power in 1:19. This is the same power that has raised the Christian up and seated him or her with Christ in the heavenly realms now (2:4-6). Moreover it is the same power available to you and to me as we engage our spiritual enemy who is trying to tear down the church (6:10-11). Too often the church fails because Christians think it cannot succeed. We fail to appreciate the eternal divine power presently available to build the church and to defeat its foes.

The third thing we learn from this epistle about the character of the church is its consummation. This too involves an eternal perspective. Ephesians reveals that the church will serve the purpose of God throughout eternity future (2:4-7; 3:8-10). The church will demonstrate the richness of God's grace to all beings forever (2:7). It will also demonstrate the richness of God's wisdom to all beings forever (3:10).

In summary, Ephesians reveals the important place the church has in God's eternal plan for history. In the past He conceived of it as part of His eternal plan. In the present He is constructing it with His eternal power. In the future He will bring it to consummation in fulfillment of His eternal purpose.

Whereas the revelation of the church's eternal character constitutes a major portion of this epistle Paul also taught much about the temporal conduct of the church. The church's eternal character has major implications for its temporal conduct (4:1). We can organize this part of the revelation under three headings as well.

The first implication of the character of the church that I want to point out that Paul stressed relates to its construction. Since the church is what it is, the unified body of Christ, it is very important that Christians preserve this unity (4:1-3). Note that this is not a unity among professing Christians that we must achieve. It is a unity among genuine Christians that we must preserve. We must be very careful to avoid causing divisions in the body of Christ. One of the seven things Solomon wrote that the Lord hates is someone who spreads strife among his brothers (Prov. 6:19).

A second implication of the character of the church relates to its confession. The church, Paul urged, must make a confession or give testimony to God. This is the will of God (5:15-17). We do this by sanctifying all of life to God, setting it apart to Him for His honor and glory. Consequently Paul talked about the basic relationships of life--husbands and wives, parents and children, employers and employees. Our faith must have an impact on these relationships. The church makes its confession before the world not primarily by formulating creeds of belief but by demonstrating sanctification in conduct.

Third, another implication of the character of the church that Paul explained relates to its conflict with the forces opposed to God's purposes. We must arm ourselves, stay alert, and take a stand against these spiritual forces (6:10-11).

To summarize, the church must maintain unity as it grows. It must sanctify every relationship as it makes its confession to the world. It must also stand firm against its spiritual enemies as it conflicts with Satan's forces. You see how these points clarify Matthew 16:18: "I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it." The church cooperates with God as He builds it in three ways. It must remain united itself. Second, it must present a message of purity and holiness to the world by its sanctified relationships. Third, it must fight God's enemies after putting on the whole armor of God.

Attempting to summarize the teaching of Ephesians into a short message statement I would phrase it this way. Ephesians reveals that the church is part of God's eternal plan, and it grows as a result of God's power working through believers' lives, overcoming their spiritual enemies.

We come next to the abiding appeal that this letter contains. I said Paul summarized the central revelation of Ephesians in 1:1, "the saints . . . in Christ Jesus." Similarly he summarized the timeless exhortation of this letter in 4:1, "Walk . . . worthy of the calling with which you have been called."

First, we are to walk in view of God's eternal plan. That is, we should live now with God's purposes throughout eternity clearly in view. God chose us before the creation of the world so He could conform us to the image of His Son (1:4; Rom. 8:29). We are to "grow up . . . into Him . . . even Christ" (4:15). The measure in which we are living in holiness and in love is the measure in which we are conforming to God's eternal plan. Paul did not tell us to be holy because decency demands it, or because God may discipline us if we don't. We are to live thinking about God's eternal plan and remembering that God had our individual lives in His mind from eternity past.

We can walk according to God's plan only by appropriating His almighty power. God is able to enable us to walk in this plan by His power. "Now to Him who is able to do exceeding . . ." (3:20-21). We have the power to walk worthily. However, we must allow God's Spirit to control us if we want to walk in harmony with God's will (5:18).

Third, we are to walk opposing God's unseen enemies as well as in view of God's eternal plan and appropriating God's almighty power. We need to balance the passive "be filled with the Spirit" with the active "stand firm" (6:14). Our enemies are not primarily other people but the unseen demonic personalities behind them. In former years, people scoffed at the idea of demons and malignant spiritual forces. Today there is a more realistic awareness of their existence and powerful influence. We must engage spiritual enemies with spiritual arms: truthfulness, righteous conduct, the gospel, trust in God, the Word of God appropriate to the need, and prayer (6:14-18).

Finally let me make application of the message of this epistle to us.

The measure of the church's power to change the world is the measure of her other-worldliness. Many in our day criticize the church for being uninvolved, or at least not involved enough, with the physical problems of people. Ephesians teaches us that the way to help people the most is by dealing with unseen issues: unity, love, holiness, prayer, and evangelism. We do the church's work much more effectively by praying than by picketing, by protesting, and by politicking. The measure of the church's power to help the world is the measure of her other-worldliness. The church must remember her heavenly calling in the eternal plan of God to realize all God purposes for her.

Conversely the measure of the church's other-worldliness is the measure of her influence in the world. If we really see God's purpose for the church, we can never remain unconcerned about or uninvolved with the physical problems of people. Was our Lord insensitive to suffering, unconcerned about injustice, or lacking in compassion toward the oppressed? Never, and He is the Head into whom we are to grow up.

"The church of God can never help God when she ceases to be other-worldly. When she is other-worldly she helps the world; and cannot avoid doing so."⁴

Constable: Ephesians (Outline)

Outline

I. Salutation 1:1-2

II. The Christian's calling 1:3-3:21

A. Individual calling 1:3-2:10

1. The purpose: glory 1:3-14

2. The means: knowledge 1:15-23

3. The motive: grace 2:1-10

B. Corporate calling 2:11-3:19

1. Present unity 2:11-22

2. Past ignorance 3:1-13

3. Future comprehension 3:14-19

C. Doxology 3:20-21

III. The Christian's conduct 4:1-6:20

A. Spiritual walk 4:1-6:9

1. Walking in unity 4:1-16

2. Walking in holiness 4:17-32

3. Walking in love 5:1-6

4. Walking in light 5:7-14

5. Walking in wisdom 5:15-6:9

B. Spiritual warfare 6:10-20

IV. Conclusion 6:21-24

Constable: Ephesians

Ephesians

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Copyright 2003 by Thomas L. Constable

Haydock: Ephesians (Book Introduction)

THE

EPISTLE OF ST. PAUL, THE APOSTLE,

TO THE EPHESIANS.

INTRODUCTION.

Ephesus was a famous city, the metropolis of Asia Minor, upon the Ægean Sea, now called the Archipelago. In it was the temple of Diana, one of the seven wonders of the world. St. Paul had staid there two years, and preached another year thereabouts. See Acts xx. The chief design of this Epistle was to hinder the Ephesians, and others in the neighbouring cities, from being seduced by false teachers, who were come among them. In the first three chapters he extols the grace of God, in mercifully calling the Gentiles. It was written when St. Paul was a prisoner; (see Chap. iv. 1. and vi. 20.) but whether during his first imprisonment, at Rome, an. 62 [in the year A.D. 62], or in the latter imprisonment, as others judge about an. 65, in uncertain. (Witham) ---Ephesus was the capital of Lesser Asia, and celebrated for the temple of Diana, to which the most part of the people of the East went frequently to worship. But St. Paul having preached the gospel there for two years the first time, and afterwards for about a year, converted many. He wrote his Epistle to them when he was a prisoner at Rome, and sent it by Tychicus. He admonishes them to hold firmly the faith which they had received; and warns them, and also those neighbouring cities, against the sophistry of philosophers and the doctrine of false teachers, who were come among them. The matters of faith contained in this Epistle, are exceedingly sublime, and consequently very difficult to be understood. It was written about twenty-nine years after our Lord's ascension. (Challoner) --- Ephesus was the chief city in Asia Minor, much given to superstitions, and not less to debauchery and libertinism. In it was the famous temple of Diana. St. Paul had preached in this place three years; (Acts xx.) so that all, both Jews and Gentiles, heard the word of the Lord, till he was driven away by Demetrius, the silversmith. At his departure, he left Timothy (1 Timothy i.) to maintain the purity of the gospel, and preserve them from the fables, which St. Paul had warned the Ephesians, would be introduced among them by rapacious wolves, and men talking perversely, to lead disciples after them. The Gentile converts held fast to the doctrines they had received from St. Paul: the Jews were the chief innovators. To the former the apostle writes this Epistle, praising their steadfastness, and instructing them more fully in the hidden mysteries of faith, viz. redemption, justification, call of the Gentiles, predestination, and the glorification of Christ, and his body, the Church. In the fourth, and succeeding chapters, he exhorts them to the practice of morality, and to fulfill their respective duties of parents, children, masters, servants, &c. and finally reminds all the soldiers of Christ, to be armed with spiritual weapons against all the assaults of the devil. St. Jerome observes that this Epistle, especially the first three chapters, are intricate and difficult; probably owing to the sublimity of the subject. The last three contain the most interesting morality. (Estius. passim.) See also Acts xviii. 19. et seq. and xix. 1. et sequ. --- When Cardinal Pole was consulted by what method the obscure passages of St. Paul's Epistles could be best unfolded, he replied: Let the reader begin with the latter part, where the apostle treats of morality, and practise that which is delivered there; and then let him go back to the beginning, where points of doctrine are discussed with great acuteness and subtilty.

====================

Gill: Ephesians (Book Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO EPHESIANS

The city of Ephesus is, by Pliny ^a, called the other light of Asia; Miletus was one, and Ephesus the other: it was the metropolis of the lesser Asia, and one of the twelve cities of Ionia, and the first and chief of them: it is said to be built by the Amazons ^b: it was famous for the magnificent temple of Diana; and the inhabitants of it were very much given to superstition and idolatry, and even to devilish arts, Act 19:19. It abounded with orators and philosophers, and men of great wisdom and learning ^c; and was formerly a very rich, trading, flourishing city, but now a village, and a poor desolate place; it retains the name of Efeso, though the Turks call it Aia Salik. Hither the Apostle Paul first went after he had been at Corinth, though he then made but a short stay; when he came thither again, he found twelve disciples, and was the instrument of making a great many more: here he continued two or three years and formed a Gospel church, very large and flourishing, to whom he writes this epistle; and which was written by him when he was a prisoner at Rome, as appears by several passages in it, Eph 3:1, and seems to have been written much about the same time as were the epistles to the Philippians, and to the Colossians, and to Philemon. Dr. Hammond thinks it was written about the year 58, and Dr. Lightfoot places it in 59, and the fifth year of Nero. The occasion of it was the foresight the apostle had of false teachers that would spring up in this church, after his death, and spread their pernicious doctrines, and draw away disciples after them, and do great mischief in the church; wherefore the design of this epistle is to establish the saints in the doctrines of the Gospel, that so they might not be carried away with the errors of the wicked: the subject matter of it is most excellent; it treats of the most sublime doctrines of grace, of divine predestination, and eternal election, of redemption by Christ, and of peace and pardon by his blood, of conversion by the power of efficacious grace, and of salvation by the free grace of God, in opposition to works: it also very largely treats of the nature and usefulness of the Gospel ministry, and of gifts qualifying for it, and of the several duties of religion incumbent on Christians; and the method which is used is exceeding apt and beautiful, for the apostle first begins with the doctrines of the Gospel, which he distinctly handles and explains, and then proceeds to enforce the duties belonging to men, both as men and Christians.

Gill: Ephesians 1 (Chapter Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO EPHESIANS 1

In this chapter are contained the inscription of the epistle, the salutation of the persons to whom it is written, the apostle's thanksgiving for blessings received by him, and them; in which the efficient, moving, procuring, and final causes of salvation are taken notice of, and the several parts and branches of it observed; and the whole is concluded with prayers for the Ephesians; in which mention is made of various things to the comfort of the saints, and to the glory of Christ. The inscription is in Eph 1:1, in which the author of the epistle puts his name, declares his office, and how he came into it; and describes the persons to whom he wrote it, by their religious characters, and the place of their abode. The salutation is in Eph 1:2, which is common to all his epistles: and in Eph 1:3, is the thanksgiving to God, as the God and Father of Christ, for spiritual blessings in Christ in general; and then he proceeds to particulars, and begins with election, which is represented as an act of God the Father, as of particular persons, as done in Christ, and from the foundation of the world, the end of which is perfect holiness and love, Eph 1:4, and which is further illustrated under the name of predestination; the blessing which that is an appointment to, is the adoption of children; the moving cause of it, is the good pleasure of the divine will; the instrumental cause, or means, is Christ Jesus; the end with God is for himself, Eph 1:5, and which, in the next verse, is explained of the glory of his grace; to which grace, acceptance with him in Christ is owing; and which is another spiritual blessing, or a branch of election and predestination, Eph 1:6. To which is added another, and that is redemption; the author of which is Christ; the price, or procuring and meritorious cause of it is his blood; a branch of which is forgiveness of sins; and the whole is according to the plenteous and free grace of God, Eph 1:7, the entire plan and scheme of which is the produce of abundant wisdom and prudence, Eph 1:8, and is no other than the mystery of the will of God revealed in the Gospel, according to his sovereign will and purpose, Eph 1:9, which lay hid within himself until the fulness of times, or the Gospel dispensation, in which Christ being sent, has gathered all together in himself, Eph 1:10, through whom the saints enjoy the inheritance they are adopted to in predestination, which is the effect of an unfrustrable purpose, and a wise counsel and will, Eph 1:11. The end of which is, that those predestinated, redeemed, and adopted ones, should be to the praise and glory of God, Eph 1:12, and who are described as such, who first trusted in Christ upon hearing the Gospel; and after they had believed in him, were sealed by the Holy Spirit, said to be the Spirit of promise, Eph 1:13, and who is also spoken of as the earnest and pledge of the saints' inheritance, and who will continue so until all the people of God are redeemed from the grave in the resurrection morn, which will also issue in the praise and glory of God, Eph 1:14, and now on account of all these blessings of predestination, adoption, redemption, calling, and the sealing of the Spirit; as also, because of their faith in Christ, and love to the saints, these believers were possessed of, the apostle gave thanks, and continued to give thanks to God in his prayers to him, Eph 1:15. The object of his prayers is described as the God of Christ, and Father of glory; the petitions to him are for an increase of knowledge of Christ from the Spirit, as a spirit of wisdom and revelation, Eph 1:17, and that they might have a clearer view of the nature of that glory they were called unto, and were hoping for, Eph 1:18, and observe the wonderful display of the power of God in their conversion and faith; which is illustrated by comparing it with that power which was shown in raising Christ from the dead, Eph 1:20, which leads the apostle to take notice of the exaltation of Christ at the right hand of God in heaven, consequent on his resurrection; where he is advanced above angels and men, and has all things in subjection to him for the good of his church, of which he is the head, and which is his body and fulness, Eph 1:21.

College: Ephesians (Book Introduction)

INTRODUCTION

We are saved by grace through faith! We do not earn our salvation - it is the gift of God. This is the shocking good news of Ephesians. Even though we were dead in sin and fully deserved God's wrath, he saved us and brought us into the body of Christ. It is a glorious privilege to be a part of Christ's body, and it carries with it a glorious responsibility.

We are saved by grace, for good works. God saved us so that he could live in us and work through us. We are filled with his fullness and re-created in his likeness. We are imitators of God. His power works in us, making possible more than we could ever ask or think. We are strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. The message of Ephesians is a message of salvation: God gives it; man lives it.

THE WRITER

From earliest times the church has acknowledged Paul as the author of Ephesians. But while Ephesians has been called "the quintessence of Paulinism," it is now widely denied that Paul wrote the book. Despite the current trend in scholarly criticism, there are good and sufficient reasons for upholding Paul as the author.

Reasons to Support Paul as the Author

1. The letter claims to have been written by Paul (1:1 and 3:1), and has several personal references (1:15-16; 4:1; 6:19-20). Those who deny this claim must assume the burden of proving otherwise.

2. The letter was widely known and accepted in the early church, and no one (not even the heretic Marcion) disputed that Paul was the author.

3. The letter is filled with Pauline features. Is it more likely that an imitator copied Paul's writing style in 90 to 95% of the epistle, or that Paul himself wrote it, diverging from his usual style 5 to 10% of the time?

4. The letter closely parallels Colossians.

5. The practice of writing letters in the name of someone else was not as widely practiced in the early church as some claim.

6. A comparison with the church literature of the period from which a non-Pauline Ephesians is supposed to come (such as 1 Clement) indicates that the letter is far more akin to Paul than to the supposedly contemporary church literature of the late first century.

7. The major themes - justification by faith, grace, atonement by Christ, the place of the Jews and the law - agree with Paul's uncontroverted letters.

8. The nature of the letter accords well with what Paul would have written from prison, as a final summation of what the church is.

Challenges to Pauline Authorship

It must be admitted that many scholars have advanced reasons to reject Paul as the author of Ephesians. Their challenges will be listed and briefly answered:

1. Style and Vocabulary: The sentences are often long and complicated, with heavy use of synonyms and adjectives. Certain words and phrases ("devil," "heavenly realms") are not found in other Pauline letters.

However, it must be seriously questioned whether our collection of Paul's brief letters can establish what his style and vocabulary was. Furthermore, an author must be free to exercise flexibility in his style when he writes to a different audience on a different subject. Finally, "devil" is found in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus (but the critics deny the Pauline authorship of all three of these as well).

2. Literary Dependence: There are so many parallels between Ephesians and other letters, especially Colossians, that Ephesians must have been copied and expanded by an admirer of Paul. Of the 155 verses in Ephesians it is estimated that 73 have verbal parallels in Colossians.

However, the similarities could more easily result because the letters all had the same author. There is good evidence that Ephesians and Colossians were written at the same time, which would account for their frequent parallels. (It should be noted that the "style and vocabulary" argument is that Ephesians is too different, while the "literary dependence" argument is that Ephesians is too much the same.)

3. Historical Considerations: The Jew/Gentile tension has ceased; the "holy apostles" are revered as in retrospect; and the "dividing wall" at the temple in Jerusalem has been torn down. Therefore, the letter must have been written after Paul had already died.

However, the Jew/Gentile tension was not as big a problem in some locations; the apostles were held in reverence from the very beginning (Acts 2:42; 5:12-13); the symbolic "dividing wall" could still stand in the temple when it had already been torn down in the church.

4. Doctrinal Arguments: The "church" is now universal, rather than local; various themes are handled differently in other Pauline letters; the view of marriage differs from 1 Cor 7.

However, these arguments are more apparent than real. From the beginning Jesus saw his church on a universal scale (Matt 16:18) and nothing prevents Paul from using this concept. Certain themes (such as "the mystery," "in Christ," the Trinity) may be expressed in different terms in Ephesians, but it is foolish to force a strict uniformity on Paul or to prohibit him from adding any insights to what he has already written.

In conclusion, it must be said that those who dispute what the church has accepted from the beginning have not proved their case. There is more than sufficient reason to accept the epistle as from Paul's own hand, and to feel his pulse beating in every line.

THE AUDIENCE

The Recipients of the Letter

There are several reasons to question whether Paul addressed this epistle to the Ephesian saints:

1. Several of the earliest manuscripts do not include the words "in Ephesus" in 1:1.

2. Marcion, while a heretic, referred to it as "the epistle to the Laodiceans" at a very early date (about A.D. 140).

3. Though Paul spent three years in Ephesus, longer than any other location on his missionary journeys, the letter is strangely impersonal. He "has heard" about their faith (1:15). Unlike his other epistles, Paul addresses no local problems, and closes without a single personal greeting.

4. The epistle has the mature, universal tone of a letter sent as an encyclical, in this instance to all the churches of Asia Minor.

At the same time, most manuscripts do include "in Ephesus" and the church has traditionally called this epistle "to the Ephesians." If Paul did intend that the letter be sent to churches throughout Asia Minor, it is logical that it would have been sent first to the leading city, and from there copies would be circulated. It is likely, then, that Paul did send this epistle to the Ephesians, but not to them alone.

The Locale

Ephesus was the most important city in the Roman province of Asia, located on the west coast of what is now Turkey. It was a leading commercial center, situated at the intersection of two major trade routes. It was a city where East met West, with the resulting exchange of ideas and philosophies. Ephesus boasted the temple of Artemis (Diana), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Four times the size of the famed Parthenon in Athens, this temple also served as the bank of Asia Minor, one of the few places where money could be safely deposited. An enormous theatre in the center of the city could seat from 25,000 to 50,000 people.

Within its population of one-third of a million, Ephesus also had a large colony of Jews. After rejection by the local Jewish community, Paul found it possible to teach daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. From this strategic center the gospel message spread "so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord" (Acts 19:10).

Ephesus and the other cities of Asia Minor to which Paul sent this epistle are also mentioned in Rev 1:4-3:22. By that time the church in Ephesus needed to repent and return to its first love. Ephesus continued as a leading center of Christianity for several centuries.

THE DATE AND PLACE OF WRITING

Proceeding with the conclusion that Paul himself wrote this epistle, it is necessary to identify when and where he did so. We know that Paul wrote from an imprisonment (3:1; 4:1) in which he was confined with chains (6:20). We can safely assume, furthermore, that at this same time Paul also sent letters to the Colossians and to Philemon. But where was Paul imprisoned?

Rome

The traditional - and most likely correct - view is that Paul wrote from the imprisonment in Rome described in Acts 28:16-30. Paul was allowed to live in a private dwelling, with a soldier to guard him. This continued for two years, and during the latter part of this time Paul wrote Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon - and no doubt Philippians, as well. A date around A.D. 62 is likely.

Caesarea

Paul is also known to have spent two years imprisoned in Caesarea (Acts 24:27), before his voyage to Rome. It has been suggested that Onesimus would have been more inclined to escape the 500 miles to Caesarea than to attempt the long voyage to Rome. While this location is possible, yielding a date of A.D. 58-60, no real evidence can be introduced in its support.

Ephesus

Somewhat surprisingly, some critics have attempted to make Ephesus the site of Paul's prison epistles. This would be an even more convenient location for the escape of Onesimus. However, neither the book of Acts nor church history know anything of an imprisonment in Ephesus. Paul did refer to fighting "wild beasts" in Ephesus (1 Cor 15:32), but since the city did not have a coliseum and Paul was a Roman citizen, this is probably a metaphor for the fierce men who opposed him. Because this view has no historical support, it has only its novelty to commend it.

Probable Reconstruction of Events

During his imprisonment in Rome, Paul met and converted the runaway slave Onesimus. Not long afterward, he received troubling news about doctrinal problems in Colosse (Col 1:9), the home town of Onesimus (Col 4:9). Paul determined to send the letter of Colossians to correct their errors, and decided to send Onesimus back to Philemon at the same time. Having penned letters to address these two problems, Paul also wrote a letter to the saints in Ephesus, intending that it be circulated among all the churches of Asia Minor. The resulting epistle has been called "the divinest composition of man."

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

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-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

College: Ephesians (Outline)

OUTLINE

I. DOCTRINE: God's Plan for Salvation - Eph 1:1-3:21

A. God's Blessings - 1:1-23

1. Salutation - 1:1-2

2. Present Blessings in Christ - 1:3-14

3. Potential Blessings in Christ - 1:15-23

B. God's Salvation - 2:1-22

1. Saved from Sin - 2:1-10

2. Saved from Separation - 2:11-22

C. God's Participation - 3:1-21

1. God Working in Paul - 3:1-13

2. God Working in All Christians - 3:14-21

II. DUTIES: The Christian's Response to Salvation - 4:1-6:24

A. The Christian in Church Life - 4:1-16

1. Unity in the Body - 4:1-6

2. Diversity in the Body - 4:7-11

3. Maturity in the Body - 4:12-16

B. The Christian in Personal Life - 4:17-5:21

1. The Old Nature vs. the New - 4:17-24

2. Members of One Body - 4:25-32

3. Walking in Love - 5:1-2

4. Walking in Light - 5:3-14

5. Walking in Wisdom - 5:15-21

C. The Christian in Domestic Life - 5:22-6:9

1. Wives and Husbands - 5:22-33

2. Children and Parents - 6:1-4

3. Slaves and Masters -6:5-9

D. The Christian in Warfare - 6:10-24

1. The Nature of the Enemy - 6:10-12

2. The Armor of God - 6:13-18

3. Paul's Own Farewell - 6:19-24

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV