The Epistle to the Ephesians introduces itself, as do the other Pauline letters, with the name of Paul – “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God.” At the beginning of the third chapter the writer refers to himself again as Paul. This might well seem to settle the question of authorship decisively, the more so as the vocabulary and thought of the epistle are so thoroughly Pauline. It has, however, been urged repeatedly in more recent years that the Epistle to the Ephesians was composed at the time when the first collection of Paul’s letters was published, in order to serve as a suitable introduction to the published collection. The writer, presumably one of Paul’s disciples, endeavored to give an exposition of Paul’s central teaching and to convey it as far as possible in language borrowed from Paul’s own writings.
If the Epistle to the Ephesians was not written directly by Paul, but by one of his disciples in the apostle’s name, then its author was the greatest Paulinist of all time – a disciple who assimilated his master’s thought more thoroughly than anyone else ever did. The man who could write Ephesians must have been the apostle’s equal, if not his superior, in mental stature and spiritual insight. For Ephesians is a distinctive work with its own unity of theme. If we study it word by word and phrase by phrase, it may look like a compilation from the other Pauline epistles; but when we stand back and view it as a whole, it has an individuality and a message of its own. It was no mean judge of literary excellence, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who described Ephesians as “the divinest composition of man.” Not only is it “the quintessence of Paulinism”; it carries Paul’s teaching forward to a more advanced stage of revelation and application than that represented by the earlier epistles. The author, if he was not Paul himself, has carried the apostle’s thinking to its logical conclusion, beyond the point where the apostle stopped, and has placed the coping-stone on the massive structure of Paul’s teaching. Of such a second Paul early Christian history has no knowledge.
2. Time and place of writing
That Paul was a prisoner at the time of writing is expressly stated more than once in the course of the letter. He refers to himself as “I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you Gentiles” (3:1), as “the prisoner in the Lord” (4:1), and as “an ambassador in chains” (6:20). We have the evidence of Acts for two periods of imprisonment which Paul underwent, each of two years’ duration, one in Caesarea (24:27) and the other in Rome (28:30). The single night’s imprisonment in Philippi (Acts 16:23 ff.) naturally does not enter into the reckoning here. But before either of his more lengthy experiences of imprisonment recorded in Acts he could speak of himself as having been “in prisons more abundantly” than any other apostle (2 Corinthians 11:23). Of these more abundant imprisonments there is good reason to believe that one at least must be dated during his Ephesian ministry. The time and place of the present imprisonment does not make much difference to the exposition of Ephesians. But the position adopted here is the common one, that Ephesians (as also Colossians and Philemon) was written at some point during Paul’s Roman imprisonment, between the beginning of AD 60 and the end of AD 61. If any orderly progress at all is to be traced in Paul’s thinking, then Ephesians must be dated last of all his letters to churches, and immediately after Colossians.
3. The recipients
A comparison of Ephesians 6:21 f. with Colossians 4:7 f. makes it evident that Ephesians was sent to its destination by the hand of Tychicus at the same time as Colossians. We may therefore look for the destination of both letters in the same area. Colossians was manifestly sent to the church at Colossae, in the Phrygian region of the province of Asia. The words “at Ephesus” in Ephesians 1:1 might seem to put the destination of this letter beyond question, were it not for the fact that some of our earliest and weightiest authorities for the text omit these two words. It would be surprising, too, to have such an absence of personal references in a letter written by Paul to a church in whose midst he had spent the best part of three years. The most acceptable view, having regard to the general character of the letter, is that it was intended for all the churches of the province of Asia, some of which were personally known to Paul, while others were not (cf. Colossians 2:1). While the message of the letter was never intended to be limited to one local church only, we may quite justifiably call it “The Epistle to the Ephesians,” provided that we remember that it was sent also to other churches in the province of which Ephesus was the capital city.
4. Occasion and theme
For nearly three years – probably from the summer of AD 52 to the spring of AD 55 – Paul had established his headquarters in Ephesus, the chief city of the Roman province of Asia, and not only planted a strong church in that city, but with the help of a number of colleagues evangelized the whole province. No doubt all the seven churches of Asia mentioned in Revelation, and others as well, traced their origin to these years (Acts 19:8-10).
“ . . . in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace . . . ”
Ephesians 1:7
During the following years Paul kept in close touch with the churches of Asia, and some of their members came to see him while he was a prisoner in Rome. One of these visitors was Epaphras, Paul’s colleague who had evangelized the area of the province of Asia watered by the River Lycus, and helped to found the churches of Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis. He brought Paul news of a form of false teaching which was attracting many of the Christians in those churches, especially in the church of Colossae. This was a theosophical amalgam of Jewish and pagan elements which made much of the hierarchies of principalities and powers in the universe. It was hospitable enough to make some room for Christ in its scheme of things, but its whole tendency was to deny his supremacy and the completeness of his redemptive work. To counter this unhealthy influence Paul wrote a letter to the Colossian church and sent it by the hand of his friend Tychicus, a native of the province of Asia, who had also been paying him a visit and was now on his way home again.
As Paul considered his reply to the Colossian heresy, he was led on to develop the theme of Christ’s person and work in relation to the whole universe, including those principalities and powers which played so dominant a part in that heresy. Christ had shown himself superior to those powers first because they owed their existence to him, and then because they were ignominiously routed by him when they assailed him on the cross. This cosmic significance of the person and work of Christ was no new idea to Paul: already he proclaimed “one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him” (1 Corinthians 8:6), and taught that the liberation which Christ had effected by his death would one day be enjoyed by the whole creation (Romans 8:19-22). But what is hinted at here and there in some of his earlier letters is elaborated in the Epistle to the Colossians, where Christ is portrayed as the One through whom all the powers in the universe were created and the One who by his triumphant death has brought them all into captivity to himself. Moreover, his people are so vitally united to him, being members of the body of which he is the head, that they share in his triumph and have no need to pay homage to those elemental forces which formerly held them in bondage.
But if the Church is the body of the exalted Christ, what is her relation to his cosmic role? What is her relation to the universe over which he is enthroned as Lord, and to God’s eternal purpose? These questions were not dealt with in the Epistle to the Colossians, but they continued to exercise the apostle’s mind after he had put his signature to that epistle, until he was gripped by the vision which he sets before us in Ephesians, and began to dictate the contents of this further letter, not in the swift, argumentative style with which we are so familiar from other letters of his, but in an inspired mood of meditative adoration and prayer. It was then sent, also by the hand of Tychicus, to the churches of the province of Asia to serve in some sort as his testament to dearly-loved friends whom, so far as he knew, he might never see again, as well as to others whom he had never yet seen.
This view of the origin and conception of the Epistle to the Ephesians – the view taken in the following exposition – is the most satisfactory explanation of the remarkably close affinity which exists between it and the Epistle to the Colossians.
In many Protestant circles it has been customary to look upon the doctrine of justification by faith as the be-all and end-all of Paul’s teaching. Justification by faith is certainly fundamental to all his thinking, and it comes readily to the surface no matter what subject he is dealing with. Even in Ephesians it is uncompromisingly affirmed: “by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory” (Ephesians 2:8 f.). It was inevitable and salutary in the Reformation age that the attention of Christians should be directed afresh to the ground on which men and women are accepted as righteous by God. But it is a pity when Paulinism is identified so exclusively with the emphasis of Galatians and Romans that the corporate and cosmic insights of Colossians and Ephesians are overlooked, or felt to be un-Pauline. True Paulinism has room for both, and our Christian thinking must similarly make room for both if it is not to become lop-sided and defective.
In Ephesians the Church, the body of Christ, is a new community created by God to be the dwelling-place and vehicle of his Spirit, with a view to the consummation of his eternal purpose and the establishment of his dominion throughout all creation. As Paul puts it elsewhere, creation at present is frustrated and in bondage to futility and decay, but one day it is to be emancipated from this bondage to share “the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). But nowhere is this glorious purpose unfolded so fully and clearly as in the Epistle to the Ephesians. “This Epistle,” says a great Scottish-American theologian, Dr. John A. Mackay, “because of the nature of the problem with which it deals, is the most modern of the New Testament writings.” Then he begs his readers’ pardon for introducing “a lyrical note,” which is well worthy of quotation:
I can never forget that the reading of this Pauline letter, when I was a boy in my teens, exercised a more decisive influence upon my thought and imagination than was ever wrought upon me before or since by the perusal of any piece of literature. The romance of the part played by Jesus Christ in making my personal salvation possible and in mediating God’s cosmic plan so set my spirit aflame that I laid aside in an ecstasy of delight Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo, which I happened to be reading at the time. That was my encounter with the Cosmic Christ. The Christ who was and is became the passion of my life. I have to admit, without shame or reserve, that, as a result of that encounter, I have been unable to think of my own life or the life of mankind or the life of the cosmos apart from Jesus Christ. He came to me and challenged me in the writings of St. Paul. I responded. The years that have followed have been but a footnote to that encounter.
“For by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.”
Ephesians 2:8
Paul has already stated in Colossians that God’s purpose is through Christ “to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross; through him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens” (Colossians 1:20). In Ephesians this theme of reconciliation is carried farther. God’s purpose is “to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth” (Ephesians 1:10) – in other words, to bring all creation to the point where it finds its true head in Christ. In this purpose of cosmic reconciliation the Church has an essential part to play, for the Church is herself God’s masterpiece of reconciliation. Not only is it composed of men and women who have individually been reconciled to God through Christ; it is composed of men and women who have also been reconciled to one another through Christ. In particular – and Paul never got over the wonder of this – the Church comprised both Jews and Gentiles. In this new fellowship the division between these two mutually exclusive divisions of mankind had disappeared; Christ had reconciled them both “in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby” (Ephesians 2:16), and had in himself recreated Jews and Gentiles alike as “one new man, so making peace” (Ephesians 2:15). Christ had broken down the barrier which kept Jew and Gentile apart, and brought them together as fellow-members of his one body.
Perhaps the division between Jew and Gentile does not seem so terribly important to us. It was of prime importance to a man of Paul’s birth and training – and the emphasis laid upon it in this epistle may be accounted an incidental token of Pauline authorship. But we can think of many other divisions in the world of today, more recalcitrant and malignant than the division between Jew and Gentile now is – divisions of nation, race, color, class, religion and culture which engender bitter hostility and threaten our world with annihilation unless they are removed. But how can this be done? The message of the Epistle to the Ephesians is that only through Christ, in the fellowship of his body, can iron curtains, color-bars, class-warfare and all other divisions of this kind be brought to an end. In his new community “there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman: but Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11). It is only Christ our peace who can bring together the people on either side of these barricades, by first bringing them to himself, thus making them one with him and therefore with one another. In this reconciling work of his the Church has a service to perform, not only as God’s masterpiece of reconciliation, but also as his instrument for bringing about the cosmic reconciliation which is his ultimate purpose. But the Church as she is in the eyes of men must conform to the Church as she is in the purpose of God, if she is to be an effective instrument to this end. Only as the Church is seen to be the community of the reconciled can she convincingly proclaim the gospel of reconciliation to others. If the same divisions of class and race and color as we see in the world are tolerated in the Church, her witness is nullified; the salt of the earth has lost its taste and has become good for nothing. That this is a necessary and humbling reflection today needs no emphasizing.
For this reason Paul adds to his portrayal of the Church in the purpose of God practical injunctions to ensure that this purpose may not be hindered by the daily life of Christians on earth. This second part of the epistle, which begins with the fourth chapter, is linked to the foregoing part by the particle “therefore” (4:1); the practical injunctions are the logical outcome of the truth revealed in the first three chapters.
5. Early use and recognition
A date of AD 60 or shortly after has been suggested above for the Epistle.
There is good evidence that Paul’s epistles, which had been treasured in the various places to which they were severally sent, began to be gathered together and thereafter to circulate as a collection about the end of the first century AD. Clement of Rome, writing about AD 95, shows his acquaintance with a number of Paul’s letters, and Ephesians is possibly to be reckoned among them. Ephesians was certainly known to Ignatius of Antioch before his martyrdom about AD 115, to his junior contemporary and fellow-bishop, Polycarp of Smyrna, who wrote his one surviving epistle soon after Ignatius’s martyrdom, and to the authors of the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, which also belong to the earlier years of the second century. The heresiarch Marcion, who published his “canon” or list of authoritative Christian books at Rome about 144, included Ephesians among the ten Pauline epistles contained in that list; he entitled it, however, the “Epistle to the Laodiceans” (probably identifying it with the letter referred to by Paul in Colossians 4:16). Later in the second century Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian of Carthage, and the Muratorian list of canonical books, drawn up at Rome, attest the unanimity with which the Christian world accepted the apostolic authorship and canonicity of Ephesians.
Indeed, if we go back to the New Testament age, signs are not lacking in the Pastoral Epistles (those to Timothy and Titus) and in 1 Peter which suggest that Ephesians was known and used in the writing of these letters.
6. For further study
Of all helps to the study of this Epistle I am chiefly indebted to St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians: A Revised Text and Translation with Exposition and Notes, by J. Armitage Robinson (London: Macmillan, 1904). This includes an exposition of the English text and exegesis of the Greek text.
B. F. Westcott left an incomplete work on the Epistle which was edited after his death by J. M. Schulhof and published under the title St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians: The Greek Text with Notes and Addenda (London: Macmillan, 1906). Notes on the Greek text of the first fourteen verses are included in another posthumous volume: Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul, by J. B. Lightfoot (London: Macmillan, 1895). The other member of the great Cambridge trio, F. J. A. Hort, left an unfinished introduction to the Epistle which occupies the larger part of his Prolegomena to St. Paul’s Epistles to the Romans and the Ephesians (London: Macmillan, 1895).
A few other studies, suitable for the Greekless reader, may be mentioned in chronological order. Charles Hodge’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, a careful theological exposition, first published in 1856, was reissued by the Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1950. Ephesian Studies, by H. C. G. Moule, described in the sub-title as “Expository Readings on the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Ephesians” was first published in 1900 (London: Hodder & Stoughton); it has subsequently (1947) been reissued by Messrs. Pickering & Inglis, Ltd. (Bishop Moule had already contributed the volume on Ephesians to the Cambridge Bible in 1886.) The Moffatt version of Ephesians forms the basis for E. F. Scott’s exposition of the Epistle in The Epistles of Paul to the Colossians, to Philemon and to the Ephesians, a volume in the Moffatt New Testament Commentary (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1930). John A. Mackay, whose tribute to the influence of Ephesians has been quoted above, chose it as his theme when he was invited to deliver the Croall Lectures in New College, Edinburgh; his lectures were published under the title God’s Order: The Ephesian Letter and this Present Time (New York: Macmillan; and London: Nisbet, 1953). William Barclay has given us a translation and exposition of The Epistle to the Ephesians in his inimitable Daily Bible Readings (Edinburgh: Church of Scotland Publications, 1956), reissued as part of the volume on Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians in The Daily Study Bible (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1958). An important symposium of Studies in Ephesians has been edited by F. L. Cross (London: Mowbray, 1956). E. K. Simpson contributed the commentary on Ephesians to the volume on The Epistles of Paul to the Ephesians and to the Colossians in the New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1957). The relevance of the Epistle to evangelism in the world of today is emphasized by Markus Barth in The Broken Wall: A Study of the Epistle to the Ephesians (London: Collins, 1960).
Several other works, dealing with various aspects and topics of the Epistle, are mentioned in the course of the introduction and exposition.
7. Analysis of the Epistle
Part 1: The new community in the purpose of God (Chapters 1–3)
1. Salutation (1:1-2).
2. A doxology (1:3-14): amplified by the contemplation of:
(a) the mystery of God’s eternal purpose (1:4-12);
(b) the unity of Jew and Gentile in Christ (1:13-14).
3. A prayer for wisdom (1:15 – 2:10): amplified by the description of God’s power in:
(a) the raising of Christ from the dead (1:19-23);
(b) the raising of those who were dead in sins (2:1-10).
4. The Gentiles made heirs of the promises (2:11-22).
5. The prayer for wisdom resumed (3:1-13), with a digression on:
(a) the mystery of Christ (3:2-7);
(b) Paul’s stewardship of the mystery (3:8-13).
6. The prayer for wisdom concluded (3:14-19).
7. A doxology (3:20-21).
Part 2: The new community in the life of believers (Chapters 4–6)
1. Unity in diversity in the body of Christ (4:1-16).
