Ephesians.
Ephesians.
§ 261. For a two-year period Paul had preached the Gospel in Ephesus, the chief city of Ionia in Asia Minor (Acts 19:1), and had gathered quite a large church for Christ (1 Cor. 16:9), which after his departure he had entrusted to his disciple Timothy (1 Tim. 1:3) and of which the evangelist John is said to have been in charge later. [Paul] directed his letter to the inhabitants of that city. No schisms had been stirred up there; no false doctrine had been sown there, as among the Galatians. Rather, the impelling cause for writing was the far-seeing concern of the apostle lest they become weak and weary of the Gospel because of the chains that were binding him at Rome.
It consists of six chapters and falls into two parts. The first is the teaching part, for it explains the foundation of our salvation, which consists in the gratuitous election of our God, in the redemption performed by Christ, in our calling by the Gospel, in justification and the gift of an eternal inheritance. The latter part is exhortation: (1) a generic one about the responsibility of the devout in general, that they should pursue piety, harmony, love, and the other Christian virtues; and (2) a specific one about the duty of husbands to wives, parents to their children, masters to their slaves, etc.