Theopedia

Epistle to the Ephesians

Overview

Ephesians is a letter of the apostle Paul, written from prison, that sets out the doctrine of salvation by grace in Christ before drawing out its implications for the unity and conduct of the church.1 Its opening chapters unfold what God has done in Christ, “according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4), and its closing chapters apply that doctrine to the church’s unity, holiness, households, and spiritual warfare.

Author and Date

The letter names Paul as its author, writing as “the prisoner of Jesus Christ” (Eph. 3:1; cf. 4:1; 6:20). It belongs with Colossians, Philemon, and Philippians among Paul’s Prison Epistles.2 Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon in particular were written on the same occasion and sent by the same courier, Tychicus, who traveled with Onesimus, the runaway slave Paul was returning to his master Philemon of Colossae.2 Scholars have long debated whether Paul wrote during his imprisonment at Caesarea or at Rome; the traditional view places the letter in Rome, around AD 60-62.2

Historical and Literary Context

Ephesus was the leading city of the Roman province of Asia, on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, and home to the temple of Diana.3 Paul had spent roughly three years there in ministry (Acts 19:1-20:1; 20:31), yet the letter closes with none of the personal greetings that mark his letters to churches he knew as well, and some of the earliest Greek manuscripts omit the words “in Ephesus” from the salutation (Eph. 1:1).3 Various explanations have been proposed for this, including that the letter was meant to circulate among several churches of Asia Minor rather than one congregation alone, though Barrows judges the manuscript and version evidence for “in Ephesus” as original to outweigh them.3 Unlike Galatians or Corinthians, the letter answers no specific local error; Paul had no particular controversy to correct, so he wrote in a placid, contemplative frame of mind to unfold “the great work of Christ’s redemption” and its practical consequences for the church at large.3

Structure

  • Doctrinal foundation: what God has done in Christ (1:1-3:21)
    • Greeting (1:1-2)
    • Blessing for the church’s election and inheritance in Christ (1:3-14)
    • Prayer for spiritual understanding (1:15-23)
    • Salvation by grace, not works, for those dead in sin (2:1-10)
    • Jew and Gentile united as one new humanity in Christ (2:11-22)
    • Paul’s stewardship of the mystery of Christ (3:1-13)
    • Prayer for the church’s strengthening in love (3:14-21)
  • Practical application: how believers are to live (4:1-6:24)
    • Unity in the body through the gifts of Christ (4:1-16)
    • Putting off the old self and putting on the new (4:17-32)
    • Walking in love, light, and wisdom (5:1-21)
    • Household relationships: wives and husbands, children and parents, servants and masters (5:22-6:9)
    • The whole armor of God (6:10-20)
    • Commendation of Tychicus and closing (6:21-24)

Major Themes

Election before the foundation of the world. Paul opens by blessing God for having “chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love” (Eph. 1:4). A. A. Hodge treats this verse as the central text for the doctrine that God’s people are chosen in Christ, not for foreseen merit in themselves but according to the eternal covenant of grace that sets the elect under Christ’s headship.4 Boettner reads the same verse as excluding any ground for election in the believer: the Hebrew idiom “before the foundation of the world” places the choice in eternity, prior to any faith or holiness that election itself produces, making faith and holiness its fruit rather than its cause.5

Salvation by grace through faith, not works. Paul tells the Ephesians plainly, “by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). The Canons of Dort cite this same passage against the teaching that God’s election depends on some foreseen condition in man, whether a pious disposition or an act of faith considered as the sinner’s own accomplishment, on the ground that Scripture describes the sinner as spiritually dead until God, “being rich in mercy,” makes him alive together with Christ by grace alone.6

The church as one body, uniting Jew and Gentile. Paul describes Gentile believers, once “strangers from the covenants of promise,” as now “made nigh by the blood of Christ,” who “hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us” (Eph. 2:12-14). Bavinck places this reconciliation among the fruits of Christ’s redemptive work: the cancellation of the law’s legal demands and the breaking down of the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, uniting them into one new humanity in Christ.7

The whole armor of God. Paul closes with a call to “put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil,” since the Christian’s struggle “is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:11-12). Carter observes that Paul’s language here, “rulers,” “authorities,” “cosmic powers over this present darkness,” and “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places,” names a hierarchy of spiritual beings, some fallen and some unfallen, that Scripture treats as real participants in the government of the cosmos, standing under Christ’s own supremacy rather than as pagan myth to be explained away.8

Related Doctrines

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Further Reading

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 465. ↩

  2. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, 462. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, 466. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), 235. ↩

  5. Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1932), 85: “an inversion of the Scripture account which makes faith and holiness to be the consequents, and not the antecedents, of election (Ephesians 1:4; John 15:16; Titus 3:5). The statement that we were chosen in Christ ‘before the foundation of the world,’ excludes any consideration of merit in us; for the Hebrew idiom, ‘before the foundation of the world,’ means that the thing was done in eternity.” ↩

  6. Canons of Dort (Dordrecht, 1619), First Head of Doctrine, Rejection of Errors, para. 4. ↩

  7. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 16, “The Exalted Lord Christ.” ↩

  8. Craig A. Carter, Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), chap. 4, “God as the Transcendent Creator.” ↩