Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and without defect before him in love, having predestined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his desire, to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he freely gave us favor in the Beloved, in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him to an administration of the fullness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in him. We were also assigned an inheritance in him, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who does all things after the counsel of his will, to the end that we should be to the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ. In him you also, having heard the word of the truth, the Good News of your salvation—in whom, having also believed, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is a pledge of our inheritance, to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of his glory.
For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and the love which you have toward all the saints, don’t cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might which he worked in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, authority, power, dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come. He put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things for the assembly, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 Ephesus, which is familiarly known in history under a…
Ephesus, which is familiarly known in history under a great variety of names, was a very celebrated city of Lesser Asia. The remarkable events connected with the work of God in “forming there a people for himself,” (Isaiah 43:21,) through the labors of Paul, together with the commencement and progress of that church, are related by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles. At present, I shall do nothing more than glance at what bears directly on the argument of the Epistle. The Ephesians had been instructed by Paul in the pure doctrine of the gospel. At a later period, while he was a prisoner at Rome, and perceiving that they needed confirmation, he wrote to them, on that account, the present Epistle.
The first three chapters are chiefly occupied with commending the grace of God. Immediately after the salutation in the commencement of the first chapter, he treats of God’s free election. This affords him an opportunity of stating that they were now called into the kingdom of God, because they had been appointed to life before they were born. And here occurs a striking display of God’s wonderful mercy, when the salvation of men is traced to its true and native source, the free act of adoption. But as the minds of men are ill fitted to receive so sublime a mystery, he betakes himself to prayer, that God would enlighten the Ephesians in the full knowledge of Christ.
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In the second chapter, by drawing two comparisons, he places in a strong light the riches of divine grace. 1. He reminds them how wretched they were before they were called to Christ. We never become duly sensible of our obligations to Christ, nor estimate aright his kindness towards us, till we have been led to view, on the other side, the unhappy condition in which we formerly were “without Christ.” (Ephesians 2:12.) 2. The Gentiles were “aliens” from the promises of eternal life, which God had been pleased to bestow on the Jews alone.
In the third chapter, he declares that he had been appointed to be, in a peculiar manner, the Apostle of the Gentiles, because, for a long period, they were “strangers and foreigners,” (Ephesians 2:19,) but are now included among the people of God. As this was an unusual event, and as its very novelty produced uneasiness in many minds, he calls it a
“mystery which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men,” (Ephesians 3:4,5,)
but “the dispensation” (Ephesians 3:2) of which had been intrusted to himself.
Towards the close of the chapter, he again prays that God would grant to the Ephesians such an intimate knowledge of Christ, that they would have no desire to know anything else. His object in doing so is not merely to lead them to gratitude to God for so many favors, and to the expression of that gratitude by entire devotion to his service, but still more to remove all doubt about his own calling. Paul was probably afraid that the false apostles would shake their faith by insinuating that they had been only half-instructed. They had been Gentiles, and, when they embraced pure Christianity, had been told nothing about ceremonies or circumcision. But all who enjoined on Christians the observance of the law were loud in the avowal, that those who have not been introduced into the church of God by circumcision must be held as profane persons. This was their ordinary song, that no man who is not circumcised is entitled to be reckoned among the people of God, and that all the rites prescribed by Moses ought to be observed. Accordingly, they brought it as a charge against Paul, that he exhibited Christ as equally the Savior of Gentiles and of Jews. They asserted that his apostleship was a profanation of the heavenly doctrine, because it threw open to wicked men, without discrimination, a share in the covenant of grace.
That the Ephesians, when assailed by these calumnies, might not give way, he resolved to meet them. While he argues so earnestly that they were called to the gospel because they had been chosen before the creation of the world, he charges them, on the other hand, not to imagine that the gospel had been accidentally brought to them by the will of men, or that it flew to them by chance; for the preaching of Christ among them was nothing else than the announcement of that eternal decree. While he lays before them the unhappy condition of their former life, he at the same time reminds them that the singular and astonishing mercy of God appeared in rescuing them from so deep a gulf. While he sets before their eyes his own commission as the apostle of the Gentiles, he confirms them in the faith which they had once received, because they had been divinely admitted into the communion of the church. And yet each of the sentences to which we have now referred must be viewed as an exhortation fitted to excite the Ephesians to gratitude.
In the fourth chapter, he describes the manner in which the Lord governs and protects his church, which is, by the gospel preached by men. Hence it follows, that in no other way can its integrity be preserved, and that the object at which it aims is true perfection. The apostle’s design is, to commend to the Ephesians the ministry by which God reigns amongst us. He afterwards details the fruits of this preaching, — a holy life and all the duties of piety. Nor does he satisfy himself with describing in general terms how Christians ought to live, but lays down particular exhortations adapted to the various relations of society.
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, (Ephesians 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 “Galatians 1:1”)
He adds, by the will of God; for “no man ought to take this honor unto himself,” (Hebrews 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.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 The inscription and salutation, whereof we have spoken in…
The inscription and salutation, whereof we have spoken in the former Epistles.
This is the definition of the Saints, showing what they are.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the…
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:
Ver. 1. To the saints-to the faithful] Fitly; for it is by faith that we become saints, Act 15:9.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 The faithful; this may be understood either:
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:
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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.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 Observe here, 1. The penman of this epistle described…
Observe here, 1. The penman of this epistle described by his name, Paul by his office, an apostle; by his commission to that office, the will of God; that is, by the command and appointment of God. It is matter of great consolation to the ministers of Christ , as well as great satisfaction to their people, that their calling is from God, and not from themselves; that they speak not in their own names but by commission received from Christ, whose ambassadors they are.
Observe, 2. The superscription of this epistle, the persons to whom it was directed and sent, To the saints at Ephesus; so they were all at Ephesus by visible profession, and many of them, no doubt, by real sanctification. All the members of the visible church are obliged to be saints, and the true and real Christian is a true and real saint.
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He adds, And to the faithful in Christ Jesus; throughout all Asia. This pointed out their duty to them, to be not only holy in profession, but faithful in conversation; these two words, saints and faithful, conjoined, denote both their dignity and their duty; their dignity, in standing near to God, as his children; their duty, in being faithful to him as his servants.
Observe, lastly, He styles them saints and faithful in Christ Jesus; intimating, that all our grace and holiness must be holiness in Christ Jesus; that is acted and exercised by strength fetched from Christ Jesus, and that all our holiness must be accepted in Christ Jesus.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 15 Here is, 1. The title St. Paul takes to…
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's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will…
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God,.... See Gill on Rom 1:1. See Gill on Co1 1:1. See Gill on Co2 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.
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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.
(a) L. 5. c. 29. (b) Plin. ib. Justin ex Trogo, l. 2. c. 4. (c) Philostrat. Vita Apollon. l. 8. c. 3.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 By the will of God - Not by any…
By the will of God - Not by any merit of my own. To the saints who are at Ephesus - 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.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1–23 Chronological Notes relative to this Epistle.
EPISTLE OF PAUL THE APOSTLE TO THE EPHESIANS.
Chronological Notes relative to this Epistle.
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Usherian year of the world, 4065.
-Alexandrian era of the world, 5563.
-Antiochian era of the world, 5553.
-Constantinopolitan era of the world, 5569.
-Year of the Eusebian epocha of the Creation, 4289.
-Year of the Julian period, 4771.
-Year of the minor Jewish era of the world, 3821.
-Year of the Greater Rabbinical era of the world, 4420.
-Year from the Flood, according to Archbishop Usher, and the English Bible, 2409.
-Year of the Cali yuga, or Indian era of the Deluge, 3163.
-Year of the era of Iphitus, or since the first commencement of the Olympic games, 1001.
-Year of the Nabonassarean era, 808.
Year of the era of the Seleucidae, 373.
-Year of the Spanish era, 99.
-Year of the Actiac or Actian era, 92.
-Year from the birth of Christ, 65.
-Year of the vulgar era of Christ's nativity, 61.
-Year from the building of Rome, according to Varro, 813.
-Year of the CCXth Olympiad, 1.
-Jesus, high priest of the Jews.
-Common Golden Number, 5.
-Jewish Golden Number, 2.
-Year of the Solar Cycle, 14.
-Dominical Letter, D.
-Jewish Passover, March 22d.
-Easter Sunday, March 29th.
-Epact, or the moons age on the 22d of March, or the Xth of the Calends of April, 14.
-Year of the reign of Nero Caesar, the sixth emperor of the Romans, 8.
-In the first year of Porcius Festus, governor of the Jews.
-Year of Vologesus, king of the Parthians, 11.
-Year of Domitius Corbulo, governor of Syria, 2.
-Roman Consuls; C. Caesonius Paetus, and C. Petronius Turpilianus.
CHAPTER I.
The apostle's salutation to the Church, 1, 2.
He blesses God for calling the Gentiles to the adoption of
children by Jesus Christ, by whose sacrificial death both
they and the Jews find redemption, 3-7.
He shows that it was through the great abundance of God's
wisdom and goodness that the Gentiles were called into a
state of salvation, and that they should receive the Holy Spirit
as the earnest of their inheritance, 8-15.
He praises God for their conversion, and prays that they may
be farther enlightened, that they may see the glory of Christ,
and partake of the blessings procured by his passion and
exaltation, 16-23.
NOTES ON CHAP. I.
Verse 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 εφεσω, 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.
The faithful in Christ Jesus] πιστοις. the believers-the persons who received Christ as the promised Messiah, and the Saviour of the world, and continued in the grace which they had received.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 18, 22 Eph 1:1-2. Paul, an apostle by the will of…
Eph 1:1-2. Paul, an apostle by the will of God — Not by any merit of my own; to the saints — Or holy persons, as τοις αγιοις properly signifies; who are at Ephesus — And in all the adjacent places: for this epistle was not directed to the Ephesians only, but likewise to all the other churches of Asia; and to the faithful in Christ Jesus — Or the believers, as the word πιστος is rendered Act 10:45; 2Co 6:15; and 1Ti 4:3; 1Ti 4:10; 1Ti 4:12. There seems to be no reason to suppose that the apostle gave the Christians at Ephesus this title on account of their being remarkably faithful to Christ, in relying on him alone for salvation, without that attachment to the Mosaic law, which was found in some other churches, and particularly among the Galatians. For we find he uses the same title when addressing the Colossians, (Col 1:2,) whom yet he reproves on this very account, Eph 2:16. Grace be to you, &c. — See on Rom 1:7.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–23 Paul, an apostle; - see the notes at Rom…
Paul, an apostle; - see the notes at Rom 1:1.
By the will of God - see the notes at 1Co 1:1.
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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.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 19, 21, 22, 23 St. John Chrysostom take notice, in his preface to…
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)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain On v1 Ephesians Chapter 1
Ephesians Chapter 1
The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ, having chosen us in Him. Chapter 1 unfolds (Eph 1:4-7) these blessings, and the means of sharing them; Eph 1:8-10, the settled purpose of God for the glory of Christ, in whom we possess them. Next, Eph 1:11-14 set before us the inheritance, and the Holy Ghost given as a seal to our persons, and as the earnest of our inheritance. Then follows a prayer, in which the apostle asks that his dear children in the faith-let us say that we-may know our privileges and the power that has brought us into them, the same as that by which Christ was raised from the dead and set at the right hand of God to possess them, as the Head of the assembly, which is His body, which, with Him, shall be established over all things that were created by its Head as God and that He inherits as man, filling all things with His divine and redeeming glory. In a word, we have first the calling of God, what the saints are before Him in Christ; then, having stated the full purpose of God as to Christ, God’s inheritance in the saints; then the prayer that we may know these two things, and the power by which we are brought into them, and the enjoyment of them.
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But we must examine these things more closely. We have seen the establishment of the two relationships between man and God-relationships in which Christ Himself stands. He ascended to His God and our God, to His Father and our Father. We share all the blessings that flow from these two relationships. He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings; not one is lacking. And they are of the highest order; they are not temporal, as was the case with the Jews. It is in the most exalted capacity of the renewed man that we enjoy these blessings: and they are adapted to that capacity, they are spiritual. They are also in the highest sphere: it is not in Canaan or Emmanuel’s land. These blessings are granted us in the heavenly places; they are granted us in the most excellent way-one which leaves room for no comparison-it is in Christ. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. But this flows from the heart of God Himself, from a thought outside the circumstances in which He finds us in time. Before the world was, this was our place in His heart. He purposed to give us a place in Christ. He chose us in Him.
What blessing, what a source of joy, what grace, to be thus the objects of God’s favour, according to His sovereign love! If we would measure it, it is by Christ we must attempt to do so; or, at least, it is thus that we must feel what this love is. Take especial notice here of the way in which the Holy Ghost keeps it continually before our eyes, that all is in Christ-in the heavenly places in Christ-He had chosen us in Him-unto the adoption by Jesus Christ-made acceptable in the Beloved. This is one of the fundamental principles of the Spirit’s instruction in this place. The other is that the blessing has its origin in God Himself. He is its source and author. His own heart, if we may so express it, His own mind, are its origin and its measure. Therefore it is in Christ alone that we can have any measure of that which cannot be measured. For He is, completely and adequately, the delight of God. The heart of God finds in Him a sufficient object on which to pour itself out entirely, towards which His infinite love can all be exercised.
The blessing then is of God; but moreover it is with Himself and before Him, to gratify Himself, to satisfy His love. It is He who has chosen us, He who has predestined us, He who has blessed us; but it is that we should be before Him, and adopted as sons unto Himself. Such is grace in these great foundations. This consequently is what grace was pleased to do for us.
But there is another thing we have to note here. We are chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. Now this expression is not simply that of the sovereignty of God. If God chose some out of men now, it would be as sovereign as if before the world: but this shews that we belong in the counsels of God to a system set up by Him in Christ before the world existed, which is not of the world when it does exist, and exists after the fashion of this world has passed away. This is a very important aspect of the Christian system. Responsibility came in (for man of course) with the creation of Adam in this world. Our place was given us in Christ before the world existed The development of all the characters of this responsibility went on up to the cross and there closed; innocent, a sinner without law, under law, and, when every way guilty, grace-God Himself comes into the world of sinners in goodness and finds hatred for His love. The world stood judged and men lost, and this the individual now learns as to himself. But then redemption was accomplished, and the full purpose and counsel of God in the new creation in Christ risen, the last Adam, was brought out, “the mystery hidden from ages and generations,” while the first man’s responsibility was being tested. Compare 2Ti 1:9-11; Tit 1:2, where this truth is very distinctly brought out.
This responsibility and grace cannot be reconciled really but in Christ. The two principles were in the two trees of the garden; then promise to Abraham unconditionally, that we might understand blessing was free grace; then the law again brought both forward, but put life consequent on responsibility. Christ came, is life, took on Himself for all who believe in Him the consequence of responsibility, and became, as the divine Son and withal as risen Head, the source of life, our sin being put away; and here, as risen with Him, we not only have received life, but are in a new position quickened out of death with Him, and have a portion according to the counsels which established all in Him before the world existed, and are established according to righteousness and redemption, as a new creation, of which the Second Man is the head. The following chapter will explain our being brought into this place.
We have said that God reveals Himself in two characters, even in His relationship to Christ; He is God, and He is Father. And our blessings are connected with this; that is, with His perfect nature as God, and with the intimacy of positive relationship with Him as Father. The apostle does not yet touch on the inheritance, nor on the counsels of God, with regard to the glory of which Christ is to be the centre as a whole; but he speaks of our relationship with God, of that which we are with God and before Him, and not of our inheritance-of that which He has made us to be, and not of that which He has given us. In Eph 1:4-6 our own portion in Christ before God is developed.Eph 1:4 depends on the name of God;Eph 1:5, on that of Father.
The character of God Himself is depicted in that which is ascribed to the saints (Eph 1:4). God could find His moral delight only in Himself and in that which morally resembles Him. Indeed this is a universal principle. An honest man can find no satisfaction in a man who does not resemble him in this respect. With still greater reason God could not endure that which is in opposition to His holiness, since, in the activity of His nature, He must surround Himself with that which He loves and delights in. But, before all, Christ is this in Himself. He is personally the image of the invisible God. Love, holiness, blameless perfection in all His ways, are united in Him. And God has chosen us in Him. InEphesians 1:4 we find our position in this respect. First, we are before Him: He brings us into His presence. The love of God must do this in order to satisfy itself. The love which is in us also must be found in this position to have its perfect object. It is there only that perfect happiness can be found. But this being so, it is needful that we should be like God. He could not bring us into His presence in order to take delight in us, and yet admit us there such as He could not find pleasure in. He has therefore chosen us in Christ, that we should be holy, without blame before Him in love. He Himself is holy in His character, unblamable in all His ways, love in His nature. It is a position of perfect happiness-in the presence of God, like God; and that, in Christ, the object and the measure of divine affection. So God takes delight in us; and we, possessing a nature like His own as to its moral qualities, are capable of enjoying this nature fully and without hindrance, and of enjoying it in its perfection in Him. It is also His own choice, His own affection, which has placed us there, and which has placed us there in Him, who, being His eternal delight, is worthy of it; so that the heart finds its rest in this position, for there is agreement in our nature with that of God, and we were also chosen to it, which shews the personal affection that God has for us. There is also a perfect and supreme object with which we are occupied.
Remark here that, in the relationship of which we here speak, the blessing is in connection with the nature of God; therefore it is not said that we are predestined to this according to the good pleasure of His will. We are chosen in Christ to be blessed in His presence; it is His infinite grace; but the joy of His nature could not (nor could ours in Him) be other than it is, because such is His nature. Happiness could not be found elsewhere or with another.
But inEphesians 1:5 we come to particular privileges, and we are predestined to those privileges. “He has predestined us unto the adoption, according to the good pleasure of his will.” This verse sets before us, not the nature of God, but the intimacy, as we have said, of a positive relationship. Hence it is according to the good pleasure of His will. He may have angels before Him as servants; it was His will to have sons.
Perhaps it might be said that, if admitted to take delight in the nature of God, one could hardly not be in an intimate relationship; but the form, the character of this relationship depends certainly on the sovereign will of God. Moreover, since we possess these things in Christ, the reflection of this divine nature and the relationship of son go together, for the two are united in us. Still, we must remember that our participation in these things depends on the sovereign will of God our Father; even as the means of sharing them, and the manner in which we share them, is that we are in Christ. God our Father, in His sovereign goodness, according to His counsels of love, chooses to have us near Himself. This purpose, which links us to Christ in grace, is strongly expressed in this verse, as well as that which precedes it. It is not only our position which it characterises, but the Father introduces Himself in a peculiar way with regard to this relationship. The Holy Ghost is not satisfied with saying “He has predestined us unto the adoption,” but He adds “unto himself.” One might say this is implied in the word “adoption.” But the Spirit would particularise this thought to our hearts, that the Father chooses to have us in an intimate relationship with Himself as sons. We are sons to Himself by Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will. If Christ is the image of the invisible God, we bear that image, being chosen in Him. If Christ is a Son, we enter into that relationship.
These then are our relationships, so precious, so marvellous, with God our Father in Christ. These are the counsels of God. We find nothing yet of the previous condition of those who were to be called into this blessing. It is a heavenly people, a heavenly family, according to the purposes and counsels of God, the fruit of His eternal thoughts, and of His nature of love-that which is here called the “glory of his grace.” We cannot glorify God by adding anything to Him. He glorifies Himself when He reveals Himself. All this is therefore to the praise of the glory of His grace, according to which He has acted towards us in grace in Christ; according to which Christ is the measure of this grace, its form towards us, He in whom we share it. All the fulness of this grace reveals itself in His ways towards us-the original thoughts, so to speak, of God, which have no other source than Himself, and in and by which He reveals Himself, and by the accomplishment of which He glorifies Himself. And observe here, that the Spirit does not say “the Christ,” at the end ofEphesians 1:6. When He speaks of Him, He would put emphasis on the thoughts of God. He has acted towards us in grace in the Beloved-in Him who is peculiarly the object of His affections. He brings this characteristic of Christ out into relief when He speaks of the grace bestowed upon us in Him. Was there an especial object of the love, of the affection of God? He has blessed us in that object.
And where is it that He found us when He would bring us into this glorious position? Who is it that He chooses to bless in this way? Poor sinners, dead in their trespasses and sins, the slaves of Satan and of the flesh.
If it is in Christ that we see our position according to the counsels of God, it is in Him also that we find the redemption that set us in it. We have redemption through His blood, the remission of our sins. Those whom He would bless were poor and miserable through sin. He has acted towards them according to the riches of His grace. We have already observed, that the Spirit brings out in this passage the eternal counsels of God with regard to the saints in Christ, before He enters on the subject of the state from which He drew them, when He found them in their condition of sinners here below. Now the whole mind of God respecting them is revealed in His counsels, in which He glorifies Himself. Therefore it is said, that that which He saw good to do with the saints was according to the glory of His grace. He makes Himself known in it. That which He has done for poor sinners is according to the riches of His grace. In His counsels He has revealed Himself; He is glorious in grace. In His work He thinks of our misery, of our wants, according to the riches of His grace: we share in them, as being their object in our poverty, in our need. He is rich in grace. Thus our position is ordered and established according to the counsels of God, and by the efficacy of His work in Christ-our position, that is, in reference to Him. If we are to think here, where God’s thoughts and counsels are revealed, if remission and redemption come of this, we are to think not according to our need as its measure, but according to the riches of God’s grace.
But there is more: God having placed us in this intimacy, reveals to us His thoughts respecting the glory of Christ Himself. This same grace has made us the depositaries of the settled purpose of His counsels, with regard to the universal glory of Christ, for the administration of the fulness of times. This is an immense favour granted us. We are interested in the glory of Christ as well as blessed in Him. Our nearness to God and our perfectness before Him enable us to be interested in the counsels of God as to the purposed glory of His Son. And this leads to the inheritance (compare Joh 14:28). Thus Abraham, though on lower ground, was the friend of God. God our Father has given us to enjoy all blessings in heavenly places ourselves; but He would unite all things in heaven and on the earth under Christ as Head, and our relationship with all that is put under Him, as well as our relationship with God His Father, depends on our position in Him; it is in Him that we have our inheritance.
The good pleasure of God was to unite all that is created under the hand of Christ. This is His purpose for the administration of the times in which the result of all His ways shall be manifested.[2] In Christ we inherit our part, heirs of God, as it is said elsewhere, joint-heirs of Christ. Here however the Spirit sets before us the position, in virtue of which the inheritance has fallen to us, rather than the inheritance itself. He ascribes it also to the sovereign will of God, as He did before with regard to the special relationship of sons unto God. Remark also here, that in the inheritance we shall be to the praise of His glory; as in our relationship to Him we are to the praise of the glory of His grace. Manifested in possession of the inheritance, we shall be the display of His glory made visible and seen in us; but our relationships with Him are the fruit, for our own souls, with Him and before Him, of the infinite grace that has placed us in these relationships and made us capable of them.
Such then, with regard to the glory bestowed on Him as man, are the counsels of God our Father with respect to Christ. He shall gather together in one all things in Him as their Head. And as it is in Him that we have our true position as to our relationship with God the Father, so also is it with regard to the inheritance bestowed upon us. We are united to Christ in connection with that which is above us; we are so likewise with regard to that which is below. The apostle is speaking here first of Jewish Christians, who have believed in Christ before He is manifested; this is the force of “we who have first trusted in Christ.” If I may venture to use a new word, “who have pre-trusted in Christ”-trusted in Him before He appears. The remnant of the Jews in the last days will believe (like Thomas) when they shall see Him. Blessed is he who shall have believed without seeing. The apostle speaks of those among the Jews who had already believed in Him.
InEphesians 1:13 he extends the same blessing to the Gentiles, which gives occasion for another precious truth with regard to us-a thing that is true of every believer, but that had special force with regard to those from among the Gentles. God had put His seal on them by the gift of the Holy Ghost. They were not, according to the flesh, heirs of the promises; but, when they believed, God sealed them with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the earnest of the inheritance, both of the one and the other, Jews and Gentiles, until the possession acquired by Christ should be delivered to Him, until He should in fact take possession of it by His power-a power which will allow no adversary to subsist. Remark here, that the subject is not being born again, but a seal put on believers, a demonstration and earnest of their future full participation in the heritage that belongs to Christ-an inheritance to which He has a right through redemption, whereby He has purchased all things to Himself, but which He will only appropriate by His power when He shall have gathered together all the co-heirs to enjoy it with Him.
The Holy Ghost is not the earnest of love. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given unto us. God loves us as He will love us in heaven. Of the inheritance the Holy Ghost is but an earnest. We do not yet possess anything of the inheritance. Then we shall be to the praise of His glory. The glory of His grace is already revealed.
Thus we have here the grace which ordered the position of the children of God-the counsels of God respecting the glory of Christ as Head over all-the part which we have in Him as Heir-and the gift of the Holy Ghost to believers, as the earnest and seal (until they are put in possession with Christ) of the inheritance that He has won.
From Eph 1:15 to the end, we have the apostle’s prayer for the saints, flowing from this revelation-a prayer founded on the way in which the children of God have been brought into their blessings in Christ, and leading thus to the whole truth respecting the union of Christ and the assembly, and the place which Christ takes in the universe that He created as Son, and which He reassumes as man; and on the power displayed in placing us, as well as Christ Himself, at the height of this position which God has given us in His counsels. This prayer is founded on the title of “God of our Lord Jesus Christ”; that of chapter 3 on the title of “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” There it is more communion than counsels. God is called the Father of glory here, as being its source and author. But not only is it said, “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ,” but we shall see also that Christ is viewed as man. God has wrought in Christ (Eph 1:20), He has raised Him from among the dead-has made Him sit at His right hand. In a word, all that happened to Christ is considered as the effect of the power of God who has accomplished it. Christ could say, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up again in three days,” for He was God; but here He is viewed as man; it is God who raises Him up again.
There are two parts in this prayer: first, that they may understand what the calling and the inheritance of God are; and secondly, what the power is that puts them in possession of that which this calling confers upon them-the same power which sets Christ at the right hand of God, having raised Him from among the dead.
First, the understanding of the things given us. We find, it appears to me, the two things which, in the previous part of the chapter, we have seen to be the saint’s portion-the hope of the calling of God, and the glory of His inheritance in the saints. The first is connected with Eph 1:3-5, that is, our calling; the second, with Eph 1:11, that is, the inheritance. In the former we have found grace (that is, God acting towards us because He is love); in the latter, the glory-man manifested as enjoying in His Person and inheritance the fruits of the power and the counsels of God. God calls us to be before Him, holy and unblamable in love, and at the same time to be His sons. The glory of His inheritance is ours. Take notice that the apostle does not say “our calling,” although we are the called. He characterises this calling by connecting it with Him who calls in order that we may understand it according to its excellence, according to its true character. The calling is according to God Himself. All the blessedness and character of this calling are according to the fulness of His grace-are worthy of Himself. It is this which we hope for. It is also His inheritance, as the land of Canaan was His, as He had said in the law, and which nevertheless He inherited in Israel. Even so the inheritance of the whole universe, when it shall be filled with glory, belongs to Him, but He inherits it in the saints. It is the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. He will fill all things with His glory, and it is in the saints that He will inherit them. These are the two parts of the first thing to which the eyes of the saints were to be opened. By the calling of God we are called to enjoy the blessedness of His presence, near to Himself, to enjoy that which is above us. The inheritance of God applies to that which is below us, to created things, which are all made subject to Christ, with whom and in whom we enjoy the light of the presence of God near to Him. The apostle’s desire is, that the Ephesians may understand these two things.
The second thing that the apostle asks for them is, that they may know the power already manifested, which had already wrought to give them part in this blessed and glorious position. For, even as they were introduced by the sovereign grace of God into the position of Christ before God His Father; so also the work which has been wrought in Christ, and the display of the power of God, which took place in raising Him from the grave to the right hand of God the Father above every name that is named, are the expression and the model of the action of the same power which works in us who believe, which has raised us from our state of death in sin to have part in the glory of this same Christ. This power is the basis of the assembly’s position in her union with Him and of the development of the mystery according to the purposes of God. In person Christ raised up from among the dead is set at the right hand of God, far above all power and authority, and above every name that is named among the hierarchies by which God administers the government of the world that now is, or among those of the world to come. And this superiority exists, not only with regard to His divinity, the glory of which changes not, but with regard to the place given Him as man; for we speak here-as we have seen-of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is He who has raised Him from the dead, and who has given Him glory and a place above all; a place of which no doubt He was personally worthy, but which He receives, and ought to receive, as man from the hand of God, who has established Him as Head over all things, uniting the assembly to Him as His body, and raising up the members from their death in sins by the same power as that which raised up and exalted the Head-quickening them together with Christ, and seating them in the heavenly places in Him, by the same power that exalted Him. Thus the assembly, His body, is His fulness. It is indeed He who fills all in all, but the body forms the complement of the Head. It is He, because He is God as well as man, who fills all things-and that, inasmuch as He is man, according to the power of redemption, and of the glory which He has acquired; so that the universe which He fills with His glory enjoys it according to the stability of that redemption from the power and effect of which nothing can withdraw it.[3]
It is He, I repeat, who fills the universe with His glory; but the Head is not isolated, left, so to speak, incomplete as such, without its body. It is the body that completes it in that glory, as a natural body completes the head; but not to be the head or to direct, but to be the body of the head, and that the head should be the head of its body. Christ is the Head of the body over all things. He fills all in all, and the assembly is His fulness. This is the mystery in all its parts. Accordingly we may observe that it is when Christ (having accomplished redemption) was exalted to the right hand of God, that He takes the place in which He can be the Head of the body.
Marvellous portion of the saints, in virtue of their redemption, and of the divine power that wrought in the resurrection of Christ, when He had died under our trespasses and sins, and set Him at the right hand of God: a portion which, save His personal session at the right hand of the Father, is ours also through our union with Him!
Footnotes for Ephesians Chapter 1
2: It will be a grand spectacle, as the result of the ways of God, to see all things united in perfect peace and union under the authority of man, of the second Adam, the Son of God; ourselves associated with Him in the same glory with Himself, His companions in the heavenly glory, as the objects of the eternal counsels of God. I do not enlarge here upon this scene, because the chapter we are considering directs our attention to the communications of the counsels of God respecting it, and not to the scene itself. The eternal state, in which God is all in all, is again another thing. The administration of the fulness of tunes is the result of the ways of God in government; the eternal state, that of the perfection of His nature. We, even in the government, are brought in as sons according to His nature. Wonderful privilege!
3: Compare chapter 4: 9, 10: and this introduction of redemption, and the place Christ has taken as Redeemer, as filling all in all, is full of interest.
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 15
THE
EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE EPHESIANS1
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I. ADDRESS AND SALUTATION
Eph_1:1-2
1Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ2 by the will of God, to the saints3 which [who] are at [in] Ephesus,4 and to [omit to] the faithful [or believers] in Christ Jesus: [.] 2Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from [omit from]5 the Lord Jesus Christ.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Eph_1:1. The Inscription (address). A. The writer (Eph_1:1 a). Paul. Comp. the Introduction to the Epistle to the Romans. Beza (Act_13:9) explains the fact that he thus names himself in all his Epistles, by saying that he as the Apostle to the Gentiles retains the appellation used by them. Jerome: “The name Paul is the token of victory, raised above the first spoils of the church among the heathen.” [Comp, Schaff, Romans , 6 p. 58.]—An apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.—We find precisely as here ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ διὰ θελήματος θεοῦ in 2Co_1:1; Col_1:1; 2Ti_1:1. While in the earliest Epistles to the Thessalonians there is no qualifying phrase, Paul calls himself in Phm_1:1, δέσμιος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ, and writes in Php_1:1 : Παῦλος καὶ Τιμόθεος, δοῦλοι Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ; in 1Co_1:1 κλητός is prefixed, in Rom_1:1 δοῦλος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ is added, in Tit_1:1 δοῦλος θεοῦ, ἀπόστολος διʼ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ are joined together, while in 1Ti_1:1; instead of διὰ θελήματος θεοῦ, we find κατʼ ἐπιταγὴν θεοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν καὶ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἐλπίδος ἡμῶν. In Rom_1:1; Gal_1:1; Tit_1:1, still further amplifications are appended. In this variety there is nothing arbitrary, but a consideration of the circumstances and relations determines the special form of the inscription in each letter, as in each case must be shown and has been shown. The shortest form, used here by the Apostle, is sufficient to indicate, humbly in unfading remembrance of his wonderful conversion and calling, that he has received his Apostleship without his own merit or worthiness, through the will and grace of the Most High (Gal_1:15-16), hence that he had not assumed it for himself or obtained it through the mediation of others. He did not present himself to the Ephesians as a stranger, as in the case of the Roman church, nor had he to deal with opponents, as in the case of the Galatians, nor was he approaching the end of his life, as it appears in the Pastoral Epistles. Hence there was no need of such an amplification as in those letters. Still, as he was not writing about a private matter, as to Philemon, but of Church and Christianity at large, and the Epistle is an official letter of great importance, the official designation should not be omitted. Comp. the Introduction, § 1. 2, § 3.
Ἀπόστολος is an official title. [Comp. Romans, p. 59.] See Luk_6:13 (ἀποστόλους ὠνόμασεν); Mar_3:14 : ἴνα ἀποστέλλῃ αὐτοὺς κηρύσσειν. Hence 1Ti_2:7 : κῆρυξ καὶ ἀπόστολος and πρεσβεύειν ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ, 2Co_5:20; Eph_6:20. As an Apostle, one sent out, he is dependent on the Sender, has his authority in Him (against Harless), since κατʼ ἐπιταγὴν—Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ, 1Ti_1:1, does not describe the source, the origin of the Apostolic authority, but only the corresponding activity, the situation in accordance with the commission. It is no self-glorification, but in ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ there is expressed the feeling of dependence, in κατʼ ἐπιταγὴν—Ἰησοῦ that of attachment; thus in 2Co_3:5 he calls himself ἱκανός, “sufficient,” but denies his ἱκανότης ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ, his “sufficiency is of God.”
The genitive Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ accordingly designates chiefly Him who sends, who gives authority; the subject of the proclamation commanded to the Apostle is indeed the same Lord; but this lies in the nature and Being and position of the Sender, not in the genitive. Paul thus marks the authority which he has in the Christian church. [Ellicott and Alford follow Harless in taking the genitive as one of simple possession, but Eadie thinks it indicates also “the source, dignity and functions of the Apostolic commission,” as well as including the idea of authority.—R.]
Finally, the position of the words must be considered. The best and most MSS. read here Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ; the same order is found in Gal_1:1 without variation, but in all other Pauline inscriptions Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ is the better attested reading, so that Tischendorf (ed. 7, maj.) reads thus in every case except Gal_1:1, while Knapp and others read Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, except in Phm_1:1. The difference in position expresses a difference of shading in the view. “Jesus” is the personal name of Him who appeared in the form of a servant, referring chiefly to His humanity. “Christ” is the official name of the Mediator, referring to the Divinity of the Son mediating from eternity. Historically the Apostolic proclamation begins with the Jesus in the form of a servant, the Son of man, rising to the Christ, the Son of God, as He proved Himself to be. Thus it occurred in the revelation to Paul, whose question the Lord thus answered: “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest” (Act_9:5; Act_26:15; Act_22:8); in the last passage “of Nazareth” is added. He refers back to this most pointedly in Gal_1:1; hence in that passage the reading is Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ without variation. But for this very reason the prevalent designation of Paul as “an Apostle of Christ Jesus” is explicable: for the exalted Son of Man, the Christ, who had appeared in Jesus of Nazareth, had called him to be an Apostle, while He had called all the others in the form of a servant. There is, however, no perceptible reason in the church to which he writes, nor in the contents of the Epistle,7 nor in the circumstances in which he writes, for giving prominence to this distinction or to the consciousness of it. Hence the better supported reading is the more to be accepted, since, the subsequent context (πιστοὶς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ) might give occasion for substituting the more usual order.
Διὰ θελήματος θεοῦ sets forth the means, as in 1Co_1:9 : ὁ θεὸς δἰ οὐ ἐκλήθητε; Gal_4:7 : κληρόνομος διὰ θεοῦ (א. A. B. C; F. G.: διὰ θεόν). In these cases the preposition διά with the genitive evidently stands in connection with the causa principalis, seeming to be entirely=παρά, ὑπό. So in Gal_1:1, ἀπό and διά are definitely distinguished, and διά is there applied to Christ and also to God. Fritzsche’s remark does not meet the case: est autem hic usus ibi tantum admisseus, ubi nullam scntentiæ ambiguitatem crearet. Winer (p. 3558) comes nearer, since διά does not designate the author as such, i.e., as him from whom something proceeds, but chiefly as the person through whose endeavors or favor, etc., something is imparted to some one. It is precisely the activity and efficacy of the Divine will over against the various difficulties which must be overcome and set aside, “the achieving and penetrating power, the energy” of the same, which is indicated. It does not rest nor repose, as if what comes, only came hither from Him or out of Him; He must be active, must further in the present. Hence this phrase is not merely a reference to the final and supreme ground and to the important prerogative of his calling, as one divinely authorized, in order to remove all suspicion of intrusion and unwarranted appearance or writing, but it is also a reminder of the continued energy of the free grace of God; what exalts and sustains him and what humbles him, he comprehends here in one; it is as much an expression of humility as of dignity. Here this added phrase has “still another peculiar meaning. For when an Apostle in the Holy Spirit begins to write an Epistle, he knows already with the first word, what will follow further; he has conceived and borne the whole, before he begins his greeting. If we read further, how in Eph_1:3-11 all the consolation of this Epistle is brought out of the revealed mystery of the gracious good pleasure and will of God, we can mark what the Apostle has already in mind: an Apostle and messenger through the will of God brings no other message than a glad one, the gospel of Redemption unto blessedness. Comp. Rom_1:10-11; Rom_15:29; Rom_15:32. It is a counsel of grace creating joy and peace, this will of God, through which he also, who from Saul had become Paul, in his call to be an Apostle stands before all who should believe on Jesus Christ unto eternal life, as an example of the mercy that saves sinners (1Ti_1:12-16).”—Stier. [Ellicott gives especial weight to the latter part of Stier’s view, Alford to the former, while Eadie clings to the single notion of authority.—R.] Accordingly the remark of Melancthon, although accepted by most commentators, does not cover the case: Vides, quanta cura fuerit Spiritui sancto certos nos reddere, de verbo Dei, ut et secure crederemus et non aliud audiremus præter hoc verbum.
B. The recipients of the Epistle (Eph_1:1 b).—To the saints who are in Ephesus and the faithful [or believers] in Christ Jesus.—Ἅγιοι is applied to Christians according to the analogy of the Hebrew קָדֹושׁ (Exo_19:6; Deu_7:6; Deu_14:2; 1Pe_2:9) as those consecrated to God, as members of a sanctified fellowship, of the kingdom of God, of the Church of Christ. Although in the nature of the Christian communion there is not merely, the calling and destination but also the condition and furtherance of inward holiness, so that the latter are to be chiefly thought of in connection with an ἄγιος and can never be separated entirely from him, still they are not assumed in the word itself [Harless thus restricts it], so that this is not to be regarded as a moral peculiarity (Estius, Grotius and others), nor does it express the call in the history of personal salvation and the moral destination, so as to mean: those called to holiness (Schenkel). If the former view includes too much, the latter includes too little. The principle of holiness has already come to them and even into them (Lange); not merely is the goal of their calling held up before them, but the strength to attain to it is conceded and imparted (Stier). So that ἄγιος designates not merely a goal, a destination, but a relation into which the man is transferred and with which something is placed in himself.9
The inner side of this relation, the demeanor is here designated by πιστός, which means not merely faithful, reliable, but is also=πίσυνος (in any case from πείθω), πιστεύων blieving, Comp. Passow sub voce.10 So that it is used, not only in contrast with ἄπιστος (Joh_20:27; 2Co_6:15), but without such a connection (Gal_3:9; 1Ti_4:3; Tit_1:6), even in the address (Col_1:1). On this account it is not to be applied to constantia in sanctimonia (Grotius) or perpetuitas in evangelica fide (Baumgarten). Matthies is as little justified in limiting πιστοί to the enlightened believing nature, and referring ἄγιοι to the sanctified affectionate walk, as is Schenkel in applying the latter to the destination of the life and the former to the direction of the heart. For πιστεύω is not merely a direction of the heart, but a living activity, the acceptance and appropriation of what is proffered together with the devotion of one’s own person to the Giver of every perfect gift.
Καί joins πιστός with ἄγιος, as belonging together, like Col_1:2, and thus are indicated the external relation established from above, and the demeanor of the church corresponding thereto, or “prominence is given both to the external relation and the internal condition of the Christian” (Harless). There is no ground for taking the conjunctive particle as epexegetical, as Beza and others do, appealing to Eph_2:8; Gal_6:16. Although the absence of the article before πιστοῖς renders this admissible, it is decidedly opposed by the fact that the union of ἁγίοις and πιστοῖς is a description of the one church on its objective and subjective side, of the two important elements in the completion of the idea (Bengel: Dei est, sanctificare nos et asserere, nostrum, ex Dei munere credere): the two notions do not cover the same ground, nor does one replace or explain the other; besides, Paul, least of all, would elevate the subjective above the objective element, and that too with an apparent exaltation of the Ephesian church, as though the vocati were all fideles. Because the article is wanting before πιστοῖς, it is not allowable to find indicated in the two words two different grades or parts of the church, as does Stier,11 appealing to 1Co_1:2, where he thinks three grades are referred to; and yet dropping “the thought of grades, which is but indistinctly present in the two words,” he applies them to two parts, the first of which is thought of in the first part of the Epistle, the other in the second part. The acceptance of such a division would be grammatically inadmissible here (we should then read τοῖς ἁγίοις καὶ τοῖς πιστοῖς), and a similar division of the matter of the Epistle is found in others also: should not then the churches to which they were written, have had these two parts just as in Ephesus, or should not Paul have so thought, of them in the letters addressed to them? The distinction is artificial.
Both ideas are further defined: τοῖς ἁγίοις τοῖς οὗσιν ἐν Ἐφέσῳ, πιστοῖς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. The first marking the objective side of the church by a local qualification, the second, respecting its subjective side, by the life-sphere of faith; each is thus defined more closely according to its nature. On ἐν Ἐφέσῳ, see Introduction, § 5 [and Textual Note³]. Whether it is accepted or rejected makes little change in the sense of the words.—Τοῖς οὗσιν means those who are. In Rom_1:7; 1Co_1:2; 2Co_1:1; Php_1:1, ἐκκλησίᾳ τῇ οὔσῃ or ἁγίοις τοῖς οὗσιν stand in connection with a following statement of the place, as herewith ἐν Ἐφέσῳ. This justifies the presumption that here too it can mean only this; nor does the word admit of any other meaning. It is entirely inadmissible, to explain τοῖς οὗσιν without ἐν Ἐφέσῳ as meaning “actual” (to the actually holy); this would read: τοῖς ὅντως, Basil (τοῖς Ἐφεσίοις ἑπιστέλλων ώς γνησίως ἡ νωμένοις τῷ ὄντι δἰ ἐπιγνώσεως—ὅντας αὐτοὺς—ὠνόμασεν) to the contrary notwithstanding. Bengel, who does not accept ἐν Ἐφέσῳ, renders: qui præsto sunt, referring to Act_13:1; Rom_13:1. But the passages cited, Act_13:1 : κατὰ τὴν οὖσαν ἐκκλησίαν, and Rom_13:1 : αἱ δὲ οὖσαι ἐξουσίαι, by the participle of εἶναι mark only present existence and validity (in the churches which are existing there at present, the powers ruling there at present), and Bengel himself shortly before explains with more exactness: qui sunt in omnibus iis locis, quo Tychicus cum hac epistola venit, so that the participle has still a local reference. Such a reference must at all events be retained, and if ἐν Ἐφέσῳ must be omitted, then there is a lacuna, either intentional on the part of the writer, as in the case of a circular letter, or occasioned by the transcribers.
Ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ is joined to πιστοῖς. The connection with ἐν is not objectionable,12 even though πιστὸς ἐν does not occur elsewhere; for in Col_1:1 : πιστοῖς ἀδελφοῖς ἐν Χριστῷ, the phrase qualifies ἀδελφοῖς so 1Ti_1:2 : γνησίῳ τέκνῳ ἐν πίστει. But πίστις ἐν Χριστῷ is found in Eph_1:15; Col_1:4; Gal_3:26 : μετὰ πίστεως καὶ ἀγάπης τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, 1Ti_1:14; and πιστεύειν ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ Mar_1:15. Since ἐν designates the element, the life-sphere, the principle, the inmost life-fellowship of the believer, it is not=εἰς (Baumgarten), for it is not the object, aim or direction of the believer that is marked, but his activity and vitality.13 Hence it is also not=διὰ Χριστοῦ, for the means are not here discussed, as Schenkel thinks, nor is it to be rendered: fidem in Christo reponentibus (Meyer), since in that case we should find ἐπί with the dative (Winer, p. 867). The position ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ must be noticed, since at the beginning we read ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, and so too in the greeting, Eph_1:2. “The proclamation of the messenger proceeds mainly from Jesus, preaching and proving that He is the Christ—but the faith of the saints rests mainly on the Christ, the Messiah, the giver of the gift of God, of eternal life (Rom_6:23). Comp. Col_1:4; 1Ti_2:5; 1Ti_1:14-15.”—Stier. “In Christ” is in this Epistle the centre and heartbeat of the apostolic proclamation. Comp. Eph_1:3-4; Eph_1:6-7; Eph_1:10-13, etc. [See Eadie’s remarks in Homil. Notes.—R.] This formula corresponds entirely to the phrases “in Adam,” “in Abraham,” referring to the efficient fellowship of life. The connection with πιστοῖς must be retained, the more since ἁγίοις has already an added qualification. It is true ἐν Χριστῷ might be joined with ἁγίοις, as in Php_1:1. But it does not result from this, that it belongs here not merely to πιστοῖς but also to ἁγίοις, as Schenkel, Harless and others think; as if Paul had written: τοῖς ἁγίοις καὶ πιστοῖς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ! One might say with the same reason, that τοῖς αὗσιν ἐν Ἐφέσῳ belonged to πιστοῖς, since the believers also are there.
While Paul writes τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ in 1Co_1:2; 2Co_1:1; 1Th_1:1; 2Th_1:1; ταῖς εκκλησίαις Gal_1:2; in Rom_1:7; Php_1:1; Col_1:2, he says: τοῖς ἁγίοις. In the former cases he has in view the unity comprehending the Christian persons, in the latter the persons standing in this unity: this form will, therefore, scarcely support the view, that it bears in itself a more confidential character. (Schenkel on Col_1:2.) For the Romans were strangers to the Apostle, while the Colossians, Corinthians and Galatians were known and dear. Still less is there to be found in this difference an indication that he had founded the church in question or some one else.
Eph_1:2. The Salutation. [On the Pauline salutations, see Dr. Schaff’s note, Romans, p. 57.] Grace be to you and peace.—Χάρις has the same root as χαίρω, χαρά, χάρμα (joy), χαρτός (pleasant), from which also carus, gratius, gratia, grates are derived. It means favor, gracious character, loving, obliging devotion to another, such as that of a wife to the husband, the enjoyment of love. See Passow sub voce. The thought of the Scripture is aptly expressed by the German word Gnade, the original meaning of which may be perceived in the expression: die Sonne gent zu Gnaden (the sun goes down, goes under), ein gnädiger Regen (a rain that falls lightly and penetrates deeply). It is compounded of ge, with the signification of strengthening, multiplying (as in Geräusch, Geschrei, etc.), and naden (down, into the depths). Gnade, grace, is therefore condescending love and beneficent kindness of God, the Lord, condescending indeed from the heights of glory into the depths of darkness. Comp. Kling, 1Co_1:3 (Biblework). [The English word grace, as will be seen from the etymological remark above, has the same root as the Greek word used here, and is its nearest possible equivalent in all its various meanings.—R.]
Εἰρήνη from εἴρω (to knit, to speak, according to Plato, Cratylus, p. 398, D: τὸ εἵρειν λέγειν ἕστι, according to the analogy of sero, sermo, sermonem nectere) designates a union after separation, reconciliation after contest and quarrel, since then the speech is no longer against, but to and for each other, since then comes rest and joyousness, παῤῥησία. It is Friede, peace, because one is glad and free [froh und frei], the actual well-being, corresponding to the Hebrew שָׁלֹוס. [The meaning of the Hebrew word is aptly expressed thus: “Peace, plenty, and prosperity.”—R.] First comes χάρις, grace, “that which is subjective in God and Christ, which the Apostle wishes to be directed and shown to his readers; the latter is the actual result, which is presented through the bestowal of grace” (Meyer on Rom_1:7); grace is the ground of sanctification and of peace, peace is the goal of faith; the dative ὑμῖν “to you,” viz., ἁγίοις and πιστοῖς, after χάρις indicates that “grace” first of all becomes their portion, and then “peace” becomes and remains theirs more and more. The thought will be best completed from 1Pe_1:2; 2Pe_1:2, where πληθυνθείη is added,14 even if this word is not in the Apostle’s mind; for as ἅγιοι and πιστοί they are already partakers of these, and in Christians there is a growth both of grace and peace.
From God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.—The preposition ἀπό designates the coming hither, without defining more closely the relation of that which comes to him from whom it comes, as is done by ἐκ and παρἁ, or denoting the activity of him from whom it comes, as in the case of ὑπό. On the further distinction between these prepositions, see Winer, pp. 342 f., 346 f. Here ἀπό therefore means simply from, governing both the genitives: θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν and κνρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Both grace and peace come from both God and Jesus Christ; in this then God and Jesus are alike. Still in 2Co_13:13 Paul says: “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” placing it before “the love of God.” In the present passage the two are distinguished by closer qualifications. “Our Father” denotes the fatherhood of God; we rejoice as His children “by virtue of the adoption (Eph_1:5) attained through Christ.” With the word “our” the Apostle includes himself and the readers, called “you” just before, and all Christians, in humble, sacred joy. Κυρίου without ἡμῶν denotes in general the Lordship of Christ; He is such as Creator (Col_1:16; 1Co_8:6; comp. Joh_1:3), as Propitiator and Redeemer (Act_20:28), as the exalted Son of man (Php_2:9-11); and such power as Lord He has from God the Father (Eph_1:22; Mat_28:18) until the consummation of the plan of salvation (1Co_15:24; 1Co_15:28), while He in His appearance as Messiah (Χριστός) has God as head (1Co_11:3) and is “God’s” (1Co_3:23). Comp. Harless in loco. It is inconceivable how any can [as the Socinians], in opposition to the language and thought alike, make the genitive “Lord Jesus Christ” co-ordinate with “our,” and thus dependent on “Father;” but what is not possible for those who are unwilling to perceive Christ in His Dignity above us, and us in our need below Him!
The importance of this benediction will be perceived from the constant repetition of it, even if in manifold forms. The briefest form is found in 1Th_1:1 : χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη; in Col_1:2 we have: χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν; 2Th_1:2 : χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Then as here (Eph_1:2) in Rom_1:7; 1Co_1:3; 2Co_1:2; Php_1:2; Phm_1:3. In Gal_1:3, ἡμὥν occurs after κυρίου, not after πατρός, and something further is appended, together with a doxology. Tit_1:4 : χάρις καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς καὶ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν The greetings in the two Epistles to Timothy are the fullest: χάρις, ἕλεος, εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς καὶ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν. “Mercy” enters between, to indicate the activity of “grace” towards this “peace.”
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Paul knows and feels himself to be an Apostle of Jesus Christ, quite as much as those who were immediately called and sent out by Jesus Himself. He too was called and ordained just as immediately in an extraordinary manner, as these in an ordinary way. On this account he adds, “by the will of God,” excluding all human choice and self-will in his call. Hence he is not to be reckoned as the thirteenth, but as the twelfth chosen in the place of the traitor Judas; the election of Matthias (Act_1:15-26), having been occasioned by Peter and consummated by the disciples before the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, is to be regarded as a work of haste and precipitancy. [On the other hand, see Lechler, Biblework, Acts, p. 22. The question is discussed in the histories of the Apostolic times. “Paul never represents himself as one of the twelve, but seems rather to distinguish himself from them as one born out of due time, occupying a similar relation to the Gentile world, as the older apostles did to the Jewish.” Schaff, Hist. of the Apost. Church, p. 513. The only practical use made of it in modern times has been in the interest of Prelacy, against the people’s choice of ministers.—R.]
2. As Paul places himself upon an entire equality with the other Apostles, although he is pre-eminently the Apostle to the Gentiles (Act_9:15; Act_20:21; Act_26:17-18; comp. Lechler, Biblework, Acts, p, 171), he designates the Apostolate as unique in its character, in respect to the immediate call, as well as to its special position and mission in the incipient stages of the Christian Church. This refutes the error of the Irvingites, who believe in the re-appearance of actual Apostles and the re-establishment and renewal of the Apostolate in their churches (Schenkel, Schmoller, on Gal_1:2, Biblework). We must not, however, overlook the fact, that Paul in Php_1:1 calls himself in connection with Timothy only “the servant of Christ Jesus,” and in Rom_1:1, “servant of Jesus Christ,” in Tit_1:1, “servant of God,” first, and then “Apostle;” thus giving priority in these passages to the general official name; including his assistant with himself in Php_1:1, while in the two Epistles to the Thessalonians he mentions these without any further qualification. In the Apostolate, as a specializing of the general service of the church, we must regard the general ecclesiastical office as conjoined, finding in the former the basis of all real church offices. It is in fact the historically first form of office in the church, unfolding itself further in the wider course of ecclesiastical development, according to the necessity of the congregation, in conformity with the gifts and tasks of the church. Thus the diaconate soon sprang up (Act_6:1-7), then other offices (Eph_4:11), especially that of “presbyter” in both Jewish and Gentile Christian churches. To this correspond the instructions and commissions imparted to the Apostles by the Lord Himself (Mat_16:19; Mat_18:18; Mat_28:19-20, where the promise: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,” is especially to be noted; Joh_20:21-23), which are still in force for the ministers of the word, and will be unto the end of the world. In addition, it may be remembered that the Apostle is writing to churches already existing, though in most cases founded by himself, so that he does not place himself with his office and ministry temporal in priority, nor as to his rank above the church, but works on and in her, as well as for her.
3. Paul regards the church from a double point of view, as consecrated to God, and believing. With the first term (ἄγιοι) he sets forth its objective ground, with the second (πιστὸι ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ) its subjective life; the former marks the Divine work of salvation, the latter the human acceptance and appropriation; that indicates the relation of the church to God, this the demeanor; that defines their worth (dignity), this their worthiness; that is always first, impelling to the other, this is always second, having in the first its ground, impulse and power. In the objective factor, in God’s arranging and ordering, there is constantly given the power, which will and can and should become efficient, even though only latent at times. Nothing is said respecting the degree and extent to which this power, given in connection with the assembly effected by God, has wrought and been successful in the whole body; from the first feeble beginnings on to the consummation, there are manifold, unmistakable gradations; fluctuations, too, and relapses of a very dubious character. But above the appearance in single churches and periods, the eternal and glorious basis must not be misunderstood; here Paul gives an important example to the Ephesians. The Christian must confess in humble gratitude that he is ἄγιος, and in assiduous obedience feel and show himself to be πιστὸς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ.
4. God, who has condescended and given Himself to us as a Father (“grace be unto you from God our Father”) with His gifts (“peace”), stands together with Christ (“and the Lord Jesus Christ”) toward us as Giver and Dispenser. It is the will of God, who has ordered all things (“by the will of God”) to this end, constantly accomplishing His purpose actively through His creatures, inanimate as well as animate and personal, willing and unwilling, yes, resisting even. Accordingly the Lord sends His Apostles, remains together with the Father the constant source of all the benefits of salvation, aye, the element, the life-sphere for all the called and believing ones. Although it remains untouched here, in what relation the Lord Jesus stands to God the Father, it is still clear, that He needs no “grace” and “peace,” but is, as the sending Lord and partaker of Divinity, highly exalted above us, and we are deep below Him, poor, wretched, without peace, needing Him, but yet the objects of His mercy, who should become partakers of God.
5. Grace and peace stand related to each other: in the former God condescends to man, in the latter man lifts himself to God. In grace, the Most High comes down into the depths of misery and sin; in peace, poor sinful man, taken up, reconciled, pacified, cleansed, draws nigh to his God and Father. Neither is complete at once, each has its development and history: grace, not merely forgiveness of sin, but deliverance, enlightening, sanctification, beatification, imparts ever more fully, penetrates ever deeper and wider, exalts ever more gloriously; peace, not merely rest, quiet, but union and harmony, strengthens more and more, grows and impels ever higher and more beautifully. This is indicated by the form of the benediction. The victory is decided; it will be followed up, improved, and that more completely—and all this by the ethical mode of faith, not an indefinite and general one, but the special definite faith in Christ Jesus the living Mediator of all blessing and salvation.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Did God make out of Saul, the persecutor of the Church of Jesus Christ, Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ, then rejoice in humility and think that the same God who has made of thee a Christian, a joyous child of God, will help others to the same privilege; if He succeeded in doing this in your case, is it not even more likely to succeed in that of others?—Do not forget that in dealing with the Apostle of Jesus Christ, thou dealest with the will and work of God.—Take heed in thine office and calling, that thou standest there by the will of God.—Paul, so wonderfully led, so marvellously overcome and so highly favored, sees through all the defects, weaknesses, sins of his churches, their glory, the glory of the people of God, and their life of faith, however weak. Now then, do not starch thyself in thy precious office with proud ignoring of the worth of thy flock; rejoice in the worth of thy ministry, but at the same time in the church of thy Lord; do not depreciate the church of God because of human appearances or on account of individual members, however numerous, since thou dost claim respect for thy office despite thy sinful person. The dignity of the office and the calling is to be recognized, even if the person in office or called permits himself to become guilty of unworthiness.
What is specifically Christian is this, that thou, called and trained by the Father, inwardly deniest the natural Ego more and more entirely, for the sake of the one and unique person, Jesus Christ.—He who is never satisfied in his morality, but humbly strives and believes and hopes, is near to Christ and belongs to Christ. Christless morality, irreligious virtue, or, as it was more faithfully termed in the last century and still is in this, “godless” virtue, calling and thinking itself “free,” has only the outward appearance, the garment, is really foolish pride. Thou canst be a broker or agent of morality, then thy part in it is usufructuary, but thou art no owner of it.—From the fact that thou art “holy,” i.e., consecrated to God, accepted by Him the Holy One, follows thy faith, which appropriates and believes what is Divine and holy, more and more inwardly to the internal personality. It is therefore not correct to say: Holiness proceeds from faith in Christ; hence Paul calls them believers, too. Nor is holiness merely the goal of Christian striving; he who has God and Christ, the Holy One, has holiness also; it is not put before us as a goal, far or near, but we, as Christians, are in it, as in an element, a sphere, that it may become ours, be in us, increasing and strengthening itself in us.—The saint consecrated to God (ἄγιος) says, first in the consciousness and confession of his faith, however: I am God’s! The believer (πιστός) says: God is mine! But that we are God’s always comes first, then that God is ours.—How well has Paul complemented the salutation of the Old Testament: Peace be with you (Jdg_6:23; 1Sa_25:6, etc.), by adding or rather prefixing grace, which was not wanting in the Old Testament.
Starke:—A minister of Christ, a teacher of the Gospel, must be installed by the will of God. Mark this, ye runners, who run of yourselves.—Where grace is, there is peace also, even though it be not felt by a believer in his state of conflict.—Since grace and peace come from Christ as well as from God the Father, Christ must be very God as is the Father.
Rieger:—A believer is already a saint.—My God! I am Thine; therefore am I holy. Uphold me in faith on Christ Jesus!—The chief possession of the saints and believers is grace and peace. This is from the very first the life of their heart; this distributes to them their daily nourishment and strength, and with this, too, they are equipped even unto the end of their course.
Heubner:—The call of God to the ministry gives the proper joy in office.—The Apostolic benediction contains all that is worth wishing for.—Schenkel:—Neither the consummation of salvation nor the beginning of faith is to be found outside of fellowship with Christ.—Grace is the ground of our faith, peace the hope of our life.
Stier:—He whom the Lord admits among His called saints, has an inextinguishable spark of faith, that may bring him among the elect and faithful. And if there were left of the church only a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, a cottage in a vineyard, a well-nigh devastated, straitly besieged city, and the rest were as Sodom and Gomorrah—if instead of the Ephesus of the days of Paul and John, there remains only the miserable village of Aja-soluk: yet shall the besieged city of God remain His preserved city, until He Himself destroys it, and we would not regard His sacred people as rejected either in their dispersion or in their blindness.—Grace and peace, it is just this which is wanting to those who are away from Christ and without God in the world, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel. Grace and peace, it is this which is ever more and more needful for those, who have obtained precious faith in the righteousness which our God and our Saviour Jesus Christ gives. In this double yet single word we have once more: what proceeds from God and what should be effected in us. The first ground of all holiness is the grace of the Eternal One, meeting and preventing us; the final goal of all fidelity in faith is complete peace or entire salvation.
[Eadie:—“In Christ Jesus.” The faith of the Ephesian converts rested in Jesus, in calm and permanent repose. It was not a mere external dependence placed on Him, but it had convinced itself of His power and love, of His sympathy and merits; it not only knew the strength of His arm, it had also penetrated and felt the throbbing tenderness of His heart—it was therefore in Him.—“Grace.”—As a wish expressed for the Ephesian church, it does not denote mercy in its general aspect, but that many-sided favor that comes in the form of hope to saints in despondency, of joy to them in sorrow, of patience to them in suffering, of victory to them under assault, and of final triumph to them in the hour of death.—“Peace.”—A conscious possession of the Divine favor can alone create and sustain mental tranquility. To use an impressive figure of Scripture, the unsanctified heart resembles “the troubled sea,” in constant uproar and agitation—dark, muddy and tempestuous; but the storm subsides, for a voice of power has cried, “Peace, be still,” and there is “a great calm:” the lowering clouds are dispelled, and the azure sky smiles on its own reflection in the bosom of the quiet and glassy deep. The favor of God and the felt enjoyment of it, the Apostle wishes to the members of the Ephesian Church.—R.]
Footnotes:
[1] Title: א. A. B. D. E. K. and others: πρὸς Ἐφεσίους, to which F. G. and others prefix ἄρχεται, some versions incipit. L. has τοῦ ἁγίου ἀποστόλου Παύλου επιστολὴ πρὸς Ἐφεσίους. [Elzevir has Παύλου τοῦ ἀποστόλου ἡ πρὸς Ἐφεσίους ἐπιστολή, which is followed in the E. V.—R.]
[2]Eph_1:1.—[Rec., א. A. F. G. K. L., all cursives, some versions, read: Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. B. D. E., some versions and fathers, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Ellicott, Alford: Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ. The latter is more usual (see Col_1:1) and seemingly better adapted to the contents of this Epistle, which would afford grounds for deciding against it. See in Exeg. Notes, Braune’s reasons for accepting the first reading.—R.]
[3]Eph_1:1.—[א.3 A. insert πᾶσιν after ἁγίοις. So Vulgate, Coptic.—R.]
[4]Eph_1:1.—[See the Introd. § 5, for a discussion respecting the words ἐν Ἐφέσῳ. The words are found in all uncial and cursive manuscripts except א. B. 67. They are found in all versions without exception. Meyer (p. 8) defends the words as decidedly genuine, and with him a number of the best editors. On the other hand, they are omitted in the three manuscripts mentioned above, though supplied by later hands in א. B., and really present in 67, with marks of suspicion. To this must be added, the testimony of Basil that in his time they were wanting in old copies, Marcion’s view, the possibility that Tertullian did not know of them, Origen’s acceptance of the omission, and the bare possibility that Jerome did not insert them. The discovery of א. and its omission of them has led careful editors, such as Tischendorf, Ellicott and Alford, to bracket them, but there is at present no evidence sufficient to warrant their rejection, while the omission makes a reading so singular as to overbear the ordinary canon respecting the lectio difficilior. We must also take into the account the “subjective criticism” of the earlier centuries.—R.]
[5]Eph_1:2.—[Ellicott aptly says: “The preposition in such cases as this should certainly be omitted, as its insertion tends to make that unity of source from whence the grace and peace come less apparent than it is in the Greek.” For the same reason a thorough revision would remove the comma after “Father,” as well as the second “to” in Eph_1:1.—R.]
[6][Whenever the name of an Epistle or Gospel thus occurs, in Italics, followed by a reference to page or section, without any other specification, the reference is to the present edition of the “Biblework,” or “Lange’s Commentary,” as it is popularly called.—R.]
[7][The contents of the Epistle, especially its fundamental thoughts, seem to me to be strikingly in keeping with the order: “Christ Jesus,” so much so as to awaken additional suspicion of an alteration to that form in MSS. of an early date.—R.]
[8][The references in the original are to the 6th German edition of Winer, but they have been altered to conform to the 7th German edition, which is now the standard, and to whose pages the last American edition refers in a separate index.—R.]
[9][Dr. Hodge explains it: “Those who are cleansed by the blood of Christ, and by the renewing of the Holy Ghost, and thus separated from the world and consecrated to God.” No doubt this describes the “saints,” but it is too extensive a definition of the word as here used. Eadie opposes the restriction of Harless, but properly says: “The appellation ἅγιοι thus exhibits the Christian church in its normal aspect—a community of men self-devoted to God and His service.” Ellicott has a valuable note on the word, agreeing with Alford, who says: “It is used here in its widest sense, as designating the members of Christ’s visible Church, presumed to fulfil the conditions of that membership.”—R.]
[10][The classical meaning: qui fidem præstant, is accepted by Alford, but the particular and theological sense: qui fidem habet, is preferable here, and is adopted by Hodge, Ellicott, Eadie. The last author thinks the other meaning would require a simple dative after it, as Heb_3:2. See his notes for the authorities justifying this meaning in the N. T.—R.]
[11][Stier accepts the meaning: faithful, which best accords with his peculiar view respecting the two grades in the church.—R.]
[12][Alford seems to reject this connection. In that case we must accept an elliptical construction: “The saints who are in Ephesus, the believers (who are) in Christ,” or take the phrase as qualifying both adjectives; the objections to the latter will be found below.—R.]
[13][Ellicott thus discriminates between πιστὸς ἐν Χριστῷ and πιστεύειν εἰς Χριστόν: “The latter involves a closer connection of the verb and the preposition, and points rather to an act of the will, while the former involves a closer connection of the preposition and the noun, and marks a state and condition.”—R.]
[14][Ellicott and Alford supply εἴη, not ἔστω (Meyer), the optative being the more usual form, as is implied in the suggestion of Dr. Braune.—R.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–23 (Rom 1:7; Co1 1:3; Co2 1:2; Gal 1:3).
(Rom 1:7; Co1 1:3; Co2 1:2; Gal 1:3).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 The Introduction.
The Introduction.
1. Paul—Note, Rom_1:1.
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Apostle of—Of, importing belonging to, rather than sent by.
By the will—As Paul anticipates no opposition to his apostleship, he does not, as in the case of his letter to the Galatians, (Gal_1:1,) emphatically assert it, but gracefully assumes it.
Saints—Properly the ordinary title of all Church members.
Faithful— Importing both first belief and a continued fidelity.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22 Ch. Eph_1:1-2. Greeting
Ch. Eph_1:1-2. Greeting
1. Paul] See Act_13:9 for the first occurrence of this name of the Apostle. He probably bore, from infancy, both the two names, Saul (Saoul, Saulus) and Paulus, the first as a Hebrew home-name, the latter for use in the Gentile world. Paulus (Paul) would thus naturally become the prevalent name during the Christian life-work of the bearer.
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an apostle] Lit., an envoy, a missionary; in the Gospels and Acts always in the special sense of an immediate Delegate from the Saviour; except perhaps Act_14:14, where Barnabas bears the title. In Rom_16:7 the sense is perhaps more extended; certainly so in 2Co_8:23. It always, however, in N. T., designates at least a sacred messenger, not excepting Php_2:25, where see note in this Series. St Paul needed often to insist on the fact and rights of his apostleship in the highest sense of the word; 1Co_9:1-2; 2Co_12:12; Gal_1:1.—See further, Appendix F.
of Jesus Christ] Of Christ Jesus is the order in many documents. The sacred name (Jesus) and title (Christ) occur together in the Gospels five times, in the Acts often, in the Epistles perpetually. It is most important to remember that Christ is merely the Greek version of the Hebrew Messiah (Anointed). In the N. T. it thus constantly refers back to O. T. prophecy and to the truth (uttered by the Messiah Himself, Joh_4:22), that “salvation is of the Jews.”
by the will of God] So, in the same connexion and position, 1 Cor., 2 Cor., Col., 2 Tim. In 1 Tim. (and Tit_1:3) we have “according to the commandment” of God. See Gal_1:1 for the deep certainty of a direct Divine commission which underlay such a phrase in St Paul’s mind. He knew himself to be “a vessel of choice, to bear the name” (Act_9:15) of his Lord.
saints] Holy ones; persons possessed of holiness, separated from sin to God. It is true that this is “the language of charitable presumption” (Pearson, Exposition of the Creed, Art. ix); when a community is thus described, St Paul does not thereby positively assert that each individual answers the description. But observe that this presumptive use of the word “saint” does not lower the true sense of the word, so as to make it properly mean, e. g., merely a member of a Christian community, a possessor of visible Church privileges.
which are at Ephesus] “Some very ancient authorities omit at Ephesus” (margin of Revised Version). On the question thus raised, see Introduction, ch. 4.
and to the faithful] I. e. “the saints,” under a different aspect. For the word as used, of Christian believers, see Act_10:45 (“the faithful of the circumcision”); Act_16:1 (“a faithful Jewess”); 2Co_6:15 (“the faithful with the unfaithful,” i.e. the believer with the unbeliever); Col_1:2; 1Ti_4:3 (“them who are faithful and know, &c.), 1Ti_4:12 (“the faithful”), 1Ti_5:16 (“any faithful man or faithful woman”), 1Ti_6:2 (“faithful,” i.e. Christian, “masters”); Tit_1:6. These and similar passages, and the contrast of the word “unfaithful” (infidelis, infidel), shew that as a designation of Christians it means not trustworthy but trustful; full of faith, in the Christian sense. On its application to the community, see on “saints,” above.
in Christ Jesus] See, for parallels to this all-important phrase, Rom_8:1; 1Co_15:18; 2Co_5:17, &c. And compare the Lord’s language, Joh_6:56; Joh_14:20; Joh_15:2-7; and the illustration given by e.g. Eph_5:30. The “saints and faithful” are regarded as solidaire with their Lord, in respect both of inseparable interest, holy dearness, and oneness of spirit (1Co_6:17); specially the latter. The Epistle itself is a large comment on the phrase.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–23 (1) By the will of God.—This phrase, used in…
(1) By the will of God.—This phrase, used in 1Co_1:1; 2Co_1:1; Col_1:1; 2Ti_1:1 (comp. the equivalent expression of 1Ti_1:1), appears to be St. Paul’s ordinary designation of the source of his apostolic mission and authority; used whenever there was nothing peculiar in the occasion of the Epistle, or the circumstances of the Church to which it was addressed. It may be contrasted, on the one hand, with the more formal enunciation of his commission, addressed to the Roman Church (Rom_1:1-5), and the indignant and emphatic abruptness of the opening of the Galatian Epistle—“an apostle not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ” (Gal_1:1). On the other hand, to the Thessalonian churches, in the Epistles written shortly after their conversion, he uses no description of himself whatever (1Th_1:1; 2Th_1:1); in the Epistles to the Philippians and to Titus he is simply “the servant of Jesus Christ” (Php_1:1; Tit_1:1): to Philemon (for special reasons) “the prisoner of Jesus Christ.” The phrase in the text stands midway between the emphasis of the one class of Epistles and the more familiar simplicity of the other.
To the saints. . . . and to the faithful in Christ Jesus.—Here, as in Col_1:2 (“the saints and faithful brethren”) the same persons are described by both epithets. They are “saints,” as “called” (see Rom_1:7; 1Co_1:2) into “the communion of saints” by the grace of God; they are “faithful,” as by their own act believing in Christ and holding fast that faith. The two epithets are correlative to each other. Without the call and the grace of God, men cannot believe; without the energy of faith they cannot be, in effect as well as in opportunity, “saints.” Both epithets belong in capacity and profession to all members of the Church militant; and St. Paul applies them accordingly to the whole body of any church which he addresses, without hesitation or distinction. In living reality they belong only to the “Invisible Church” of the present, which shall form the “Church triumphant” of the hereafter. It has been noted that the use of the word “saints,” as the regular and ordinary name of Christians, is more especially traceable in the later Epistles of St. Paul. So in his speech before Agrippa he says, “Many of the saints did I shut up in prison” (Act_27:10). The phrase, “in Christ Jesus,” belongs to both the words “saints” and “faithful;” but it is here more closely connected with the latter.
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Which are at Ephesus.—On these words, omitted in the oldest MSS., see the Introduction.
[1. Introduction to the Epistle (Eph_1:1-23).
(1) SALUTATION (Eph_1:1-2).
(2) THANKSGIVING TO GOD FOR—
(a) The election of the whole Church before the world began, by the predestinating love of the Father, to holiness, grace, and glory (Eph_1:3-6);
(b) this election depending on Redemption, in virtue of unity with Christ as the Head of all created Being (Eph_1:7-10);
(c) and being manifested doubly, in the calling and faith, first of the Jewish, then of the Gentile Christians (Eph_1:11-14).
(3) PRAYER for their fuller knowledge of the hope, glory, and spiritual reality of their inheritance, manifested in the Resurrection, Ascension, and Royalty of Christ, the Head of the Church (Eph_1:15-23).]
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–23 Vers. 1, 2. ADDRESS AND SALUTATION.
Vers. 1, 2. ADDRESS AND SALUTATION.
Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus. Paul"s one but all-sufficient claim on the Ephesians is his relation to Christ: he is Christ"s apostle, not only as sent forth by him, but also as belonging to him; elsewhere his servant or bondman. He makes no claim to their attention on the ground of his great experience in the gospel, his profound study of it, or even his gifts, but rests simply on his being Christ"s apostle; thus recognizing Christ as the only Head of the Church, and source of authority therein. By the will of God. The First Person of the Trinity, the Fountain of Godhead, has not only devised the whole scheme of mercy, but has likewise planned the subordinate arrangements by which it is carried out; thus it was by his will that Paul held the office of an apostle of Christ. (see Gal_1:1; Act_26:7; Gal_1:11, Gal_1:12) His authority and his dignity as an apostle are thus the highest that can be: "He that heareth you, heareth me." To the saints that are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus. This designation is expanded in the verses that immediately follow. "Saints" means set apart for God, and, as the result thereof, persons pure and holy; "faithful" is equivalent to "Believers;" while "in Christ Jesus" denotes the Source of their life, the element in which they lived, the Vine into which they were grafted. Such persons were the heart and nucleus of the Church, though others might belong to it. In the fervor of his salutations hero and elsewhere, Paul seems to see only the genuine spiritual members of the Church; though afterwards he may indicate that all are not such. (see Php_3:15) With regard to the clause, "that are at Ephesus," see Introduction.
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Vers. 1, 2.
Address and salutation.
Character and scope of the Epistle as a whole (see Introduction); circumstances of the writer; jubilant tone of the Epistle; cordiality of the Ephesian Church.
I The writer speaks with authority. He is an "apostle," sent and commissioned directly by Christ, and acting in his name a real ambassador of the Lord of glory.
II He holds this office "by the will of God;" pursues neither an irregular nor a merely volunteer course unsanctioned by the supreme Ruler, but acts by the will of God.
III The Church is a society of saints," and "faithful," or believing, "in Christ Jesus." If we want these attributes, we may be of Israel, but we are not Israel.
IV Divine blessings are invoked and brought near to the Church, viz.
(1) grace (see Exposition);
(2) peace; both of these having their only source for sinners in God and Christ.
This salutation is more than a pious wish or even prayer; the blessings are brought as it were to the door of all. It rests with them either to receive them or not. "Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God!" The blessings brought near are very precious, for God in Christ with all his fullness is there. Let us beware of trifling with the offer. Let us open the door and welcome the Lord of grace and peace.
HOMILIES BY T. CROSKERY. Vers. 1, 2.
The salutation.
The apostle introduces his Epistle by a duplicate order of ideas: a double blessing and peace;" a double source of blessing our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ;" a double designation of the Christian people and faithful in Christ Jesus;" and a double source of authority apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.
I THE AUTHOR. "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God." As one standing outside the circle of the twelve, who overshadowed all others by his immense authority, it was necessary he should preface his Epistle by the mention of his independent apostleship. Yet in no spirit of vanity or self-assertion does he use the high language of apostolic authority and inspired conviction. He disclaims all personal merit in his call. His apostleship was linked with grace in its original bestowal; therefore he speaks of "grace and apostleship" in the same breath (; (Rom_1:5) it was "by the will of God," not by the suggestion or call of man, that he found his place in the service of all the Churches. For us the interest of our author"s name has a profound significance; for, though in language of the deepest humility he speaks of himself as "the least of the apostles" and "less than the least of all saints," he stands before all coming ages as the great apostle of the Gentiles, whose personal history and writings fill one-third of the New Testament Scriptures, and who, more than any other apostle, has shaped the theology of Christendom in its best periods, supplying at once the bone and marrow of the evangelical system of thought.
II THE PERSONS ADDRESSED. "The saints which are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus.
1. This double title seems to suggest the objective and subjective sides of Christian life; for if it is God"s work to make saints, it is man"s to believe;" we are chosen to salvation "through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth". (2Th_2:13) God has joined these two principles together: let not man put them asunder.
2. It is in Christ we obtain our standing both as saints and as believers. He is made unto us "wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption". (1Co_1:30) The expression, "in Christ," which occurs here for the first time in this Epistle, is found thirty-three times in the New Testament. Christian life, like revelation, is Christo-centric.
3. The Christians at Ephesus had grown from twelve disciples (Act_19:1) into a large and influential community, worshipping the Lord under the very shadow of the great Temple of Diana. The apostle has a deep personal interest in the fortunes of a Church established in the very acropolis of paganism the first of the seven Churches of Asia forming the third capital of Christianity, as Antioch was the second and Jerusalem the first. He remembers the three years of untiring and anxious labor he had spent in the city, as well as the interest of the Ephesian Christians in himself and his work which he seeks shortly to intensify by the projected visit of a beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord". (Eph_6:21, Eph_6:22) The Apostle Paul was unique among the apostles of Christ for his quickness in finding out a common ground of interest among the believers of every place, for his deep yearning after appreciation, and the heartfelt joy of finding his services recognized by the Churches he served, as well as by the facility with which he held a hundred interests in his hand, and engaged the sympathy of all sorts of men in the cause of Christ.
III THE TERMS OF THE SALUTATION. "Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ." This is the apostle"s usual salutation to Churches it is only in the pastoral Epistles that he adds the word "mercy but its form suggests a beautiful and significant blending of the Greek and Hebrew methods of salutation, as if to anticipate the share of Jew and Gentile alike in the future blessings of the gospel How sweetly Christianity sanctifies the common courtesies of life!
1. The double blessing. "Grace and peace." The word "grace" has a unique history among English words. It means ever so many things, all suggestive of the happiest associations, and has never suffered that contraction of meaning which has spoiled the moral beauty of so many other words. In the gospel sense, whether it applies to the origin of man"s salvation or to the Christian disposition which is the result of it, grace marks a beautiful movement of life in the direction of blessing given or received. Grace is the key-note of the Ephesian Epistle. Grace is the well-spring of all blessings. "The way to heaven lies not over a toll-bridge, but over a free bridge, even the unmerited grace of God in Christ Jesus." Peace is the fruit of grace, which can never be severed from its fruits. It is the very testament of Christ: "My peace I give unto you:" the very equanimity, firmness, serenity, of his own life carried into the lives of his saints. This peace so keeps the heart and mind" that nothing can break down a spirit so established. The two graces are here in their due order; for there is no peace without grace. They cover the whole space of a believer"s life; for if it begins in grace, its latter end is peace. The Lord always has "thoughts of grace and peace toward us". (Jer_29:11) They are together thebright sum of the gospel.
2. The double Source of blessing. "From God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ." There is a certain intensity of bright suggestion in the asserted origin of these blessings. God the Father is the "God of grace" (1Pe_5:10) and "the God of peace"; (Heb_13:20) and equally so "grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, (Joh_1:17) and he isalso our Peace. (Eph_2:14) But the Father is the original Fountain of all blessings, and the Son the Dispenser of blessing to us. The juxtaposition of Christ with the Father is the significant proof of the divinity of the Son of God. No man"s name can be placed beside God"s in the dispensation of Divine blessings. The Holy Ghost is not named, because it is he who communicates the grace and the peace. Similarly, the believer has "fellowship with the Father and the Son", (1Jn_1:3) but the Holy Ghost is the power of this fellowship.
3. It is neither improper nor unnecessary to pray for grace and peace, though we already possess them. We need a continuous supply and a continuous experience of both blessings. Believers are, therefore, fully justified in coming boldly to a throne of grace, that they may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. T.C.
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR
Vers. 1, 2.
The salutation of the saints.
In the present case Paul, without associating any brethren with himself, proceeds to state his apostleship, and to transmit his salutation to the saints at Ephesus. These saints had been gathered for the most part out of paganism, and this will account for the introduction, as well as many of the contents, of this magnificent Epistle. We note the following lessons as here suggested:
I THE APOSTLESHIP OF PAUL HAD BEEN RECEIVED DIRECTLY FROM JESUS CHRIST. (Ver. 1.) The name "Paul" was the Roman counterpart of the Hebrew Saul," and its use in these superscriptions to the Epistles was doubtless to conciliate those Christians who had once been heathen. (f1) This Paul, then, the man who had made the interests of the Gentile world a chief concern, declares that he had received his apostleship from Christ directly. He thus repudiated any man-given or man-made apostleship. It is Jesus who alone could make an apostle, just as it is he alone who can make a minister. All that any Church can do is to recognize a God-given qualification. (f2) Paul was the apostle of Jesus, the man sent forth by the risen and reigning Lord to evangelize the heathen. Such a consciousness of Christ"s consecration gave him great power.
II HE HERE SALUTES LIVING SAINTS. (Ver. 1.) Monod has pertinently remarked that, while others seek their saints among the dead, Paul seeks saints, and so should we, among the living. Saintliness should characterize all Christians. In fact, a Christian is a "person set apart, separated from the world, and reserved for the service of Jesus Christ and for the glory of God, according as it is written, "This people have I formed for myself, they shall show forth my praise. Accordingly, Paul did not hesitate to call the Christians at Ephesus "saints," for he expected from them saintly lives. The very name raised the standard of Christian profession throughout the Church at Ephesus. And would it not be well for us to use it, and to strive always to deserve its use? It is to be feared that our saints, like those of Rome, are for the most part dead and gone; whereas what the age needs is saintliness embodied in flesh and blood before it. It is only then that it shall come to acknowledge the power of the Christian faith. Of course, Paul did not imply that every professor at Ephesus was saintly. He used the term presumptively, as a charitable spirit will. But the very use of the term raised the whole standard of holy living there and did immense good.
III THESE SAINTS ARE FULL OF FAITH IN CHRIST JESUS. (Ver. 1.) We take pistoi in this passage in the sense of men of faith. Paul thus states the principle of their saintliness. They had learned to trust Christ and to regard him as their King, and so they came to be consciously consecrated unto all good works. Fidelity flows from this living faith in Christ. They prove reliable men because they have first learned to rely upon the Savior (cf. (Joh_20:28; Gal_3:9) Let us apply this principle ourselves. If we trust Jesus as we ought, we shall find the trust working itself out into lovable and lovely lives, and we too shall be saintly.
IV PAUL DESIRES FOR THESE SAINTS THE GRACE AND PEACE OF GOD. (Ver. 2.) There is something beautiful in the old forms of benediction. We lose their fragrance in our cold "Good-byes." The Greeks and Romans were accustomed to wish their correspondents "Safety;" the Jews took the simpler form of" Peace." But the gospel came to give to both a deeper meaning and breathe grace and peace of the deepest character into human souls. Hence these salutations of the saints. God"s undeserved favor coming forth as grace finds its effects in the responsive human heart in a heavenly peace, so that the once troubled spirit comes into wondrous calm. What Paul is about to state in his Epistle will not interfere with but rather deepen this holy peace.
It is well for us to see the Fountain-head of blessing in the Father"s heart, to see the channel of communication in his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and to experience its effect in the peace which passeth all understanding, which he has ordained should keep our hearts and minds by Christ Jesus. (Php_4:6) The saints are meant to be peaceful spirits as they consecrate their energies to the service of the Lord. R.M.E.
HOMILIES BY R. FINLAYSON Vers. 1, 2.
Address and salutation.
The great verity of which the Epistle to the Ephesians treats is the Church of Christ. It has its place along with other everlasting verities in the twelfth chapter of the Hebrews. It exists in no visible community as it exists in the mind of God. This letter is addressed to the Ephesian Church; but there is nothing peculiarly Ephesian about it. There are no Ephesian errors which are combated. There are no salutations sent to particular members of the Church of Ephesus. This gives it a catholic form; and it may have been that it was addressed as a circular letter to a number of Churches of which Ephesus was the center.
I ADDRESS.
1. The writer. "Paul." He was the founder of the Ephesian Church, as of many Churches besides. Of all Christian workers he clearly bears the palm. It seems as if it would take many of our lives to make up what he succeeded in putting into the latter half of his. And yet what was Paul? He at once brings himself into relation to two personalities, two and yet one. For the first mentioned, Jesus (Accomplisher of salvation) is the Christ (the Anointed) of the second mentioned.
(1) His relation to Christ. "An apostle of Christ Jesus." He was subordinated to Christ. He is the great efficient Cause who saves (in the fullest sense) by his Word, by his blood, by his Spirit. To him, therefore, must be all the praise of salvation. "Unto him that loved us." But yet he stood in an important relation to him as an apostle. He was not the only apostle, but he was as much an apostle as any. He was sent from Christ (with special authority), as Christ was sent from God. With special powers his mission was to bring the salvation that was in Christ to man, and to build up the Church.
(2) His relation to God. "Through the will of God." This was at once his abasement and his support. He had no personal merit entitling him to the position of apostle. At the same time, that position was not a self-chosen one. It was the will of God that Christ (such is the idea) should station him, now here and now there, among the Churches. And whether he was anxiously engaged in the composition of an Epistle, or whether he was pleading tremblingly with his voice for Christ, he was supported by the feeling that he was acting at the Divine instance and under the Divine authority.
2. The persons addressed.
(1) Generic designation. "To the saints which are at Ephesus." The members of the Ephesian Church are designated "saints." We are to think of the Old Testament meaning. Temple, city, land, priests, people, were all holy, or devoted to God. We are to take this name to ourselves, not vauntingly as what we are, but humbly as what we aspire to be.
(2) Specific designation. "And the faithful in Christ Jesus." This is a designation associated with Christ. They were distinctively a Christian community. We are marked off not merely from those who have no faith (infidels) or an unholy faith (such as those who think it right to offer human sacrifices), but also from the Old Testament Church (the one Sacrifice having now been offered), and also from angels, who admire and adore Christ but have not the same close interest in him as sinners of mankind. In the cross we see the Divine purpose of salvation fully disclosed; and, under a sense of our great demerit, we rest upon Christ (in his boundless merit) as he is offered to us in the gospel.
II THE SALUTATION.
1. The two words of salutation.
(1) Grace. "Grace to you." The idea to which grace (on God"s part) is opposed is merit (on our part).
For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
We feel that, if it were only to fare with our friends according to their deserving before God, it would not be well with them. There would be innumerable things for which they could not answer. We therefore recognize the great condition of their welfare to be that there should be the outgoing of undeserved favor and of loving care toward them. And so that is the first thing we put into our greeting.
(2) Peace. "And peace." This is not peace of any description, which may only be a curse in disguise. But it is a peace which is conjoined with grace. It is a freedom from anxiety, which results from the consciousness of being loved and mercifully dealt with. It is the child"s feeling at rest under the shelter of his father"s roof, and, when he acts amiss, in the enjoyment of his forgiveness.
2. The twofold source to which we look in salutation.
(1) First source. "From God our Father." The fatherly in God is higher up than his omnipotence. The Father"s heart we have found to be the source of blessing to ourselves, and we feel that it is only from that source that others can be truly blessed. He who is gracious to us be gracious also to them.
(2) Second source. "And the Lord Jesus Christ." He is the glorious Manifestation of the Father"s grace. It is by him that blessings have been obtained, and through him that they come to us. "No man cometh to the Father but by me." We must, therefore, in seeking blessings for our friends, recognize him as the lordly Dispenser in his Father"s house. R.F.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS Vers. 1, 2.
The highest things in the world.
an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus: grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ." The words set before us three of the greatest things in human life.
I THE HIGHEST OFFICE IN THE WORLD. "Can apostle of Jesus Christ.
1. He was a messenger of the greatest Person. How great was his Master! Messengers of inferior personages are often but little esteemed, whilst those of illustrious ones are held in high honor. He who represents a king receives something of kingly homage. An "apostle" is a representative of "Jesus Christ," who is the Son of God, the Creator of the universe, and the Head of all "principalities and powers." But what was his message?
2. He was the bearer of the grandest message. He who bears an important message a message on which the interest of a neighborhood or the destiny of a nation depends, will stamp the hearts of men with awe. An apostle of Christ delivers the highest message pardon to the guilty, light to the benighted, freedom to the slave, immortality to the dying, salvation to the lost.
3. He was a messenger of Christ by the "will of God." Many go out in the name of Christ, but not according to the Divine will. The Eternal has never called them to missions so holy and momentous, and hence they misrepresent the doctrines and the genius of his blessed Son. This was not Paul"s case. He was called to be an "apostle," "separated unto the gospel of God". (Rom_1:1) He felt this. When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother"s womb, and called me by grace," etc. What office in the world approaches this in sublimity? A messenger of Christ by the will of God"! He who by the will of God" bears Christ"s message to the hearts of men sustains a position, compared with which the most elevated offices amongst men sink into contempt.
II THE HIGHEST CHARACTERS IN THE WOULD. "To the saints," etc. "Saints" and "faithful." Who are they? They are those who are consecrated in soul to truth, and love and God, and this because they are faithful. They are made holy through their faith in Christ. All moral excellence in man is derived in this way and in no other. Philosophy, history, and the Bible show this. Notice, these saints resided at "Ephesus." This, the chief city in Asia Minor, was the center and stronghold of paganism; it had the temple of Diana, one of the greatest wonders of the world. Its influence upon millions was immense, and its appeal was to men"s superstition, sensualism, and selfishness. Albeit there were Christians there, holy and believing men. This shows:
1. Man is not necessarily the creature of circumstances.
2. That, with the possession of the gospel, a religious life is practicable everywhere. What characters in society are equal to those of genuine "saints"? None. They are "lights;" without them the social heavens would be midnight. They are living stones; "without them the social temple would fall to ruins. They are "salt;" without them the social body would become putrescent and pestilential.
III THE HIGHEST BLESSINGS IS THE WORLD. Grace and peace." Here are two blessings.
1. Divine favor. "Grace." The love, the benediction, the approbation of God. What a boon this!
2. Spiritual peace. "Peace," not insensibility, not stagnation, but a repose of the soul in God. Men through sin have lost peace. "The wicked are like the troubled sea." Sinners are at war with themselves, society, the universe, God. But through God"s love, through. Christ souls are at one with all. "Peace sweet word, blessed thing! To the mariner after a storm, to a nation after a war, how blessed! But far more blessed to the soul after a life-war with self and its Maker. He will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon God." Who will say that there are any higher things on earth than are found in this text? And these highest things, thank God, we may all possess. We may all, in a sense, be apostles of Christ. We may be all "saints and faithful." We may all partake of the "grace" of God and possess the blessed "eijrhnh. D.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will…
Eph_1:1-2
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus.
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Introductory greeting
In these words we have--
I. Pauls description of himself. An apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. He attributed nothing to the vigour of his faith, to the passion of his gratitude for the Divine goodness, to the completeness of his self-consecration to Christs service; he was living and acting under the control of forces which had their origin above and beyond himself; his apostolic work was the effect and expression of a Divine volition. He believed that the Divine will is the root and origin of all Christian righteousness and blessedness. And this is the secret of a strong and effective Christian life. Our spiritual activity reaches its greatest intensity when we are so filled with the glory of the Divine righteousness, the Divine love, and the Divine power, that we are conscious only of God, and all thought of ourselves is lost in Him.
II. Pauls description of those to whom he is writing. They are the saints which are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus.
1. Saints. The title of all Christians--not attributing any personal merit to them, but simply recalling their prerogatives and obligations. It reminded them that God had made them His own; that they were holy because they belonged to Him. The temple had once been holy, not because of its magnitude, its stateliness, and the costly materials of which it was built, but because it was the house of God; and the tabernacle, which was erected in the wilderness, though a much meaner structure, was just as holy as the temple of Solomon, with its marble courts and its profusion of cedar and brass and silver and gold. The altars were holy, because they were erected for the service of God. The sacrifices were holy, because they were offered to Him. The priests were holy because they were divinely chosen to discharge the functions of the temple service. The Sabbath was holy, because God had placed His hand upon it, and separated its hours from common use. The whole Jewish people were holy, because they were organized into a nation, not for the common purposes which have been the ends of the national existence of other races, but to receive in trust for all mankind exceptional revelations of the character and will of God. And now, according to Pauls conception, every Christian man was a temple, a sacrifice, a priest; his whole life was a sabbath; he belonged to an elect race; he was the subject of an invisible and Divine kingdom; he was a saint, i.e., one whom God has set apart for Himself. The act of consecration is Gods act, not ours. Our part, is subordinate and secondary. We have only to submit to the authority of the Divine claim, and to receive the dignity conferred by the Divine love.
2. Faithful. Those who have faith have also fidelity; faith guarantees fidelity.
3. In Christ Jesus. One of Pauls characteristic phrases--the keynote of this Epistle.
III. Pauls salvation or benediction. Grace to you, etc. A gospel, a message from God, bringing home to Christian hearts a fresh assurance of the grace of God the Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ, a fuller realization and a richer consciousness of the peace, the infinite and eternal blessings, which that grace conferred. If the true ideal of the Christian life were fulfilled, men would be conscious that whenever we came near to them Christ came near, bringing with Him the rest of heart, the courage, and the hope which His presence always inspires. When He was on earth those who touched the border of His garment were healed of physical sickness. Now that He is in heaven there streams from Him a mightier and more gracious power; and if our union with Christ and Christs union with us were more complete, that power, working through us, would be a perpetual source of blessing to mankind. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)
Prefatory inscription
1. Ministers must inculcate to themselves, and to those with whom they have to deal, that their calling is from God. Even as civil magistrates give out their writs in the kings name, with mention of the office they bear under him, to ensure due respect from the subjects, so this great Church officer mentions the position held by him under Christ, the King of the Church, that the things delivered by him may be accordingly received.
(1) This is good for both minister and people. How can he speak the words of God as the mouth of God with reverence and all authority, if he consider not that God has commanded him to do this work?
(2) The ministry is a work so weighty, that no man of himself is sufficient for it. Now, what can more assure me that I shall be made able, than to look at God, who has called me to this office? Princes call not their subjects to any service but that they see them furnished with all necessaries.
(3) Whereas the difficulties and enmities which faithful ministers encounter are many, how could they expect to be shielded but by fixing their eyes on Him who has called them?
2. The quality of him who brings this Epistle to us is that he is an ambassador of Christ.
(1) The apostles were immediately--no person coming between--designed by Christ.
(2) They were infallibly assisted, so that in their office of teaching, whether by word of mouth or writing, they could not err.
(3) Their mission was universal.
(4) They could give, by imposition of hands, the gifts of the Holy Ghost.
(5) Eyewitnesses of Christ. From these considerations we see the firmness of all things delivered in this Epistle; for it was not so much the apostle as God in him who wrote: as, when a lesson is sounded forth upon an instrument, it is not so much the instrument as his who plays on it.
3. We must account it our greatest dignity that we belong to Christ.
4. It is the will of God that assigns to us our several callings.
(1) The providence.
(2) The free grace of God.
5. All the members of the visible Church are to be saints.
(1) They were all saints by outward profession. How dreadful the state of those who, like as they tell of Halifax nuts, which are all shells, no kernels, profess themselves saints, but by their lives deny it.
(2) There were many true saints, and the better part, not the larger, gives the designation. Wine and water is called wine; gold and silver ore united is called gold and silver, though there is much dross mixed with it.
6. In the most wicked places God gathers and maintains His people. Where God has His Church, we say, the devil has his chapel; so, on the other hand, where the devil has his cathedral, God has His people. As in nature we see a pleasant rose grow from amidst the thorns, and a most beautiful lily spring out of slimy, brackish places, and as God in the darkness of the night makes beautiful lights arise, so here, in the darkest place, He will have some men who shall shine as lights in the midst of a perverse generation.
(1) Let us not be discouraged; however uncongenial our surroundings may be, God can and will watch over His own, wherever they be.
(2) Let us be thankful if we are placed amid Christian surroundings.
7. It is faith in Christ alone which makes men saints. Faith produces
(1) purity of heart;
(2) the outward profession of holiness;
(3) holy conversation; which three things together go to make up saintliness or sanctification. Though we still have sins, yet the better part gives the name. Corn fields, we see, have many weeds, yet we call them corn fields, not fields of weeds; so grace, though it seems little in comparison with sin, yet will in time overcome the evil within us; for the Spirit that is in us from Christ is stronger than the spirit of the world. (Paul Bayne.)
The inscription
1. The wisdom of God hath judged it most convenient to teach His people, not immediately by Himself or by the ministry of angels, but of men like unto ourselves; hereby to try His peoples obedience (Mat_10:40), and because their infirmity could not well endure the ministry of others (Exo_20:19).
2. It doth not follow hence that every man who thinketh himself sufficiently gifted may take upon him the office of the ministry, except he be called unto it of God.
3. Even those who are saints and believers do stand in need of Gods grace and favour both to pardon and subdue sin, seeing the best of them are but sanctified in part (1Co_13:12), having the dregs of corruption always remaining and frequently stirring in them (Rom_7:23). (J. Fergusson.)
Grace be to you and peace.
The apostolic salutation
1. It is the duty of a minister of Christ to bless the faithful children of the Church in the name of God (Num_6:23).
(1) What this blessing is. A ministerial act, applying Gods blessing to the well-deserving children of the Church, and placing them in assured possession through faith of Gods blessing towards them.
(2) On what it is grounded.
(a) The spirit of discerning (Mat_7:20).
(b) The authority which God has bestowed.
2. Even the holiest justified persons have need of grace.
3. The best thing we can seek is the grace of God. This grace is our life; it is better than life. As the marigold opens when the sun shines over it, and shuts when it is withdrawn, so our life follows this favour; we are enlarged if we feel it, and troubled if it is hidden.
4. True peace is a most singular blessing (Php_4:7; Joh_14:22).
(1) What it is. Peace is a tranquility or rest in the mind, springing out of Christs death, wrought in us by the Spirit, through the Word of God; opposed to fear, grief, or any kind of perturbation which breaks the sweet consent and harmony of the mind.
(2) In what kinds it may be considered.
5. All true peace is bred in us from the knowledge of Gods love toward us.
6. God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ are the authors of true peace. Let us, then, learn whither to fly, that our souls may be settled in true peace, such as the world cannot take from us; let us seek it of Him who, if He quiet, nothing can disturb. Many, when disquieted in mind and body, fly to such means as may still those pains which they feel smart upon them; and when they have, with music, company, etc., quieted their troubled spirit, then they think their peace is well restored. If a creditor should set a sergeant upon our backs, were it wisdom in the debtor to compound with him, and corrupt him, and to think all safe while the sergeant winks at him? Everybody would account this folly; for he is never a whit the more out of danger till the creditor be agreed with. Thus it is likewise in seeking our peace by stilling our evils, and not by quieting the anger of God, which is justly kindled against us. (Paul Bayne.)
Grace and peace from God
1. Believers then, as now, required grace continually to keep them, and enable them to stand before their God. As our bodily frames require fresh food for their daily sustenance, and without it would grow weak, languish, and die, so do we in a spiritual sense require continual supplies of heavenly refreshment.
2. But it is not only grace, but peace too, for which the apostle prays for them. True peace cannot exist without grace--and peace is the consequence of grace. The believer stands, through grace, accepted, justified by the precious blood of Jesus; the sweet apprehension of Christ by faith brings pardon and peace to his soul.
3. And as then, so now, it is our consolation to remember the source from whence alone grace and peace can flow. Not from Paul, Apollos, or Cephas, but from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Jehovah, the Father, is the fountain, and Jehovah, the Son, the channel, of all blessings. The fountain of living waters as redundant as at the creation--the Sun of righteousness with undiminished effulgence--the Ocean unfathomable in the depths of love and mercy,--an ocean without bottom or shore. Oh, how lamentably we live below our privileges! How little we bathe in that Fountain! how little we bask in that Sun! how little we ride buoyant on that Ocean with our anchor cast within the veil! (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)
Grace and peace
Grace is in the Holy Scripture in every way connected with God. The Father is the God of all grace (1Pe_5:10); Jesus is the author, giver, and dispenser of grace (Act_15:11; 2Co_8:9; Rom_16:20; 1Th_5:28); and the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of grace (Heb_10:29), who dispenses to the Church His gifts and graces as He pleases (1Co_12:1-14). The seat of the Divine Majesty is the throne of grace (Heb_4:16); the gospel is called the Word of His grace; and believers are the children of His grace. The first word the young believer utters is grace, and the oldest dies with the same word on his lips. It is this free grace which makes God the sovereign giver, and man the humble receiver; it is this which lends to the gospel its chief glory, and renders speechless in the presence of God those who reject it. It is this which roots out the principles of pride and human merit, and surrounds the mercy of God with unparalleled splendour. Incarnation, atonement, resurrection, and mediation are but steps in the manifestation of His grace. His acts are in keeping with His character; and neither in creation nor in providence does the Divine Majesty shine forth more gloriously than it does from the throne of grace. The apostle connects grace with peace: Grace be to you, and peace, etc. Peace is a lovely characteristic of the gospel. Everything breathes peace and pardon to the believer. But what does the word mean? It includes peace with God, peace of conscience, and peace with our fellow men; it declares that the veil between you and God is rent, and that you have free access to the Holiest of all; it is the assurance to your trembling conscience that the enmity is taken away, and that God is love. This is what we receive in believing, which Jesus promised, and which the world can neither give nor take away. It is strong and perfect in proportion as the eye rests on Christ; it becomes weak and broken in proportion as you love earthly things. In the assurance of this peace we brave the storms of life, and in the same tranquillizing conviction we fall asleep in Jesus. Sin alone can disturb this calm and blissful repose. It bids defiance to the rage of the persecutor, and is never more radiant than when in pain and torture it looks upward to the martyrs crown (Act_7:60). (W. Graham, D. D.)
St. Pauls salutation effective
The new man is a habitation for God. He breathes out his desires, not from his own life alone, but from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. The salutation of such an one is not in word only. He is not a mere messenger of Christ, but a medium. We must assuredly believe that whenever Paul wrote, Grace be to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, there was an actual outgoing of grace and peace from God through him. No one can live in God without being a channel for God. The vessel that receives its supply from an exhaustless source must overflow. Our Lord, who spake no vain words, declared of His true disciple that rivers of living water should flow out from him. These living streams of grace and peace can never be lost. They may be rejected by those whom you desire to bless; but in that case, our Lord says, they return to you again. What you give you have. The river of life which flows, and flows evermore, from God, having completed its circuit, returns to God again. We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish. (John Pulsford.)
Salvation is all of grace
Grace, grace, free grace, the merits of Christ for nothing; white and fair, and large Saviour mercy, which is another sort of thing than creature mercy or law mercy; yea, a thousand degrees above angel mercy, hath been and must be the Rock that we drowned souls must swim to. (Rutherford.)
Value of grace
Henry Welch (one of the Puritans) was, I suppose, a preacher of no extraordinary ability, but it is said of him that, though he did not excel in gifts, it was made up to him in grace. (Dr. Halley.)
Grace and peace secretly given
Dew falls insensibly and invisibly. You may be in the field all night, and not perceive the dew falling, and yet find great dew upon the grass. So the operations and blessings of Gods Word, and graces thereof, are invisible; we feel the work, but the manner of the working is unknown to us. No man can see the conversion of another, nor can well discern his own. The Word works by little and little, like as the dew falls. (B. Keach.)
Peace from Christ
I have spilled the ink over a bill, and so have blotted it till it can hardly be read; but this is quite another thing from having the debt blotted out, for that cannot be till payment is made. So a man may blot his sins from his memory and quiet his mind with false hopes, but the peace which this will bring him is widely different from that which arises from Gods forgiveness of sin through the satisfaction which Jesus made in His atonement. Our blotting is one thing; Gods blotting out is something far higher. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 6, 12, 15, 20 Chapter 1
Chapter 1
THE INTRODUCTION
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THE WRITER AND READERS
Eph_1:1-2
In passing from the Galatian to the Ephesian epistle we are conscious of entering a different atmosphere. We leave the region of controversy for that of meditation. From the battle-field we step into the hush and stillness of the temple. Eph_1:3-14 of this chapter constitute the most sustained and perfect act of praise that is found in the apostles letters. It is as though a door were suddenly opened in heaven; it shuts behind us, and earthly tumult dies away. The contrast between these two writings, following each other in the established order of the epistles, is singular and in some ways extreme. They are, respectively, the most combative and peaceful, the most impassioned and unimpassioned, the most concrete and abstract, the most human and divine amongst the great apostles writings.
Yet there is a fundamental resemblance and identity of character. The two letters are not the expression of different minds, but of different phases of the same mind. In the Paul of Galatians the Paul of Ephesians is latent; the contemplative thinker, the devout mystic, behind the ardent missionary and the masterly debater. Those critics who recognise the genuine apostle only in the four previous epistles and reject whatever does not conform strictly to their type, do not perceive how much is needed to make up a man like the apostle Paul. Without the inwardness, the brooding faculty, the power of abstract and metaphysical thinking displayed in the epistles of this group, he could never have wrought out the system of doctrine contained in those earlier writings, nor grasped the principles which he there applies with such vigour and effect. That so many serious and able scholars doubt, or even deny, St. Pauls authorship of this epistle on internal grounds and because of the contrast to which we have referred, is one of those phenomena which in future histories of religious thought will be quoted as the curiosities of a hypercritical age.
Let us observe some of the Pauline qualities that are stamped upon the face of this document. There is, in the first place, the apostles intellectual note, what has been well called his "passion for the absolute." St. Pauls was one of those minds, so discomposing to superficial and merely practical thinkers, which cannot be content with half-way conclusions. For every principle he seeks its ultimate basis; every line of thought he pushes to its furthest limits. His gospel, if he is to rest in it, must supply a principle of unity that will bind together all the elements of his mental world.
Hence, in contesting the Jewish claim to religious superiority on the ground of circumcision and the Abrahamic covenant, St. Paul developed in the epistle to the Galatians a religious philosophy of history; he arrived at a view of the function of the law in the education of mankind which disposed not only of the question at issue, but of all such questions. He established forever the principle of salvation by faith and of spiritual sonship to God. What that former argument effects for the history of revelation, is done here for the gospel in its relations to society and universal life. The principle of Christs headship is carried to its largest results. The centre of the Church becomes the centre of the universe. Gods plan of the ages is disclosed, ranging through eternity and embracing every form of being, and "gathering into one all things in the Christ." In Galatians and Romans the thought of salvation by Christ breaks through Jewish limits and spreads itself over the field of history; in Colossians and Ephesians the idea of life in Christ overleaps the barriers of time and human existence, and brings "things in heaven and things in earth and things beneath the earth" under its sway.
The second, historical note of original Paulinism we recognise in the writers "attitude towards Judaism." We should be prepared to stake the genuineness of the epistle on this consideration alone. The position and point of view of the Jewish apostle to the Gentiles are unique in history. It is difficult to conceive how any one but Paul himself, at any other juncture, could have represented the relation of Jew and Gentile to each other as it is put before us here. The writer is a Jew, a man nourished on the hope of Israel, {Eph_1:12} who had looked at his fellow-men across "the middle wall of partition". {Eph_2:14} In his view, the covenant and the Christ belong, in the first instance and as by birthright, to the men of Israel. They are "the near," who live hard by the city and house of God. The blessedness of the Gentile readers consists in the revelation that they are "fellow-heirs and of the same body and joint-partakers with us of the promise in Christ Jesus". {Eph_3:6} What is this but to say, as the apostle had done before, that the branches "of the naturally wild olive tree" were "against nature grafted into the good olive tree" and allowed to "partake of its root and fatness," along with "the natural branches," the children of the stock of Abraham who claimed it for "their own"; that "the men of faith are sons of Abraham" and "Abrahams blessing has come on the Gentiles through faith"? {Rom_11:16-24, Act_13:26, Gal_3:7, Gal_3:14} For our author this revelation has lost none of its novelty and surprise. He is in the midst of the excitement it has produced, and is himself its chief agent and mouthpiece. {Eph_3:1-9} This disclosure of Gods secret plans for the world overwhelms him by its magnitude, by the splendour with which it invests the Divine character, and the sense of his personal unworthiness to be entrusted with it. We utterly disbelieve that any later Christian writer could or would have personated the apostle and mimicked his tone and sentiments in regard to his vocation, in the way that the "critical" hypothesis assumes. The criterion of Erasmus is decisive:
Nemo potest Paulinum pectus effingere.
St. Pauls doctrine of "the cross" is admittedly his specific theological note. In the shameful sacrificial death of Jesus Christ he saw the instrument of mans release from the curse of the broken law; {Gal_3:10-13, 2Co_5:20-21, etc.} and through this knowledge the cross, which was the "scandal" of Saul the Pharisee, had become Pauls glory and its proclamation the business of his life. It is this doctrine, in its original strength and fulness, which lies behind such sentences as those of Eph_1:7, Eph_2:13, and Eph_5:2 : "We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses-brought nigh in the blood of Christ-an offering and sacrifice to God for an odour of sweet smell."
Another mark of the apostles hand, his specific spiritual note, we find in the "mysticism" that pervades the epistle and forms, in fact, its substance. "I live no longer: Christ lives in me." "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." {Gal_2:20, 1Co_6:17} In these sentences of the earlier letters we discover the spring of St. Pauls theology, lying in his own experience-"the sense of personal union through the Spirit with Christ Jesus." This was the deepest fact of Pauls consciousness. Here it meets us at every turn. More than twenty times the phrase "in Christ" or its equivalents recur, applied to Christian acts or states. It is enough to refer Eph_3:17, "that the Christ may make His dwelling in your hearts through faith," to show how profoundly this mysterious relationship is realised in this letter. No other New Testament writer conceived the idea in Pauls way, nor has any subsequent writer of whom we know made the like constant and original use of it. It was the habit of the apostles mind, the index of his innermost life. Kindred to this, and hardly less conspicuous, is his conception of "God in Christ" {2Co_5:19} saving and operating upon men, who, as we read here, "chose us in Christ before the worlds foundation- forgave us in Him-made us in Him to sit together in the heavenly places-formed us in Christ Jesus for good works."
The ethical note of the true Paulinism is the conception of the "new man" in Christ Jesus, whose sins were slain by His death, and who shares His risen life unto God. {Romans 6} From this idea, as from a fountainhead, the apostle in the parallel Colossian epistle {Colossians 3} deduces the new Christian morality. The temper and disposition of the believer, his conduct in all social duties and practical affairs are the expression of a "life hid with Christ in God." It is the identical "new man" of Romans and Colossians who presents himself as our ideal here, raised with Christ from the dead and "sitting with Him in the heavenly places." The newness of life in which he walks receives its impulse and direction from this exalted fellowship.
The characteristics of St. Pauls teaching which We have described-his logical thoroughness and finality, his peculiar historical, theological, spiritual, and ethical standpoint and manner of thought-are combined in the conception which is the specific note of this epistle, viz., its idea of "the Church" as the body of Christ, -or in other words, of "the new humanity" created in Him. This forms the centre of the circle of thought in which the writers mind moves; it is the meetingpoint of the various lines of thought that we have already traced. The doctrine of personal salvation wrought out in the great evangelical epistles terminates in that of social and collective salvation. A new and. precious title is conferred on Christ: He is "Saviour of the body," {Eph_5:23} i.e., of the corporate Christian community. "The Son of God who loved me and gave up Himself for me," becomes "the Christ" who "loved the Church and gave up Himself for her." "The new man" is no longer the individual, a mere transformed ego; he is the type and beginning of a new mankind. A perfect society of men, all sons of God in Christ, is being constituted around the cross, in which the old antagonisms are reconciled, the ideal of creation is restored, and a body is provided to contain the fulness of Christ, a holy temple which God inhabits in the Spirit. Of this edifice, with the cross for its centre and Christ Jesus for its corner-stone, Jew and Gentile form the material-"the Jew first," lying nearest to the site.
The apostle Paul necessarily conceived the reconstruction of humanity under the form of a reconciliation of Israel and the Gentiles. The catholicism we have here is Pauls catholicism of "Gentile engrafting"-not Clements, of "churchly order and uniformity"; nor Ignatius, of "monepiscopal rule." It is profoundly characteristic of this apostle, that in "the law" which had been to his own experience the barrier and ground of quarrel between the soul and God, "the strength of sin," he should come to see likewise the barrier between men and men, and the strength of the sinful enmity which distracted the Churches of his foundation. {Eph_2:14-16} The representation of the Church contained in this epistle is, therefore, by no means, new in its elements. Such texts as 1Co_3:16-17 ("Ye are Gods temple," etc.) and 1Co_12:12-27 (concerning the "one body and many members") bring us near to its actual expression. But the figures of the "body" and "temple" in these passages, had they stood alone, might be read as mere passing illustrations of the nature of Christian fellowship. Now they become proper designations of the Church, and receive their full significance. While in 1 Corinthians, moreover, these phrases do not look beyond the particular community addressed, in Ephesians they embrace the entire Christian society. This epistle signalises a great step forwards in the development of the apostles theology-perhaps we might say, the last step. The Pastoral epistles serve to put the final apostolic seal upon the theological edifice that is now complete. Their care is with the guarding and furnishing of the "great house" which our epistle is engaged in building. The idea of the Church is not, however, independently developed. Ephesians and Colossians are companion letters, -the complement and explanation of each other. Both "speak with regard to Christ and the Church"; both reveal the Divine "glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus." The emphasis of Ephesians falls on the former, of Colossians on the latter of these objects. The doctrine of the Person of Christ and that of the nature of the Church proceed with equal step. The two epistles form one process of thought.
Criticism has attempted to derive first one and then the other of the two from its fellow, thus, in effect, stultifying itself. Finally Dr. Holtzmann, in his "Kritik der Kolosser- und Epheserbriefe," undertook to show that each epistle was in turn dependent on the other. There is, Holtzmann says, a Pauline nucleus hidden in Colossians, which he has himself extracted. By its aid some ecclesiastic of genius in the second century composed the Ephesian epistle. He then returned to the brief Colossian writing of St. Paul, and worked it up, with his own Ephesian composition lying before him, into our existing epistle to the Colossians. This complicated and too ingenious hypothesis has not satisfied anyone except its author, and need not detain us here. But Holtzmann has at any rate made good, against his predecessors on the negative sides, the unity of origin of the two canonical epistles, the fact that they proceed from one mint and coinage. They are twin epistles, the offspring of a single birth in the apostles mind. Much of their subject matter, especially in the ethical section, is common to both. The glory of the Christ and the greatness of the Church are truths inseparable in the nature of things, wedded to each other. To the confession, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," His response ever is, "I will build my Church." The same correspondence exists between these two epistles in the dialectic movement of the apostles thought.
At the same time, there is a considerable difference between the two writings in point of style. M. Renan, who accepts Colossians from Pauls hand, and who admits that "among all the epistles bearing the name of Paul the epistle to the Ephesians is perhaps that which has been most anciently cited as a composition of the apostle of the Gentiles," yet speaks of this epistle as a "verbose amplification" of the other, "a commonplace letter, diffuse and pointless, loaded with useless words and repetitions, entangled and overgrown with irrelevances, full of pleonasms and obscurities."
In this instance Renans literary sense has deserted him. While Colossians is quick in movement, terse and pointed, in some places so sparing of words as to be almost hopelessly obscure, Ephesians from beginning to end is measured and deliberate, exuberant in language, and obscure, where it is so, not from the brevity, but from the length and involution of its periods. It is occupied with a few great ideas, which the author strives to set forth in all their amplitude and significance. Colossians is a letter of discussion; Ephesians of reflection. The whole difference of style lies in this. In the reflective passages of Colossians, as indeed in the earlier epistles, we find the stateliness of movement and rhythmical fulness of expression which in this epistle are sustained throughout. Both epistles are marked by those unfinished sentences and anacolutha, the grammatical inconsequence associated with close continuity of thought, which is a main characteristic of St. Pauls style. The epistle to the Colossians is like a mountain stream forcing its way through some rugged defile; that to the Ephesians is the smooth lake below, in which its chafed waters restfully expand. These sister epistles represent the moods of conflict and repose which alternated in St. Pauls mobile nature.
In general, the writings of this group, belonging to the time of the apostles imprisonment and advancing age, display less passion and energy, but a more tranquil spirit than those of the Jewish controversy. They are prison letters, the fruit of a time when the authors mind had been much thrown in upon itself: They have been well styled "the afternoon epistles"; being marked by the subdued and reflective temper natural to this period of life. Ephesians is, in truth, the typical representative of the third group of Pauls epistles, as Galatians is of the second. There is abundant reason to be satisfied that this letter came, as it purports to do, from "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through Gods will."
But that it was addressed to "the saints which are in Ephesus" is more difficult to believe. The apostle has "heard of the faith which prevails. amongst" his readers; he presumes that they "have heard of the Christ, and were taught in Him according as truth is in Jesus." He hopes that by "reading" this epistle they will "perceive his understanding in the mystery of Christ". {Eph_3:2-4} He writes somewhat thus to the Colossians and Romans, whom he had never seen; but can we imagine Paul addressing in this distant and Uncertain fashion his children in the faith? In Ephesus he had laboured "for the space of three whole years," {Act_20:31} longer than in any other city of the Gentile mission, except Antioch. His speech to the Ephesian elders at Miletus, delivered four years ago, was surcharged with personal feeling, full of pathetic reminiscence and the signs of interested acquaintance with the individual membership of the Ephesian Church. In the epistle such signs are altogether wanting. The absence of greetings and messages we could understand, these Tychicus might convey by word of mouth. But how the man who wrote the epistles to the Philippians and Corinthians could have composed this long and careful letter to his own Ephesian people without a single word of endearment or familiarity, and without the least allusion to his past intercourse with them, we cannot understand. It is in the destination that the only serious difficulty lies touching the authorship. Nowhere do we see more of "the apostle" and less of "the man" in St. Paul; nowhere more of "the" Church, and less of "this or that" particular church. It agrees with these internal indications that the local designation is wanting in the oldest Greek copies of the letter that are extant. The two great manuscripts of the fourth century, the Vatican and Sinaitic codices, omit the words "in Ephesus." Basil in the fourth century did not accept them, and says that "the old copies" were without them. Origen, in the beginning of the third century, seems to have known nothing of them. And Tertullian, at the end of the second century, while he condemns the heretic Marcion (who lived about fifty years earlier) for entitling the epistle "To the Laodiceans," quotes only the title against him, and not the text of the address, which he would presumably have done, had he read it in the form familiar to us. We are compelled to suppose, with Westcott and Hort and the textual critics generally, that these words form no part of the original address.
Here the "circular hypothesis" of Beza and Ussher comes to our aid. It is supposed that the letter was destined for a number of Churches in Asia Minor, which Tychicus was directed to visit in the course of the journey which took him to Colossi. Along with the letters for the Colossians and Philemon, he was entrusted with this more general epistle, intended for the Gentile Christian communities of the neighbouring region at large: During St. Pauls ministry at Ephesus, we are told that "all those that dwell in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks". {Act_19:10} In so large and populous an area, amongst the Churches founded at this time there were doubtless others beside those of the Lycus valley "which had not seen Pauls face in the flesh," some about which the apostle had less precise knowledge than he had of these through Epaphras and Onesimus, but for whom he was no less desirous that their "hearts should be comforted, and brought into all the wealth of the full assurance of the understanding in the knowledge of the mystery of God". {Col_2:1-2}
To which or how many of the Asian Churches Tychicus would be able to communicate the letter was, presumably, uncertain when it was written at Rome; and the designation was left open. Its conveyance by Tychicus {Eph_6:21-22} supplied the only limit to its distribution. Proconsular Asia was the richest and most peaceful province of the Empire, so populous that it was called "the province of five hundred cities." Ephesus was only the largest of many flourishing commercial and manufacturing towns.
At the close of his epistle to the Colossians St. Paul directs this Church to procure "from Laodicea," in exchange for their own, a letter which he is sending there. {Col_4:16} Is it possible that we have the lost Laodicean document in the epistle before us? So Ussher suggested; and though the assumption is not essential to his theory, it falls in with it very aptly. Marcion may, after all, have preserved a reminiscence of the fact that Laodicea, as well as Ephesus, shared in this letter. The conjecture is endorsed by Lightfoot, who says, writing on Col_4:16 : "There are good reasons for the belief that St. Paul here alludes to the so-called epistle to the Ephesians, which was in fact a circular letter, addressed to the principal Churches of proconsular Asia. Tychicus was obliged to pass through Laodicea on his way to Colossae, and would leave a copy there before the Colossian letter was delivered." The two epistles admirably supplement each other. The Apocalyptic letter "to the seven Churches which are in Asia," ranging from Ephesus to Laodicea, {Revelation 2,3} shows how much the Christian communities of this region had in common and how natural it would be to address them collectively. For the same region, with a yet wider scope, the "first catholic epistle of Peter" was destined, a writing that has many points of contact with this. Ephesus being the metropolis of the Asian Churches, and claiming a special interest in St. Paul, came to regard the epistle as specially her own. Through Ephesus, moreover, it was communicated to the Church in other provinces. Hence if came to pass that when Pauls epistles were gathered into a single volume and a title was needed for this along with the rest, "To the Ephesians" was written over it; and this reference, standing in the title, in course of time found its way into the text of the address. We propose to read this letter as "the general epistle of Paul to the Churches of Asia," or "to Ephesus and its daughter Churches."
But how are we to read the address, with the local definition wanting? There are two constructions open to us:
(1) We might suppose that a space was left blank in the original to be filled in afterwards by Tychicus with the names of the particular Churches to which he distributed copies, or to be supplied by the voice of the reader. But if that were so, we should have expected to find some trace of this variety of designation in the ancient witnesses. As it is, the documents either give Ephesus in the address, or supply no local name at all. Nor is there, so far as we are aware, any analogy in ancient usage for the proceeding suggested. Moreover, the order of the Greek words is against this supposition.
(2) We prefer, therefore, to follow Origen and Basil, with some modern exegetes, in reading the sentence straight on, as it stands in the Sinaitic and Vatican copies. It then becomes: "To the saints, who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus."
"The saints" is the apostles designation for Christian believers generally, as men consecrated to God in, Christ. {1Co_1:2} The qualifying phrase "those who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus," is admonitory. As Lightfoot says with reference to the parallel qualification in Col_1:2, "This unusual addition is full of meaning. Some members of the (Asian) Churches were shaken in their allegiance, even if they had not fallen from it. The apostle therefore wishes it to be understood that, when he speaks of the saints, he means those who are true and steadfast members of the brotherhood. In this way he obliquely hints at the defections" By this further definition "he does not directly exclude any, but he indirectly warns all." We are reminded that we are in the neighbourhood of the Colossian heresy. Beneath the calm tenor of this epistle, the ear catches an undertone of controversy. In Eph_4:14 and Eph_6:10-20 this undertone becomes clearly audible. We shall find the epistle end with the note of warning with which it begins.
The Salutation is according to St. Pauls established form of greeting.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv1–23 1, 2. Paul, an apostle. It was always the…
1, 2. Paul, an apostle. It was always the custom anciently to place the name of the writer at the beginning rather than at the end as with us. By the will of God. Emphasis is placed in most of Paul's epistles upon the fact that he was not an apostle by the appointment of man, but by the will of God. To the saints at Ephesus. All Christians were called saints in the early church. See the salutations of other Epistles. And to the faithful. The same as the saints. There is no article in the Greek before “faithful.” A literal translation is “To the saints dwelling in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus.”
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 15, 19 Eph_1:1. To the saints.—Dismiss the commonly accepted meaning. Not…
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Eph_1:1. To the saints.—Dismiss the commonly accepted meaning. Not men who by hard and rigorous methods have reached the heights where but few abide, but those who, as the elect of God, are separated from everything unholy and kept for God’s peculiar possession (1Pe_2:9). And faithful.—Sometimes the word may mean “believers,” sometimes “trust-worthy.” “The use of the adjective for the Christian brotherhood cannot be assigned rigidly either to the one meaning or the other. Its very comprehensiveness was in itself a valuable lesson” (Lightfoot).
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Eph_1:2. Grace … and peace.—The light-hearted Greek salutation was, “Rejoice”; the more sober Hebrew—our Lord’s own—was, “Peace be to you.” Here both unite.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Eph_1:1-2
Apostolic Salutation.
I. He declares the divine source of his authority.—“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God” (Eph_1:1). The faithful ambassador scans his commission with the utmost care, and is solicitous to clearly understand the will of his Sovereign. If he examines his own fitness for the office, it is only to be humbled under a sense of unworthiness, and to express surprise that he should be chosen to such a dignity and be entrusted with such powers. His supreme ambition is to sink his own personal predilections in the earnest discharge of his duty. Paul does not dilate on his own mental capabilities or spiritual endowments. He accepts his appointment to the apostleship as coming directly from the hand of God, and recognises the divine will as the source of righteousness and of all power to do good. This lofty conception of his call gave him unfaltering confidence in the truth he had to declare, inspired him with an ever-glowing zeal, rendered him immovable in the midst of defection and opposition, and willing to obliterate himself, so that the gospel committed to him might be triumphant. The true minister, in the onerous task of dealing with human doubt and sin, feels the need of all the strength and prestige conferred by the conscious possession of divine authority. He seeks not to advance his own interests or impose his own theories, but to interpret the mind of God to man and persuade to submission and obedience. The power that makes for righteousness has its root in the divine will.
II. He designates the sacred character of those he salutes.—“To the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus” (Eph_1:1). The Ephesian saints were made so by their faith in Christ Jesus. They were not saints because Paul called them so. Sanctity is not the result of human volition, nor can it be created by a college of cardinals. “Many saints have been canonised who ought to have been cannonaded.” Sanctity is the gift of God, and is bestowed on those who believe in Christ Jesus and maintain their allegiance by continued faith in him. They are holy so long as they are faithful. The saints of God! “Think,” says Farrar, “of the long line of heroes of faith in the olden times: of the patriarchs—Enoch the blameless, Noah the faithful, Abraham the friend of God; of the sweet and meditative Isaac, the afflicted and wrestling Jacob; of Moses, the meekest of men; of brave judges, glorious prophets, patriotic warriors, toiling apostles; of the many martyrs who would rather die than lie; of the hermits who fled from the guilt and turmoil of life into the solitude of the wilderness; of the missionaries—St. Paul, Columban, Benedict, Boniface, Francis Xavier, Schwartz, Eliot, Henry Martyn, Coleridge, Patteson; of the reformers who cleared the world of lies, like Savonarola, Huss, Luther, Zwingli, Wesley, Whitefield; of wise rulers, like Alfred, Louis, Washington, and Garfield; of the writers of holy books, like Thomas-à-Kempis, Baxter, Bunyan, Samuel Rutherford, Jeremy Taylor; of the slayers of monstrous abuses, like Howard and Wilberforce; of good bishops, like Hugo of Avalon, Fénélon, and Berkeley; of good pastors, like Oberlin, Fletcher of Madeley, Adolphe Monod, and Felix Neff; of all true poets, whether sweet and holy, like George Herbert, Cowper, Keble, and Longfellow, or grand and mighty, like Dante and Milton. These are but few of the many who have reflected the glory of their Master Christ, and who walk with Him in white robes, for they are worthy.”
III. He supplicates the bestowal of the highest blessings.—“Grace be to you, and peace” (Eph_1:2). Grace and peace have a divine source. Grace is the rich outflow of God’s goodness, made available for man through the redeeming work of Christ. There is sometimes the thought that grace implies God’s passing by sin. But no, quite the contrary; grace supposes sin to be so horribly bad a thing that God cannot tolerate it. Were it in the power of man, after being unrighteous and evil, to patch up his ways and mend himself so as to stand before God, there would then be no need of grace. The very fact of the Lord’s being gracious shows sin to be so evil a thing that man, being a sinner, is utterly ruined and hopeless, and nothing but free grace can meet his case. This grace God is continually supplying. Grace, like manna, will rot if kept overnight. “Wind up thy soul,” says George Herbert, “as thou dost thy watch at night.” Leave no arrears from day to day. Give us this day’s food; forgive us this day’s sins. Peace is first peace with God, with whom the soul was at enmity; then peace of conscience, troubled on account of repeated sins, and peace with all men. All our best wishes for the welfare of others are included in the all-comprehensive blessings of grace and peace.
Lessons.—
1. The will of God is the highest authority for Christian service.
2. The saintly character is the outgrowth of a practical faith.
3. Grace and peace describe the rich heritage of the believer.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Eph_1:1-2. Paul’s Introduction to the Epistle.—The design of this epistle is more fully to instruct the Ephesians in the nature of that gospel they had received, to guard them against certain errors to which they were exposed from the influence and example of unbelieving Jews and Gentiles, and to inculcate upon them the importance of a conversation becoming their faith and profession. It contains the substance of the gospel.
I. Paul here calls himself an apostle of Jesus Christ.—The word “apostle” signifies a messenger sent on some particular business. Jesus Christ is called an Apostle because He was sent of God to instruct and redeem mankind. Paul and others are called apostles because they were sent of Christ to teach the doctrines they had received from Him. To confirm this commission, as well as to give their ministry success, Christ, according to His promise, wrought with them and established their words with signs following.
1. Paul was an apostle by the will of God.—He received not his call or commission from man; nor was he, as Matthias was, chosen to his apostleship by men; but he was called by Jesus Christ, who in person appeared to him for this end that He might send him among the Gentiles, and by God the Father, who revealed His Son in him, and chose him that he should know His will and be a witness of the truth unto all men.
2. He was called of God by revelation.—It was not a secret revelation known only to himself, like the revelation on which enthusiasts and impostors ground their pretensions, but a revelation made in the most open and public manner, attended with a voice from heaven and a light which outshone the sun at noonday, and exhibited in the midst of a number of people to whom he could appeal as witnesses of the extraordinary scene. The great business of Paul and the other apostles was to diffuse the knowledge of the gospel and plant Churches in various parts of the world.
II. Paul directs this epistle to the saints and faithful.—The phrases denote they had been called out of the world and separated from others that they might be a peculiar people unto God. The religion we profess contains the highest motives to purity of heart and life. If, content with a verbal profession of and external compliance with this religion, we regard iniquity in our hearts, we are guilty of the vilest prevarication, and our religion, instead of saving us, will but plunge us the deeper into infamy and misery. That which is the visible ought to be the real character of Christians.
III. The apostle expresses his fervent desire that these Ephesians may receive the glorious blessings offered in the gospel.—
1. Grace. Pardon is grace, for it is the remission of a deserved punishment. Eternal life is grace, for it is a happiness of which we are utterly unworthy. The influences of the divine Spirit are grace, for they are first granted without any good disposition on our part to invite them, they are continued even after repeated oppositions, they prepare us for that world of glory for which we never should qualify ourselves.
2. Peace.—By this we understand that peace of mind which arises from a persuasion of our interest in the favour of God. Our peace with God is immediately connected with our faith in Christ. Our peace of mind is connected with our knowledge of the sincerity of our faith. “If our heart condemn us not, we have confidence toward God.” The way to enjoy peace is to increase in all holy dispositions and to abound in every good work. If the apostle wished grace and peace to Christians, surely they should feel some solicitude to enjoy them.—J. Lathrop, D.D.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 22 1. “Apostle” is a Greek word, and means “sent…
1. “Apostle” is a Greek word, and means “sent forth.” We see here that Christ sends the apostle, through the will of God.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Eph 1:1-2
Eph 1:1-2
In these words we have—
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I. Paul’s description of himself: "an Apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God." He was not appointed to his office through the intervention of the Church or of those who had been Apostles before him; his call came direct from heaven. Much less had he dared to undertake his great work at the impulse of his own zeal for the honour of Christ and the redemption of men. He was an Apostle "through the will of God." The expression is characteristic of the Pauline theology; Paul believed that the Divine will is the root and origin of all Christian righteousness and blessedness. And this is the secret of a strong, and calm, and effective Christian life. Our spiritual activity reaches its greatest intensity when we are so filled with the glory of the Divine righteousness, the Divine love, and the Divine power that we are conscious only of God, and all thought of ourselves is lost in Him.
II. Having described himself, Paul goes on to describe those to whom the Epistle is written. They are "the saints which are at Ephesus and the faithful in Christ Jesus." In the early days all Christians were saints. This title did not attribute any personal merit to them; it simply recalled their prerogatives and their obligations. Whenever they were so called they were reminded that God had made them His own. They were holy because they belonged to Him. According to Paul’s conception, every Christian man was a temple, a sacrifice, a priest; his whole life was a Sabbath; he belonged to an elect race; he was the subject of an invisible and Divine kingdom; he was a saint. The title implies no personal merit; it is the record of a great manifestation of God’s condescension and love.
III. The closing words of the second verse, "Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ," belong to too lofty a region to be regarded as merely an expression of courtesy and goodwill. I think that we must call them a benediction. If the true ideal of the Christian life were fulfilled, men would be conscious that whenever we came near to them Christ came near; when we invoked on men the Divine favour and the Divine peace, the invocation would be His rather than ours: it would be spoken in His name, not in our own, and what we spoke on earth would be confirmed and made good in heaven. We have ceased to bless each other because our consciousness of union with Him who alone can make the blessing effective has become faint and dim.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 11.
Reference: Eph 1:1, Eph 1:2.—Homilist, 4th series, vol. i., p. 213; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. viii., p. 59.
Eph 1:3
Of the spiritual blessings which we have in Christ we notice—
I. Election. God has chosen us not only that we may be saved from eternal destruction, not only that we may be happy for ever in heaven, but He has chosen us for this special purpose: that we should be holy and without blame before Him. We cannot have before us a nobler, grander object to contemplate than that it is God’s purpose to make us holy and without blame before Him, to conform us in spirit and in life to the image of His dear Son.
II. Predestination and adoption. Whatever may be said about all human beings being the children of God, I am inclined to think that there is more of sentiment than of sound Scriptural truth in that notion, for I find it continually set forth in the New Testament that there is a connection between faith in Christ and our becoming children of God. "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus," says the Apostle Paul, and thus it is that we are adopted and received into the adoption of sons.
III. Redemption. Much as this doctrine is derided at the present time, the fact that He bought us at such a price as His own precious life makes our redemption and eternal life so absolutely secure.
IV. Forgiveness of sins. Christ has not redeemed us from the curse of the law that He might afterwards reproach us for our sins. There comes with the redemption the forgiveness. There comes with the act of love that saved us from the curse of the law the act of oblivion, in which all sin is forgiven and forgotten.
H. Stowell Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. viii., p. 344.
Eph 1:3
(with Eph 1:20; Eph 2:6; Eph 3:10; Eph 6:12)
In the Heavenlies.
I. In the heavenlies we have (1) a blessed home. (2) We are quickened together and raised up with Christ. As a result of His thus quickening us together with Christ and raising us up together, God makes us sit together at His own right hand. This involves elevation over all created powers and a share in His absolute sovereignty.
II. The situation of believers in the heavenlies, thus blessed and thus exalted, naturally draws upon them the notice of other beings, of other intelligences, good or evil, who may be capable of understanding what is going on in the heavenlies. The heavenlies now put on the aspect of a theatre or place of exhibition in the view of holy angels, the unfallen inhabitants of heaven. By the Church they have made known to them the manifold wisdom of God.
III. In chap. Eph 6:12 another change or metamorphosis befalls the heavenlies. Instead of a spectacle, there is a strife; instead of an exhibition, a fight. The heavenlies now appear as a field of battle. The heavenlies are not now, any more than the heavenlies before the Fall, secure from the invasion of the spoiler and the foe. Our enemies are the world rulers of the dark and disordered system of things that now prevails among men. They follow us into our retreat. Resenting our escape from their dominion, bitterly grudging our being blessed by God and exalted in Christ, in the heavenlies, they would fain scale the mountain of our hope and joy in the Lord. Their temptations and assaults now are not carnal, but spiritual. Be not unduly afraid of them. Be not ignorant of their devices. Beware of meeting them in their own domain, in the world of whose darkness they are rulers.
R. S. Candlish, Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, p. 1.
Eph 1:3.
I. Men, in the midst of the many conflicting manifestations of God, are trying to find the supreme revelation which will harmonise all the crossing rays in its own serene and fadeless light. This supreme revelation we find in Christ. The God whom Jesus obeyed, the Father whom Jesus loved, is the God and Father we today are striving to find that we may love Him too. Every Godlike man gives a new revelation of God to man. "The God of Abraham" was a new conception of God that made primitive religion richer and better. The personal appropriation of God, so common in Hebrew piety, does not make the world at large poorer, but richer, by enlarging human faith and by sanctifying human experience. Every flower that blows, every bird that sings in summer, may claim the sunshine as its own. The violet can say, "My sun," without trespassing on the rights of the daisy; the butterfly can say, "My sun," without taking anything away from the lark. Each leaf and plant, each fern and flower, is a fresh revelation of the same sun—a new incarnation of the one great mind in nature. So is every Godlike man showing a new phase of the Divine character.
II. The God of Jesus Christ can do no wrong. The eternity after time is done with will be as stainless as the eternity before time was. Time and sin are discords leading into deeper and sweeter symphonies. Christ saw hell and loved God; He knew that hell was not a land lying outside the boundaries of the kingdom of righteousness. Christ did not explain evil; He simply left it beneath His feet and went home. The explanation of sin comes only to those who have conquered sin.
H. Elvet Lewis, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 390.
References: Eph 1:3.—Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 130: J. Stalker, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 127.
Eph 1:3-4
I. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." These words recall the joy and triumph of the ancient Psalms. They read as if Paul was intending to write a song of happy thanksgiving. He attributes to Christ the whole development of his spiritual life. The larger knowledge of God and of the ways of God, which came to him from year to year, had come from Christ; and he felt sure that whatever fresh discoveries of God might come to him would come from Christ. Faith, hope, joy, peace, patience, courage, zeal, love for God, love for man—he had found them all in Christ. It was on the ground of his own personal experience that he was able to tell men that the riches of Christ are unsearchable.
II. I need hardly remind you that Calvinism has derived its strongest Scriptural support from the interpretation which has been placed upon certain passages in the writings of the Apostle Paul. On the first few verses of this Epistle the Calvinistic theory of election and predestination has been supposed to rest as on foundations of eternal granite. It is true that the technical terms of the Calvinistic theology are to be found in the Epistles of Paul, but they do not stand for the Calvinistic ideas. When Paul speaks of God electing men, choosing them, foreordaining them, predestinating them, He means something very different from what Calvinism means when it uses the same words. Calvinism teaches that by the decree of God some men are foreordained to everlasting death; Paul teaches that "it is the will of God that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth." Calvinism teaches that "neither are any other redeemed by Christ but the elect only"; Paul teaches that Christ gave Himself a ransom for all. According to the Calvinistic conception, some men who are still children of wrath, even as the rest, are among the elect, and will therefore some day become children of God. That is a mode of speech foreign to Paul’s thought; according to Paul, no man is elect except he is in Christ. We are all among the non-elect until we are in Him. But once in Christ, we are caught in the current of the eternal purposes of the Divine love; we belong to the elect race: all things are ours; we are the children of God and heirs of His glory.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on Ephesians, p. 25.
References: Eph 1:3, Eph 1:4.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix., No. 1738. Eph 1:3-6.—Homilist, 4th series, vol. i., p. 272. Eph 1:4, Eph 1:5.—Ibid., 3rd series, vol. viii., p. 202. Eph 1:5.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii., No. 360; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 102; J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. v., p. 373.
Eph 1:5-6
Regeneration and Sonship in Christ.
We have now to consider that original and central Divine purpose which explains and includes all that the infinite love of God has done for our race already, all that the infinite love of God will do for us through the endless ages beyond death. God "foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself."
I. "Through Jesus Christ." Our Lord is always represented as being, in the highest sense and in a unique sense, the Son of God. He is a Servant and something more. There is an ease, a freedom, a grace, about His doing of the will of God, which can belong only to a son. There is nothing constrained in His moral and spiritual perfection; it is not the result of art and painstaking. He was born to it, as we say; He does the will of God as a child does the will of his father: naturally, as a matter of course, almost without thought. The character of His communion with His Father confirms this impression. There is no irreverent familiarity, but there is no trace of fear or even of wonder. It is plain that He lived in the very light of God, saw God as no saint had ever seen Him; but He was not subdued or overawed by the vision. Prophets had fallen to the ground when the Divine glory was revealed to them; but Christ stands calm and erect. A subject may lose self-possession in the presence of his prince, but not a son.
II. This adoption of which Paul speaks is something more than a mere legal and formal act, conveying certain high prerogatives. We are called the sons of God because we are really made His sons by a new and supernatural birth. In some the change is immediate, decisive, and apparently complete; in others it is extremely gradual, and may for a long time be hardly discernible. Look at these Ephesian Christians. The Apostle has to tell them that they must put away falsehood and speak the truth; that they must give up thieving, and foul talk, and covetousness, and gross sensual sin. He addresses them as saints. They were regenerate, but yet in some of them the moral effects of regeneration were very incomplete; the change which regeneration was ultimately certain to produce in their moral life had only begun, and it was checked and hindered by a thousand hostile influences.
III. What God has done for us is "to the praise of the glory of His grace"; and the Apostle adds, "which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved." With the infinite suggestiveness of the last word Paul seems to have been content. Christ dwells for ever in the infinite love of God, and as we are in Christ, the love of God for Christ is in a wonderful manner ours.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 40.
Eph 1:5-10
The Final Restoration of all Things.
There are several passages in the New Testament—and this is one of them—which make it clear that the Divine mercy is ultimately to achieve a complete triumph over misery and moral evil; and these passages, if they stand alone, might give us the impression that all who in any age, in any land, in any world, have erred and strayed from God are to be brought back by the Good Shepherd to the flock and to the fold.
I. But this Epistle, like the other documents contained in the New Testament, was not written for persons who were uninstructed in the Christian faith. If anything is clear about the teaching of Christ and His Apostles it is that they warned men not to reject the Divine mercy and so become irrevocable exiles from God’s presence and joy. They assumed that some would be guilty of this supreme crime and would be doomed to this supreme woe. Some men will inherit eternal life; some men will be punished with the second death. When therefore Paul spoke of God’s purpose to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth, the Ephesian Christians would not misunderstand his meaning. It would be understood that while those who had incurred irrevocable exclusion from the life of God were to receive the just punishment of their sin and to perish, the rest of the moral universe was to be organised into a perfect unity for eternal ages of righteousness and glory.
II. The universe was created to reach its perfection in Christ, and the eternal thought of God has been moving through countless ages of imperfection, development, pain, and conflict towards this great end. Crossed, resisted, defied, apparently thwarted, by moral evil, the Divine purpose has remained steadfast, has never been surrendered. Its energy has been wonderfully revealed in the incarnation and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Its final triumph is secure. God will "sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth." In Him the discords of the universe will be resolved into an eternal harmony; its conflicts will end in golden ages of untroubled peace; it will find God, and in finding God will find eternal unity and blessedness. What we hope for in the endless future is a still more complete participation in whatever knowledge and love of God, whatever righteousness, whatever joy, may exist in any province of the created universe. Race is no longer to be isolated from race, or world from world. A power, a wisdom, a holiness, a rapture, of which a solitary soul, a solitary world, would be incapable, are to be ours through the gathering together in one of all things in Christ.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 90.
Reference: Eph 1:6.—Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 267; Ibid., Sermons, vol. viii., No. 471; vol. xvi., No. 958; vol. xxix., No. 1731; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 95. Eph 1:6, Eph 1:7.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 93.
Eph 1:7
The Forgiveness of Sins.
I. The Apostolic doctrine of the Atonement rests on Christ’s own teaching. To understand this doctrine it is necessary to have a clear conception of what is meant by the forgiveness of sins. (1) It is not a change in our minds towards God, but a change in God’s mind towards us. (2) It must not be confounded with peace of conscience. It is clearly one thing for God to be at peace with us and quite a different thing for us to be at peace with ourselves. (3) There is another possible error. We must not suppose that as soon as God forgives us we escape at once from the painful and just consequences of our sins. The sins may be forgiven, and yet many of the penalties which they have brought upon us may remain.
II. What is it then for God to forgive sins? (1) When God forgives men, His resentment ceases. He actually remits our sin. Our responsibility for it ceases. The guilt of it is no longer ours. That He should be able to give us this release is infinitely more wonderful than that He should be able to kindle the fires of the sun and to control through age after age the courses of the stars. (2) He can forgive sin because He is God. Sin is a violation of the eternal law of righteousness, and that law is neither above God nor below God. The eternal law of righteousness is one with the eternal life and will of God. When His resentment against us ceases, the eternal law of righteousness ceases to be hostile to us. The shadow which our sins have projected across our life, and which lengthens with lengthening years, passes away. We look back upon the sins which God has forgiven, and we condemn them still, but the condemnation does not fall upon ourselves, for God, who is the living law of righteousness, condemns us no longer.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 52.
The Riches of God’s Grace.
It is quite clear from the whole teaching of the New Testament that faith—faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—is the critical act which determines the eternal destiny of all to whom the everlasting God in Christ is made known. Penitence for sin may be most bitter, and yet sin may remain unforgiven. Prayer may be most passionate, and yet the soul may find no rest. The endeavour to break away from old courses of evil may be sincere and earnest, and yet be altogether unavailing. Forgiveness is not granted to us, nor the gift of eternal life, until we trust in God to save us through Jesus Christ our Lord.
I. The riches of God’s grace are illustrated by the nature and cause of those evils from which God is willing to redeem us. All the evils of our condition, from which God is eager to save us, are the result of our own fault. We have sinned, and the sin is regarded by God with deep and intense abhorrence. It is to the guilty, and not merely to the unfortunate, that God offers redemption. It is to the guiltiest as well as to those whose sins have been less flagrant, and thus He shows the riches of His grace.
II. Again, the riches of His grace are illustrated in what He has done to effect our redemption. "We have redemption through the blood of Christ." If Christ had descended and declared that God was ready to be at peace with us we should have had infinite reason to speak of the riches of God’s grace; but He came unasked. The price of our redemption has already been paid. We have not to entreat God to redeem us; He has provided for our redemption, and thus He has illustrated the riches of His grace.
III. Again, the condition on which God offers salvation illustrates the riches of His grace. If I were to speak with strict accuracy, I might speak of the absence of all conditions, for it is a free gift, and the only condition is that we should receive it. As Peter rose at the touch of the angel and found that his fetters were gone, and that the prison doors were open, we have only to rise up free.
R. W. Dale, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 691.
The Forgiveness of Sins and the Death of Christ.
The two truths which Paul affirms in the text are in a sense equally mysterious; but the first may be more accessible than the second. He says, first, that we have forgiveness of our trespasses in Christ, and, secondly, that we have the forgiveness of our trespasses in Christ through His blood.
I. We are assisted to approach the first truth by what he has said in the earlier verses of this chapter. The eternal springs of the Divine life of the human race are in Christ. Whatever strength, and wisdom, and blessedness, and glory are possible to us are possible through Him and through our union with Him. Christ’s eternal righteousness, His eternal relationship to the Father, the Father’s delight in Him, are the origin of all the greatness for which the human race was created. It was from Christ, according to the Divine idea of the race, that we were to receive all things. Every spiritual blessing was conferred upon the race in Him.
II. But what special relation can be discovered between the death of Christ and the remission of sins? (1) In Christ we have found the ideal righteousness of the race. Shall we be surprised if we also find in Christ the ideal submission of the race to the justice of the Divine resentment against sin? His eternal righteousness made it possible for us to be righteous, for we were created to live in His life: His voluntary endurance of agony, spiritual desertion, and death made it possible for us to consent from our very heart to the justice of God’s condemnation of our sin. In another sense than that in which the words are used by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "He was made perfect through suffering." (2) The death of Christ has another effect which constitutes it the reason and ground of our forgiveness. His death is the death of sin in all who are one with Him. (3) The death of Christ was an act in which there was a revelation of the righteousness of God which must otherwise have been revealed in the infliction of the penalty of sin on the human race.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 68.
In Paul’s idea the redemption in Christ stands out as something altogether unique, enshrined in distinctive grandeur. The definite article is used—"in whom," he says, "we have the redemption"—the one great deliverance of sinful men. That redemption is procured for us through "His blood," and it consists in "the forgiveness of sins."
I. The New Testament nowhere represents God as a Father only. A Father of infinite love and tenderness He is; it is our Lord’s supreme revelation of Him; but is He not Sovereign and Magistrate as well? If His words are words of infinite love, are they not also words of inflexible holiness? The word "redemption" is strictly a legal word. It refers to penalty, not to mere moral influence. It is an act of grace on the part of Him against whom we have sinned, but founded on principles of righteousness.
II. It is clear that Christ did not suffer to appease any implacable feeling in God, to incline God to save. Every representation of Scripture is of God’s yearning pity and love. Christ, a holy and loving Man, realised what the sin of His brother-man was—sin against the loving Father, sin that filled the soul with evil; and the realisation agonised Him, the pure, the holy, Man and Brother. Was not this bearing human sin? Feeling all this anguish for others’ sin, the anguish that they should have felt, that was the natural consequence of sin. And was not this a sacrifice for sin, a homage to righteousness, a manifestation of the inviolability of holiness, of the inevitable misery of sin, the satisfaction of a great principle, "magnifying the law and making it honourable"? "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Have we not here the key to the holiness, the love, and the profound moral philosophy of Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice?
H. Allon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxiii., p. 104.
Eph 1:7
(with Col 1:14)
What we have in Christ Jesus is here indicated by two phrases or forms of expression, which explain and define one another. The redemption through His blood is the forgiveness of sins; the forgiveness of sins is the redemption through His blood.
I. This limits the meaning of the term "redemption." It is restricted by the qualifying clause, "through His blood," and it is restricted also by the explanatory addition, "the forgiveness of sins." The transaction is wholly and exclusively an act and exercise of the Divine sovereignty.
II. The forgiveness of sins is the redemption through Christ’s blood. The statement or definition thus reversed is significant and important. It is not the simple utterance of a sentence, frankly forgiving. It is that, no doubt; but it is something more. There is the offended Father Himself providing that the irreversible sentence of law and justice lying upon His rebellious children shall have fitting and sufficient execution upon the head of His own well-beloved Son, who is willing to take their place; so that they may come forth free, no longer under condemnation, but righteous in His righteousness and sons in His sonship. This is the redemption through the blood of Christ. And this is what we have when we have the forgiveness of sins, this and nothing short of this. It is something more than impunity, something more than indulgence, something very different from either impunity or indulgence, and indeed the opposite of both.
III. We have this great benefit in Christ. The gift of God held out freely to the acceptance of all the guilty alike, the gift of God, His free gift, is Christ, and not Christ as the medium or channel through which the redemption or forgiveness reaches us, but Christ having in Himself the redemption and the forgiveness.
R. S. Candlish, Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, p. 18.
References: Eph 1:7.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 334; Ibid., Sermons, vol. vi., No. 295; vol. xxvi., No. 1555. Eph 1:7-14—Homilist, 4th series, vol. i., p. 337. Eph 1:9, Eph 1:10.—F. H. Williams, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 262; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., pp. 85, 225.
Eph 1:9-11
Christ the Justification of a Suffering World.
Such words as these of St. Paul spring out of that first bewilderment of joy which belongs to the sense of discovery. Christ is still a newly discovered wonder, and the wonder of the newness still fascinates, still overwhelms. What, then, is the mystery of God’s will in gathering together all in one in Christ? Why was the Incarnation the true and only secret, the fit and only instrument? What did it actually do? Why was it such an immense relief to St. Paul?
I. Let me take it very broadly. What is the primary plan of God as we see it in nature? For this is the plan that Christ came to fulfil. We gaze and wonder at the terrific process of creation; and if we ask in awe and amazement, What is the end of all this? What is the purpose to be achieved? we are told, "Man." Man is the final achievement in which all this preparation issues; man is worth all this infinite toil, this agelong effort, this endless struggle, this thousandfold death. He is the justification; it is all very good since it all rises up into his crowning endowment. We turn to look at man, then, man as this world’s fulfilment. What has he done to be worth it all?
II. The one nation in all the world which discovered the permanent purpose of God in history; the one nation which succeeded in finding a path through its own disasters, so that its own ruin only threw into clearer light the principles of God’s ordained fulfilment—this unique nation pronounced that the fulfilment, the justifying purpose, was to be found in holiness of spirit, the union of man with God, whose image he is. Accept this as man’s end, and no destruction appals, no despair overwhelms, for this is the higher life, which is worth all the deaths that the lower can die; this is the new birth, which would make all the anguish of the travailing be remembered no more. But to know the secret was one thing; to achieve its fulfilment was another. The one possible end— the achievement of holiness—was itself impossible to the only people who recognised it as their end.
III. The holiness of God incarnate in the flesh of this labouring humanity, the holy image of God’s perfect righteousness taking upon Himself the whole agony of man, dying the death which justifies all death—but it turns death itself, by the honourable way of sacrifice, into the instrument of the higher inheritance, into the sacrament of righteousness, into the mystery of holiness, into the pledge of perfect peace—this, and this only, makes a consummation by which the effort of God’s creation achieves an end; this and this only, is a secret and a victory worthy of the merciful God in whom we trust. I need not spend many words on the practical application of this. It is practical enough sometimes just to draw out and study God’s truth; and if we meditate on it, it will enforce on us its own applications. Only let us seek to realise that we are saved only by being well-pleasing to God; and we are well-pleasing only if He can recognise in us the fruit and crown of all this long travailing, the satisfaction of all this immense effort of creation; it is the holiness of Christ.
H. Scott Holland, Logic and Life, p. 81.
References: Eph 1:10.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. x., p. 121. Eph 1:11.—R. Thomas, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 86; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 215; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 30. Eph 1:11-14.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 456.
Eph 1:11-15
The Holy Spirit the Seal of God’s Heritage and the Earnest of our Inheritance.
I. In the early Church the access of the Spirit of God to a man was commonly associated with the mysterious gift of tongues, with the power of prophecy, or with other manifestations of a miraculous kind. It seems to be a law of the Divine action that the beginning of a new movement in the religious history of mankind should be signalised by supernatural wonders which bear emphatic testimony to the new forces that are revealing themselves in the spiritual order and illustrate their nature. These wonders gradually cease, but the loftier powers of which they are only the visible symbols remain. The miraculous manifestations of the Divine Spirit have passed away, but it was the promise of Christ that the Spirit should remain with us for ever.
II. That for the most part we are so indifferent to the presence of the Spirit of God is infinitely surprising. We repeat in another form the sin of insensibility of which the Jewish people were guilty when our Lord was visibly among them. The past was sacred to them, but they were so completely under its control that they failed to recognise the nobler disclosures of the righteousness and power and love of God to themselves. And is it not the same with us? We look back upon the days when the Son of God was teaching in the Temple and in the cornfields and on the hills of Galilee; and we feel in our hearts that those were the days in which heaven and earth met, and in which God was near to man. The presence of the Spirit, which Christ Himself declared was to be something greater than His own presence, was to bring clearer light and firmer strength and completer access into the kingdom of God, does not fill us with wonder, with hope, with exulting thankfulness.
III. Paul has spoken of us in ver. 11 as being God’s heritage; in ver. 14 we are described as anticipating an inheritance for ourselves. Our hopes are infinite. If by His Spirit God dwells in us now, we shall dwell in God for ever; and His Spirit dwells in us that He may redeem us completely from all sin and infirmity and raise us to the power and perfection and blessedness of the Divine kingdom.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 109.
References: Eph 1:13.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x., No. 592; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 4; J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 61.
Eph 1:13-14
I. The character of the inheritance. The teaching of the passage is that heaven is likest the selectest moments of devotion that a Christian has on earth. If you want to know most really and most truly what that "rest which remaineth for the people of God" is, think of what the fruits of God’s working in your hearts have already been, and expand and glorify these into "an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection." Heaven is the perfecting of the life of the Spirit begun here, and the loftiest attainments of that life here are but the beginnings and infantile movements of immature beings.
II. We gather from the passage some thoughts with regard to the true grounds of certainty that we shall ultimately possess the fulness of the inheritance. The true ground for certainly lies in this: that you have the Spirit in your heart, operating its own likeness and moulding you, sealing you after its own stamp and image. This idea is a very grand and fruitful one. There are many grounds on which, as I think, this principle rests: that the present possession of this Holy Spirit is the true certainty of the full possession hereafter. (1) The very fact of such a relation between man and God is itself the great assurance of immortality and everlasting life. (2) The characteristics that are produced by this Holy Spirit’s indwelling, both in their perfectness and their imperfection, are the great guarantee of the inheritance being ours. (3) The Holy Spirit in a man’s heart makes him desire and believe in the inheritance.
A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester, p. 42.
References: Eph 1:13, Eph 1:14.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii., No. 358; vol. xxii., No. 1284; E. C. Hall, Sermons, 1st series, p. 238; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. i., p. 315; Ibid., vol. vii., p. 163; H. W. Beecher, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 225; A. Maclaren, Sermons in Union Chapel, Manchester, p. 47. Eph 1:14.—Ibid., A Year’s Ministry, p. 233; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 202. Eph 1:15.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 275.
Eph 1:15-17
The Illumination of the Spirit.
I. The Apostle’s prayer raises the whole group of questions which are connected with the two great words "inspiration" and "revelation." These words represent two very different things. Revelations may come to men who are not inspired; and men may be inspired who are not entrusted with any new revelations of the Divine thought and will. The whole life of Christ was a revelation. His miracles were revelations of the power and pity of God. But all the men that saw Christ’s miracles were not inspired, nor all the men who were touched by His goodness, or who trembled while listening to His menaces.
II. To the Apostles inspiration was given in a very remarkable measure. They were appointed by the Lord Jesus Christ to lay the foundations of the Christian Church; they had authority to teach all nations in His name; later ages were to learn His mind from their lips. Theirs was a position of unique responsibility, and their qualifications were unique, for in the Divine order the measures of human duty and the measures of strength conferred for the discharge of it are always equal. But in kind the inspiration of the Apostles was the same as that which Paul prayed might be granted to the Christians at Ephesus, the same as that which we ourselves may hope to receive from God. We should never be afraid to accept the infinite grace of God. In Luther’s time men were afraid that the doctrine of justification by faith would corrupt the morals of the Church by relaxing the motives to righteousness. Luther preached the doctrine which many sagacious theologians regarded with dismay, and it ennobled and invigorated the morals of half Europe. A similar courage in accepting and asserting the inspiration possible to all Christians would not lessen, but confirm, the authority of prophets and psalmists, Evangelists and Apostles. When the spirit of wisdom and revelation is granted to us, the eyes of our heart, to use Paul’s phrase in the next verse, are enlightened, our own eyes, and we see the glory of God. Apart from this illumination no true knowledge of God is possible to man.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on Ephesians, p. 128.
References: Eph 1:15-22.—H.P.Hughes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 248. Eph 1:17.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 331. Eph 1:17, Eph 1:18.—A. J. Parry, Phases of Truth, p. 58.
Eph 1:18
God’s Hope in His Children.
The Apostle speaks of the hope of God in His children as of the hope of a Father; and what such a hope may include let us now proceed to inquire.
I. Foremost of all is the hope that the children will walk in fellowship with Himself, reciprocating His love, receiving and retaining His teaching, and drinking in His spirit. He hopes that we will never leave Him again, that we will always wait upon Him, that we will always respond to His will, and that we will always be aiming to be perfect as He is perfect.
II. Very closely connected with such feelings is the hope that the child will grow in every grace and in every power for good. He would not have us continue to be babes. He sets before us the example of the First-begotten, who grew in wisdom, and in stature, and in favour with God and man.
III. Once more, is it not a father’s hope that his child may be in the family a brother to the rest, and in the world a man of usefulness? And so is the Divine hope in our calling. We are adopted as sons, that together we may form one large, loving, and united family, to bear each other’s burdens and help each other to conquer the world and win eternal life.
IV. God’s hope in calling us to be sons is that we should be witnesses for the truth, teachers of others, soldiers of Jesus Christ, followers of the Lamb through evil report and good report.
V. God hopes to have His children in His house with Him for ever. Two thoughts arise here: (1) the better we know God as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father of glory, the better shall we understand His hope in making us sons and heirs; and (2) we shall always try to fulfil the hope He has in us.
J. P. Gledstone, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 138.
God’s Inheritance in the Saints.
I. God’s inheritance in the saints is possession of the highest kind. Beings are better than things.
II. God’s inheritance in the saints is His own original possession.
III. God has a second or double title to the possession of His inheritance. He has purchased it.
IV. Considered from the human and earthly side, the possession is very poor. God estimates His inheritance by His own standard. If God has a rich and glorious inheritance in the saints, then (1) He will claim it; (2) He will take care of it; (3) He will make use of it; (4) He must take pleasure in it; (5) He will not forsake it.
S. Martin, Rain upon the Mown Grass, p. 109.
Eph 1:18-19
Spiritual Enlightenment.
I. "What is the hope of His calling." This phrase should surely be taken in its simplest sense: "That ye may know the hopefulness of God’s calling; what hope there is in it; how full of hope it is." (1) Consider who it is that calls. It is God, and God in the character of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, the God who gives grace and glory. (2) Consider who are called. All men such as they are. (3) The calling of God is hopeful (a) because it is on the one hand absolutely free, and on the other hand peremptorily sovereign and commanding; (b) because it is on the one hand earnest in the way of persuasion, and on the other hand effectual, as implying a Divine work of renewal in the will within; (c) because it is on the one hand righteous, and on the other holy; (d) because it is sure on His part and capable of being made sure on our part.
II. "What the riches of His glory and His inheritance in the saints:" its rich glory; its glorious richness. This expression "His inheritance in the saints" is remarkable. It is not the inheritance which they receive from Him; it is not the inheritance which they have in Him; it is the inheritance which He has in them.
III. "And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe." That is the third thing to be known. (1) The knowledge which Paul prays for is altogether Divine, coming from a Divine source, through a Divine agency, for a Divine end. (2) The highest point in this threefold knowledge of God is the centre, and that implies your being His saints, His holy ones. (3) The exceeding greatness of God’s power is put forth in our exercising faith: it is to usward who believe. (4) The hopeful calling of God is to sinners without reserve.
R. S. Candlish, Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians.
Reference: Eph 1:18-20.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv., No. 1466.
Eph 1:18; Eph 2:7
Christ’s Resurrection and Glory in Relation to the Hope of the Church.
I. The descent of the Son of God from His eternal majesty to the infirmities and sorrows and temptations of this mortal condition is so transcendent a revelation both of the love of God and the possible greatness and blessedness of man that we need not be surprised that to many profound Christian thinkers the Incarnation has seemed to constitute the whole of the Christian Gospel, but even the Atonement did not end the succession of wonders which began with the Incarnation. The Incarnation was wonderful; that it should have been possible for the Eternal Word, who was in the beginning with God, to descend from the eternal splendours of Divine supremacy and to become man, is an infinite mystery. But that, having become man and retaining His humanity, it should have been possible for Him to reascend to those heights of authority and glory, is also an infinite mystery. This is the explanation of the emphasis and energy with which Paul dwells on the greatness of the Divine power as illustrated in the resurrection, ascension, and glorification of Christ. During His earthly life He was unequal to the great tasks of supreme authority, just as He was unequal during His childhood to the tasks of His public ministry. In His resurrection and ascension into heaven there came an extension, an expansion, an exaltation, of the powers of Christ’s human nature, which corresponded with His transition from humiliation to the glory of the Father. "The working of the strength of" (God’s) "might" rendered Him capable of a knowledge so immense, enriched Him with a wisdom so Divine, inspired Him with a force so wonderful, that Christ, the very Christ that was born at Bethlehem and was crucified on Calvary, became the real and effective Ruler of heaven and earth.
II. God will confer on us a greatness and a blessedness corresponding to the greatness and blessedness which He has conferred on Christ. No promises of glory, honour, and immortality can adequately represent the wonderful future of those who are to dwell for ever with God; but in the ascent of Christ from His earthly humiliation to supreme sovereignty, in the corresponding development of the intellectual and moral energies of His human nature, we see how immense is the augmentation of power and of joy to which we are destined.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 144.
Reference: Eph 1:19, Eph 1:20.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 254.
Eph 1:19-23
I. The Apostle desires that the Ephesian Christians may know what is "the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe." I can easily imagine that a person who has been wont to speak of the privileges of believers till he has brought himself to think of them as separated by their belief from the rest of human beings—I can easily imagine that such a person will exclaim triumphantly, "See, then, the clause determines the meaning of all that follows. Whatever glory the Apostle, or rather the Spirit of God, may unfold, these are the persons to whom He will unfold it." Even so. I rejoice to think it. And therefore let us consider who these persons were. They were a very small society, aliens from the synagogue, aliens from the Gentile temple, regarded with scorn by those whom they met in the market-place. They were obliged to live much within their own circle. It is to these persons that St. Paul speaks of a fellowship that was quite illimitable. The reward of their faith was that they could not separate themselves from any creature bearing the form of a man. To do so was not to believe in Christ. To believe in Him was to acknowledge One who represented mankind at the right hand of the Father.
II. Such a faith as this, carrying them so far above all appearances, contradicting the conclusions of their natural understandings, overcoming the temptations that most beset them, could not be attributed to anything less than a Divine operation on their spirits. The power which raises any man into the largeness and freedom of fellowship with God and with the universe is the power which exalted Christ to the right hand of the majesty on high.
III. The Resurrection and Ascension are held forth to us as the object of faith. He who wore a crown of thorns was proved to be the Prince of all the kings of the earth. He who had gone down into hell had triumphed over the principalities of hell, making a show of them openly. This St. Paul held to be the true faith of a Christian; hereby it was marked out as different from the faiths that had gone before it or that still struggled with it in the world.
IV. St. Paul, who had thrice suffered stripes; St. Paul, who had hardly escaped from the mob at Ephesus; St. Paul, who was in Nero’s hands at Rome—St. Paul dares to tell these disciples of his that the powers of the world are put under Christ. The confidence with which the Apostles believed that the kingdoms of the world had in very deed been proved to be the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ explains the longing with which they looked forward to the final unveiling of Christ, their zeal to keep the longing alive in their disciples. They could not define the limits of His conquests, who had ascended on high that He might fill everything.
V. But what is the witness of our constitution in Christ? What is it that lives to prophesy of this ultimate victory? "He has given Him to be Head over all things to His Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." All the blessings which individual men have ever received from the Gospel of Jesus Christ can be traced directly to the belief, which our Communion Service expresses, that we dwell in Christ, and that Christ dwells in us; that we are very members incorporate in the body of Him that filleth all in all. Take away that faith, and you do not take away some grand mystical conception of Christianity: you take away all that has made it practical, all that has made it dear to the hearts of sinners and sufferers, all that binds together men of different races, classes, countries, ages.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 85.
References: Eph 1:19-23.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., No. 534. Eph 1:20, Eph 1:21.—Homilist, 2nd series, vol. iv., p. 97. Eph 1:22.—W. Cunningham, Sermons, p. 237; S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Sermons, vol. iii., p. 237; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 89. Eph 1:22, Eph 1:23.—A. Blomfield, Sermons in Town and Country, p. 32; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 15th series, p. 229. Eph 1:23.—J. B. Heard, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 317; L. Davies, Ibid., vol. xxxv., p. 353; Congregationalist, 1872, p. 454. Eph 2:1.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii., No. 127; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 65. Eph 2:1-3.—R. Elder, Family Treasury, Jan., 1878. Eph 2:2.—E. Paxton Hood, Preacher’s Lantern, vol. ii., p. 435. Eph 2:3.—J. B. Heard, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 120; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 20. Eph 2:3-5.—F. W. Robertson, The Human Race, p. 163. Eph 2:4.—J. B. Brown, Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 392. Eph 2:4, Eph 2:5.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv., No. 808.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v15 Division 2. (Eph 1:15-23; Eph 2:1-10.)
Division 2. (Eph 1:15-23; Eph 2:1-10.)
Our participation with Christ in God’s work beyond death.
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We have had, then, the general outline of God’s purpose in Christ, not merely towards us, but embracing the subjection of all things to Him. We are now to see how He has, in fact, taken us up to link us with Christ for the fulfilment of blessing.
1. It takes the form. of a prayer from the apostle’s heart in behalf of those whom he is addressing. He longs for them and for us that we may have the spirit of wisdom and revelation with regard to all these things. In fact, how much has been hidden in this way through the lack of response on the part of God’s people to these wonderful communications! He has heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus and their love to all the saints. He gives thanks, therefore, for them, but that is not enough. He realizes that they are yet in a world in which Satan is busy, as by and by he will more fully show, to deprive the people of God of that which, in their knowledge of it now, would be power for them to glorify God in the scene through which they are passing. It is here, in fact, in the entering into these purposes of God, that the Christian character is practically acquired, and the Christian intelligence alone fully gained. It is no wonder, therefore, if here should be the sharpest possible contention, and that here the apostle should be in prayer that God’s people should lose nothing of that which He has designed for them. Accordingly, the prayer is to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, the One who has purposed all this, and the One to whom belongs the power alone to accomplish it. He prays that this God may give them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the "full knowledge," (as it should be) of Him. The deepest, sweetest character of the revelation of these things is that it gives the knowledge of Himself. For this we need, as he explains directly, the "eyes of our heart" to be enlightened. It is "heart," not "mind," for in the heart such eyes really are. It is not mere intelligence that can possess itself of these things. It is not any brightness of mind merely, as people would say. It is the heart for what is revealed that will lead to right intelligence as to the revelation. Could God possibly reveal these things with all their announced value for the soul, so that a human heart would kindle with desire to possess itself of them, only to find that the faculty had been denied of obtaining that which was sought for? How impossible to think of it! God’s people deprive themselves of what is the inheritance of every one of them, and they must, of necessity, connive at their being robbed of it, in order not to know. The Spirit of revelation, the Spirit of wisdom, the Spirit of understanding is in them already,and,as the apostle pictures it, it is the Spirit that searcheth the deep things of God. Can He do it in one and not in another? Or, if He be pleased still to have special human instruments, does He mean by that to deny the possession of the truth to any who seek it? Certainly, it would be impossible to think so. The apostle prays, therefore, that they might know what was the hope of this calling of God, that is, of all that, in fact, is hailing us from those blessed scenes which God is opening up to us, and that they might know what the riches are of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. It is God’s inheritance. No possession of it on our part could possibly deprive Him of what is in it, and how little would it be true inheritance if we did not inherit it with Him! It is God that inherits what is His, but it is the saints whom He puts in possession, just as He puts Israel in possession of the land which, nevertheless, He reserves as His, and which, therefore, cannot be taken away from Him. "The land is Mine," He says: "ye are strangers and sojourners," -guests therefore, as such, thrown upon the goodness and liberality of Him who, as such, is entertaining them, -"ye are strangers and sojourners with Me." We inherit after the same manner: a blessed thing to know that it is not the inheritance of a lost Father, but the inheritance of One who dwells with us in it, that belongs to us. But He desires that we should know also the greatness of His power which is working towards us with regard to these very things, according to the working of the might of His strength. How He multiplies words that we might realize the energy that is at work, a power in which He has wrought in Christ; for the work done in Him is done for us all, and the good of it belongs to us all. God has raised Christ from the dead then, and seated Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places. The work is perfectly accomplished, and He only awaits the full answer to it on the part of God. The present answer is only the pledge of the full carrying out of all. His place is already above every principality and power and dominion and every name named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come. He has put all things under His feet. Here it is the One then who has in His own hand the fulness of blessing for us, and this accomplishment already with regard to Him must have its present bearing upon our condition also, even while we are here in the world. God has given Him, in fact, to be Head over all things to the assembly which is His body, -Head over all things, which is that inheritance itself of which Paul has been speaking. He is Head in the full power of such a place to the assembly. All that is implied by the place He has, implies the blessing which is to be to the Church, united as it is to Him now in the nearest way that could be attained -His body; the apostle does not hesitate to add "the fulness of Him who filleth all in all." What things to bring together! Here is One who is possessor of divine fulness; no other could fill all in all, and yet the body is His fulness. He is not complete without it. In God’s thought and purpose, Christ would be incomplete if His body had not its place too; how near and wonderful a place, -"His body," filled with His love, energized with His mind, working out His thoughts as our bodies work out the thoughts and purposes of our minds! It is in resurrection, of course, that He becomes this Head. It is a human Head, blessed be God, though He be much more than human. That is the fitting Head to this human Body. Thus, the Church could have no existence until after He had risen from the dead. Search throughout the Old Testament, you will find nowhere the first hint, even, of any company of people as the body of Christ. You will find saints put under Him for blessing, you will find His rule over man, but such a relationship is to be found nowhere, such a relationship could not, in fact, exist until Christ as Man had risen from the dead and become, therefore, the fitting Head for such a body. Then the body itself must be brought into being, and thus the descent of the Spirit follows the ascent of Christ to the throne of God.
2. The apostle carries us back now to what, alas, was our previous fellowship. We have been called to the fellowship of Christ, but how good for us to look back and see what He has called us out of. "And you," he says, "hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." This is the first time in the epistles that we find such a statement with regard to man’s condition. The epistle to the Romans speaks of our being under death as the penalty upon our sins. It speaks of our being dead to sin as the effect of the new place of identification with Christ in His death, which God has given us; but now there is something more than this. It is man himself who is dead. That state, impracticable of help to any except God, is his. There is no possibility of self-help. There is no possibility of working out of that condition. No work is conceivable in such a state. This death is Godward. There is not anything which for Him constitutes life at all. He says that this is not a condition of irresponsibility, however, but the reverse. It is "in trespasses and sins" that men are dead; active enough, fully active in this character in which the epistle to the Romans has spoken of them, but dead as to the hopelessness of it, as to the total absence of all response to God which it implies. Activity there is enough, "in which ye once walked," he says, "according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power," or authority, "of the air, the spirit which now worketh in the sons of disobedience." This is what gives its character then to the course of this world, age, as it is literally, as we have seen; the whole period characterized by that which is away from God, and with the ruler over it who, as the ruler of the power of the air, is exhibited to us as having that complete control of the earth which the heavens have for fruitfulness or for disturbance. This ruler is the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. They are marked out as the sons of disobedience, as that which gives him title to the power which he manifests over them. How complete is this apostasy, then, from the blessed place in which God created man to be at the beginning, the one with whom He had come down to walk as with a friend. Nor was there any who did not share this place. "Among whom we also," he adds, we Jews as well as you Gentiles, "all once had our conversation in the lusts of our flesh." We had our common fellowship, terrible fellowship indeed, "in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the wills of the flesh and of the mind;" that is, the grosser or the more refined and spirit part of our nature, both alike evil and away from God. Thus we were "children of wrath by nature even as the rest." The Jew is in no wise exempt, but, on the contrary, as being in this condition in spite of all the blessing and privilege which God had bestowed upon him, is only, if possible, in a greater depth of evil than the Gentile. Such is man’s condition, then.
3. "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love wherewith He loved us even when we were dead in sins," -that is where God’s love lays hold upon us, not when there has been something right in us, not when we have begun to waken up and respond to the love which greets us from Him, but simply out of His love itself. "He has quickened us with Christ," and "by grace it is that we are saved," he adds in parenthesis. grace surely. He has given us life when in that condition. There is no condition possible between death and life, no life which could be true life except by His gift for those so fallen, so that here His love met us, doing the whole work from the beginning, quickening us, as he says, with Christ. He looks at it all as part of that same work which brought Christ up from the dead. As to the point of time, of course, we are individually quickened and brought up, but as to the character of the quickening, it is this from its being part of that redemptive work which is the fruit of His intervention for us. It is a life which, in fact, is the life of Him with whom we are quickened. It is a life which makes Him to be the "Firstborn" among human brethren. Christ is looked at here, of course, as the Representative of His people, not, therefore, in the title which belongs to Himself personally, but in that which He had earned by the work to which He stooped. Thus it is all part of the same work. We are with Him in character by virtue of this quickening. Our condition is changed into the total opposite of what it was, and not only is our condition changed, our position is changed. He has "raised us up together." Quickening and resurrection are different things. Quickening is communication of life. Resurrection is the bringing of the life into the place of the living. Christ’s resurrection has, in fact, given us this new place before God, as Romans has already taught us to say that we were justified by His resurrection. As His people, although justified now of course, when we become His people and not before, yet we look back to that resurrection of His which was the public sentence of God with regard to this. He has delivered us from every charge that could be made, from every question against us, by the resurrection of Christ. He has given us, therefore, a new and unassailable position in the One whom He has raised up. "He has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ." Notice the difference. He does not say with Christ" now any more. He is thinking simply of the representative character of Him who is seated in the heavenly places for us. We are actually quickened, we are actually raised up, we belong no more to the dead, whether as to the condition of our souls or as to the company in which we are.* We are actually quickened and raised up, but we are not actually sitting down in the heavenlies. We are virtually and representatively sitting there in the One who is before God for us. Thus we reach, as has. been said before, the height of Christian position. The epistle to the Romans has involved this already, for "in Christ" means the same thing there as here, but it is here put in the fullest and strongest way, it is developed in such a way as to make it practically a new thing for us. We would not be entitled to infer such things except we had divine warrant for them, but here we have the warrant. God has made us to sit together in the heavenly places in Christ. Now comes the display of His glorious purpose as to this. It is "that He might show forth in the ages to come the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus." We need not be surprised then that the place should be such a place of wonder! If God is going to show that which is indeed the fruit of Christ’s work and the display of the full purposes of His heart, it will be surely true that the fullest blessing possible is necessitated for this. God is acting, as it were, though only grace could say so, on His own account; but then with regard to us it is grace and nothing but grace. He adds that all the way through here: "For ye are saved by grace, through faith"; and as if that were not enough, he adds, "and this not of yourselves:" that is, as surely is meant here, the faith itself is not of us. It is not of us, but it is God’s gift. There is no principle of works, therefore, that any one may boast; nay, if you talk of works, we are His workmanship, and in such a way as He worked at the beginning in creation itself. We are His new creation, "His workmanship created in Christ Jesus." Here is what brings us, of course, into that scene of which the epistle to the Galatians has spoken to us. It is God’s work in us that has accomplished this, and "He has created us unto good works," such works "as He has afore prepared that we should walk in them." He has given us a nature which will be fruitful in us after the manner that He desires. He knows what He is doing and His purposes cannot fail of accomplishment. Thus, poorly (if we look at ourselves,) as we may rightly think of ourselves, the glory to come will display the full accomplishment of all that He has had in His heart to do; and the brethren of Christ will be such as even in this way He will not be ashamed to call His brethren.
{*It will be noticed that "together" suggests the union of Jew and Gentile, as later on in ver. 16, they are spoken of as reconciled "in one body" by the cross. Thus we not only are quickened and raised individually, but by the very fact that all believers are so, we have a common life and position, into which the previous distinction of Jew and Gentile cannot enter. -S.R.}
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 14, 18, 19
Ephesians
SAINTS AND FAITHFUL
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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.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Thanksgiving for Blessings and Prayer for Wisdom
Thanksgiving for Blessings and Prayer for Wisdom
1, 2. The salutation. I. In the Salutations to the Colossians and to Philemon, written at the same time, 'Timothy the brother' is coupled with St. Paul. He is omitted here because of the general character of the letter. At Ephesus was omitted for the same reason (see Intro.). The Apostle takes the whole responsibility of instructing Christians at large respecting 'the whole counsel of God' (Act_20:27).
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2. This is the usual salutation in the Pauline, as in the Petrine Epistles; 1 and 2 Timothy are exceptions.
3-14. This doxology or thanksgiving should be compared with that in 2Co_1:3-11. That is for a special deliverance; this is for God's general mercy in revealing His purpose to sum up all things in Christ. 'We Jews have long had this promise; but ye Gentiles also have been sealed with the Holy Spirit as an earnest of the inheritance.' The long sentence, with its accumulated richness of language, shows how difficult St. Paul finds it to express in words the majestic thoughts of which his mind is so full. 'I bless God, who has blessed us with the best of blessings, in virtue of our union with Christ. For this end He selected us from all eternity to live in His presence in holiness and love. All along He destined us to be His sons through the work of Jesus Christ. He did this simply out of His good-will, and to call forth our adoring gratitude. This was His grace to us in Him who is the Beloved, who redeemed us by His death, and freed us from our sins. What a wealth of grace is this! It conveys wisdom and understanding; for He has let us know His secret purpose, which directs and explains the course of ages, to bring all things, both in heaven and on earth, into harmony in Christ. In Christ, I say, in whom we have been chosen as God's portion; for all along He destined us, according to His all-wise will, that we Jews, who had fixed our hopes on Christ, should live to His glory. And with us Jews, you Gentiles also are now associated by faith in the gospel, and have received the Spirit as a pledge that you are His portion, and that His work of redemption is complete and redounds to His glory.'
3. With the God of our Lord Jesus Christ cp. Eph_1:17; Heb_1:9; Joh_20:17; Rev_1:6; Rev_3:2, Rev_3:12. With all spiritual blessings] RV 'with every spiritual blessing.' Something much higher than the material, temporal blessings promised in the OT. In heavenly places] RV 'in the heavenly places.' The phrase is found in four other places in Ephesians (Eph_1:20; Eph_2:6; Eph_3:10; Eph_6:12), and nowhere else. There is no substantive in the Gk., and we may render, 'among the heavenly things'; the unseen world, in which lie the spiritual forces which oppose us and which help us. Here are the true realities.
4. In history God selected the Jews first, and then the Gentiles; but the selection of both was made in eternity, independently of time, and through Christ. In love] man's love to God and his fellows, not God's love to man (Eph_3:17; Eph_4:2, Eph_4:16, Eph_4:16; Eph_5:2).
5. All are God's children by creation; but He adopted first the Jews (Rom_9:4), and then believers (Rom_8:15; Gal_4:5), into a special sonship. St. Paul is the only NT. writer who uses this metaphor of adoption, taken from Roman law.
6. To the praise of the glory] This phrase comes thrice, as a sort of refrain: cp. Eph_1:12, Eph_1:14. God's amazing bounty is a glory to be ceaselessly praised.
7. Israel had been redeemed by Jehovah from bondage; Israelites and Gentiles are redeemed by Christ from sin.
8. Wisdom and prudence] These are the fruits of God's grace in us; insight into His counsels and consequent wise conduct: in all = in giving us all, etc.
9. Mystery] In the NT. this means a secret that has been revealed; a favourite word with St. Paul (Eph_3:3-4, Eph_3:9; Eph_5:32; Eph_6:19, etc.): cp. 2Es_12:36.
10. 'For carrying out a dispensation which was carried out in the fulness of the seasons, so as to gather up in one all things in Christ.' When all the seasons had run out, the final revelation came: cp. 2Es_4:37. Dispensation] = (1) office of steward, (2) household management, (3) any provision or arrangement.
13. Ye also] 'ye Gentiles as well as we Jews.' Sealed with] 'received the Holy Spirit as a pledge that your deliverance should be complete.'
14. An earnest = Scotch 'arles,' is more than a 'pledge'; it is an instalment handed over in advance, as a guarantee that the remainder will follow (2Co_1:22; 2Co_5:5). It is part of the whole to be delivered. Redemption of the purchased possession] 'the emancipation of all that God has made His own.'
15-2:10. The doxology shades off into prayer that his readers may have wisdom to understand the glory of their inheritance and the great power of God, a power manifested in raising and exalting Christ (Eph_1:20-23), and in raising and exalting us (Eph_2:1-10), How great it must be!
15. Heard] This looks as if there were some whom St. Paul had not seen, i.e. others besides Ephesians.
17. Cp. 2Es_14:22-25.
21. The Apostle partly adopts and partly rejects Jewish phraseology about unseen powers. 'Call them what you please, Christ is above them all.'
22. An echo of Psa_8:5-8. If that could be said of man, how much more of Christ! 23. Cp. the Vine and the branches (Joh_15:5); Christ is the source of the life and completeness of the Church. But St. Paul seems to mean that Christ is, in a sense, incomplete without the Church. The very idea of Head implies a body. It is doubtful whether the Gk. can mean 'that filleth all in all.' Rather, 'who all in all is being fulfilled, made complete': cp. Col_1:24.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13 in Christ
in Christ
The believer’s place as a member of the body of Christ, vitally united to Him by the baptism with the Holy Spirit 1Co 12:12; 1Co 12:13.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 Analysis and Annotations
Analysis and Annotations
I. THE MASTERWORK OF GOD (1-3)
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1. The Godhead at Work
CHAPTER 1
1. The introduction (Eph 1:1-2)
2. The great doxology (Eph 1:3)
3. The work of the Father (Eph 1:4-6)
4. The work of the Son (Eph 1:7-12)
5. The work of the Holy Spirit (Eph 1:13-14)
6. The parenthetical prayer to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory (Eph 1:15-23)
In the brief introductory words to this Epistle, Paul speaks of himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. It is to be noticed that the will of God is repeatedly mentioned in this first chapter. All blessings mentioned in this Epistle flow from the will of God. What God hath done for us in Christ is “according to the good pleasure of His will” (Eph 1:5). Then we read also of “having made known unto us the mystery of His will” (Eph 1:9) and “who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will” (Eph 1:11). This will of God goes back to eternity, before the foundation of the world. This will made the erstwhile persecutor of the Church, the apostle of Jesus Christ, the instrument through whom that blessed will of God is now fully revealed. The Epistle is addressed “to the saints and to the faithful in Christ Jesus.” This does not mean two classes of believers. All believers are saints--separated ones. Yet a saint may not be faithful. Many who are saved by grace and are constituted saints in Christ are unfaithful in their walk and testimony. The words “to the saints and to the faithful in Christ Jesus” correspond to the two divisions of the Epistle. in the first three chapters we learn that God has made us His saints in Christ; in the last three chapters we are exhorted to walk in obedience and be faithful.
The doxology (Eph 1:3) marks the beginning of the epistle. When we reach the end of this first section we find another doxology (Eph 3:20-21). Between these two doxologies are found the unsearchable riches of God’s grace in Christ. The third verse is in itself the key to the great and deep revelation which follows in this chapter. It is the bud which the Holy Spirit gradually unfolds. The Godhead in blessing believers is revealed in the doxology. First we find the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the author of all blessings. In the second place we learn that the blessings are in the Son of God, in Christ. Then thirdly, we read what kind of blessings we receive in Christ, “every spiritual blessing,” that is, blessings communicated by the third person of the Godhead, God the Holy Spirit. The phrase “in the heavenly places” (or heavenlies) is peculiar to this Epistle. We find it five times: Eph 1:3; Eph 1:20; Eph 2:6; Eph 3:10 and Eph 6:12. It means both the nature of the blessings which we have in a risen and glorified Christ, and the locality, where our Lord is in glory. The three persons of the Godhead are mentioned in the third verse. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us; these blessings are in the Son and are communicated by the Holy Spirit. What follows is very interesting. In Eph 1:4-14 we have the three persons of the Godhead revealed and their work in the redemption of sinners. Read Eph 1:6; Eph 1:12; Eph 1:14. Each is an utterance of praise--”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); “unto the praise of His glory” (Eph 1:14). Each of these verses marks the close of what is said about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In Eph 1:4-6 we read what the Father has done; Eph 1:7-12 reveal what we have and are in the Son, in Christ; Eph 1:13-14 reveal the work of God, the Holy Spirit.
Three great facts are mentioned of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1. He hath chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world.
2. He hath predestinated us unto the Son-place in Christ.
3. He hath made us accepted in the Beloved.
What wonderful statements these are! We are in them face to face with the deepest revelation. To deny this would stamp these words as the imaginations of a deceiver. Only revelation can make known that which happened before the foundation of the world. Whatever is in God’s eternity, that unfathomable existence without beginning, is beyond man’s ability to grasp and therefore unrevealed. But here the great truth is made known that God, before there was a world, planned His masterwork. With Him in His bosom was His blessed Son, the Son of His love. In Him, by Him and for Him all things were called into existence. Yet before this creation was effected, God knew the outcome. Surprise is an impossibility with God. He knows the end from the beginning. The whole story of man’s fall and its results were not hidden from Him. And before it ever came to pass God made provision. And those who would accept Christ, as their Savior, He willed should be before Him holy and without blame, become partakers of His own divine nature. This God willed before the foundation of the world, and this is now, through grace, the portion of every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. And, furthermore, He predestinated all who believe in Christ to the Son-place.
A brief word on “predestination.” This word, which means “marked out” is nowhere found in connection with the Gospel, nor does it say anywhere in the Word, what some have said, that God has predestinated human beings to be lost. But while we do not read that He ever predestinated any one to be lost we read “God would have all men to be saved” (1Ti 2:4). God has nothing to say to a lost world about predestination. His grace, bringing salvation has appeared unto all men. God’s offer of salvation is therefore to all.
The Authorized Version speaks of “adoption of children.” This hardly expresses it correctly. Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are not adopted into the family of God; they are born into the family. The Greek has only one word “Son-place.” We are placed into the position of Sons. Not alone hath God given to us His own nature, but He gives us, because we have that nature in and through His Son, the place as Sons. Think of what God might have done for those, who by wicked works are His enemies. He might have given us the place of unfallen angels, the wonderful ministers of heaven. What mercy that would have been! Or He might have lifted us to the dignity of an archangel, full of beauty and power. But even that would not have been the very best He could have done in the riches of His grace and love. He has made us Sons, like the Son, whom He raised from the dead and seated at His own right hand.
And then He hath accepted us in the Beloved One. All this God planned and willed before the foundation of the world. The Beloved One having been mentioned, we read at once of His work. Three facts are given of the work of the Son of God:
1. He redeemed us by His blood.
2. In Him we received the revelation of the mystery of His will.
3. In Him we obtain an inheritance (Eph 1:7-12).
He came from the bosom of the Father to this earth to redeem us, so that God’s eternal will might be accomplished. Redemption, the taking out of the condition in which we are by nature, is a necessity, and has been accomplished by the blood of the Son of God, which was shed on the cross. He paid the price and has set us free. The riches of His grace by the redemption through His blood includes all our needs as sinners; the forgiveness of sins, mentioned here, is, so to speak, the foundation.
“Whosoever will” and “whosoever believeth” are the glorious terms of God’s good news to all alike. But when we believe, we know that we are chosen and predestinated. Those who have believed on Christ are predestinated and they possess the Son-place. Then having believed, we know that we were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world.
The words which follow put before us some blessed and deep truths. Redeemed through His blood, having redemption, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of grace, He hath made known unto us the mystery of His will. God wants His elect, His Church, to know the secret things of His will and what He hath purposed in Himself Therefore He hath made the riches of His grace abound towards us in all wisdom and intelligence. God has been pleased to make known in Christ the mystery of His will. It is the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began (Rom 16:25), so that we know in Christ and through Christ the fulness of His purpose. That mystery of God is Christ, in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2:3).
Christ, who has redeemed us by His blood, was raised from the dead. God “set Him at His own right hand in the heavenlies”--”He hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all” (Eph 1:21-23). This is the mystery: that Christ risen from the dead, seated at the right hand of God, is the Head and those who believe on Him constitute the Church, His body. This body is destined, according to the eternal purpose of God, to share the glory of the Head. This purpose is still in the future. The administration (or dispensation) of the fulness of times has not yet come. When it comes all things, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, will be headed up in Christ.
And in Christ we have an inheritance. In Him we have obtained an inheritance; it is equally true, that we are redeemed by His blood, His inheritance. And our inheritance in Christ is that we shall be like Him; be joint-heirs with Him and be forever with the Lord.
The work of the Holy Spirit is revealed in Eph 1:13-14. Three things are also mentioned of Him and His work:
1. Hearing and believing resulting in the quickening by the Spirit. 2. The sealing by the Holy Spirit of Promise. 3. The Holy Spirit the earnest of our inheritance.
These words are of great importance. The Son of God came to this earth to redeem us and because He has finished the work the Father gave Him to do, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, has come to do His work.
Three words are prominent in the thirteenth verse, the words “heard,” “believed,” and sealed.” They go together. The Word of Truth, the gospel of salvation must be heard and believed; the hearing and believing results in the sealing with the Holy Spirit of promise. The Holy Spirit indwelling the believer is the earnest of the inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession takes place. (For a more complete exposition we refer the reader to our larger work The Masterpiece of God.)
A brief restatement of the work of the Godhead will be helpful:
1. We found God the Father has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world. God the Son came down from Heaven’s glory and redeemed us by His blood. God the Holy Spirit quickens those who hear and believe. He is here because Christ finished His work on the cross.
2. God the Father has predestinated us unto the Son-place. God the Son reveals, to all who are sons with Him, the mystery of His will, concerning the future of the new creation. God the Holy Spirit because we are sons, possesses us and keeps those whom He possesses. He is the Spirit of Sonship.
3. God the Father has accepted us in the Beloved. God the Son has given us in Himself an inheritance. God the Holy Spirit is the earnest of that inheritance.
Surely this is revelation from God. So blessedly simple, so profound that all the eternal ages will not suffice to sound its depths. No man could have ever discovered or invented such a plan. Let us bow before it in worship and yield our lives “to the Praise of the glory of His grace.”
In Eph 1:15-23 we have the first prayer in this Epistle; the second prayer is found at the close of the third chapter. Let us notice that the greatest revelation of God as given in this Epistle has two prayers connected with it. The revelation is given to His people that they might know it and enjoy it. Prayer is needed for this. First, there is thanksgiving (Eph 1:15-16).
The prayer here is addressed to “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.” The prayer in the third chapter is made to “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This corresponds most beautifully to the blessed revelation in the first fourteen verses of this chapter. “God and Father” are the blessed words, which stand in the foreground of this Epistle. God is light and God is love. The first prayer is a prayer for light, that His redeemed people may know, be enlightened; therefore it is addressed to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. The second prayer in the third chapter is for love, and therefore addressed to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Then we find three petitions: 1. “That ye may know what is the hope of His calling.” The hope of God’s calling is that we shall be one with Him, whom He raised from the dead and to whom He gave glory. 2. That we may know “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” The riches into which God, the Father of glory, has brought us through Him, who laid His glory by, is told out in this Epistle. It is the rich Epistle of our riches in Christ. “The riches of His grace” (Eph 1:7); “the riches of the glory of His inheritance” (Eph 1:18); “rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4); “the exceeding riches of His grace” (Eph 2:7); “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8); “according to the riches of His glory” (Eph 3:16); these are the passages in which we read of His riches towards us and our riches in Him.
And what is the meaning “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints”? We have an inheritance, and He has us for His inheritance. He is our inheritance, and we are His inheritance. The glory of Christ’s inheritance are the saints, for whom He died, the many sons He brings to glory. The Church is the fulness of Him, who filleth all in all.
3. And the third petition is that we may know the exceeding greatness of His power which is to us-ward who believe.” It is resurrection power, the power which raised Him from the dead and seated Him on God’s right hand, which is to us-ward who believe. We can count on it. Ultimately the same power which raised Him up and carried Him through the heavens, will bring all the redeemed into glory.
In the presence of the words of Eph 1:23 one feels more like worshipping than trying to expound their meaning. Marvelous words! They tell out the blessed masterpiece of God. Christ the Head; the Church, chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, the body. The Head is in glory; the body not yet joined to the Head. He waits in glory; the saints wait on earth. The body needs the Head, but the Head also needs the body. “The Christ” will be complete when the body is joined to the Head by the mighty power of God. The Church as His body is His fulness; it makes Him complete. And when that is reached, when Head and body, Christ and the Church, are united in glory, then will the hope of His calling be realized and He will have the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and we shall know the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 6, 11 Salutation, Praise for the Blessings of Eternal Election, and…
Salutation, Praise for the Blessings of Eternal Election, and Prayer for Spiritual Enlightenment.
Address and salutation:
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v. 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:
v. 2. Grace be to you and peace from God, our father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul opens this epistle in his usual manner. As an apostle of Christ Jesus, of the exalted Lord, whose Messiahship was prophesied and manifested, he did not choose the office himself, but he was called thereto by the express will of God; he received his apostleship without his own merit and worthiness. But having received it, he was fully conscious of the dignity with which he had been invested, and did not propose to have any one call this in question. He addresses himself to the saints and believers in Christ Jesus that were in Ephesus. The members of that congregation that were members in truth believed in Christ Jesus as the Redeemer that had atoned for all their sins, and by this faith they were consecrated and sanctified to God. They were thus connected with Christ in the most intimate fellowship and union. In his customary salutation Paul expresses a wish that this happy condition might continue. The grace and peace desired for the Ephesian Christians by the apostle are blessings which come only from God the Father and from Christ, the Lord. The Son has secured for all men the grace and mercy of His heavenly Father, the complete forgiveness of all sins, and thereby also peace with God, the enmity between sinful mankind and the holy God having been removed by the perfect satisfaction which His vicarious work has wrought. But Christ, the Mediator, is here incidentally represented, like the Father, as the Source and Originator of grace and peace; He is true God and Savior, with the Father, from eternity.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 22 General Information:
General Information:
Paul names himself as the writer of this letter to the believers at the church at Ephesus.
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General Information:
Except where noted, all instances of "you" and "your" refers to the Ephesian believers as well as all believers and so are plural. (See: Forms of You)
Paul, an apostle ... to God's holy people in Ephesus
Your language may have a particular way of introducing the author of a letter and its intended audience. AT: "I, Paul, an apostle ... write this letter to you, God's holy people Ephesus"
who are faithful in Christ Jesus
"In Christ Jesus" and similar expressions are metaphors that frequently occur in the New Testament letters. They express the strongest kind of relationship possible between Christ and those who believe in him. (See: Metaphor)
Grace to you and peace
This is a common greeting and blessing that Paul often uses in his letters.
translationWords
Paul
apostle
Jesus
will of God
God
Ephesus
faithful
in Christ
grace
peace
God the Father
lord
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23 1:1-2 Paul follows the normal pattern of ancient Greek…
1:1-2 Paul follows the normal pattern of ancient Greek letters: He begins with a few words about himself followed by greetings. He expands this pattern in a Christian way by referring to his divine calling as an apostle, by describing his recipients as God’s holy people and as faithful followers of Christ, and by his invocation of grace and peace.
1:1 The frequent emphasis on the will of God (see 1:5, 9, 11; 5:17; 6:6) underscores God’s sovereignty in fulfilling his plan. • God’s holy people: Literally the holy ones, who are dedicated to God (see also 1:15, 18; 2:19; 3:8, 18; 4:12; 5:3; 6:18). • The most ancient manuscripts do not include in Ephesus, and there are no personal greetings in this letter. Many scholars believe that the letter was originally sent to be circulated to a number of churches in the area rather than to the church in Ephesus alone.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.