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The Ascension

New Testament · Book 49 of 66

Ephesians

The cosmic letter. Chapters 1–3 set out what believers are in Christ: positional truth stretching from before the foundation to the fullness of times. Chapters 4–6 call the believer to walk worthy of it.

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The Ascension — Gustave Doré (engraving, public domain)

The Ascension

The Ascension — Gustave Doré (engraving, public domain)

  • 6
    Chapters
  • Positional → practical
    Arc
  • Cosmic
    Scope

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

Ephesians 2:8–10

If you only read a few chapters

Epistle · Ephesians

Seated. Walking. Standing.

Ephesians is Paul's widest-angle lens on the gospel, not correcting an error but unveiling a mystery: that God's eternal plan, to sum up all things in Christ (1:10), lands concretely in one new humanity, Jew and Gentile fused into a single body, temple, and bride by grace through faith alone. The church, seated with Christ far above every rule and authority, is the very theater where His victory is displayed to the principalities and powers, and where she herself must stand armed in what He has already won.

Summary

The page tracks the letter's own three-part grammar, seated, walk, stand, verse by verse, then works through Christ's five titles in the letter and the questions scholars still debate about it.

  • The letter's own architecture: Seated (1-3), Walk (4:1-6:9), Stand (6:10-24), sized by verse count
  • Every occurrence of "seated," "walk," and "stand" tracked to its verse
  • Five ways Christ is described: cosmic head, peace, cornerstone, bridegroom, and victor over the powers
  • Contested points: who wrote it, whether "at Ephesus" was in the original, election, and how the fivefold offices work today
  • The Temple Warning Inscription, a rare physical find that backs up 2:14's "middle wall of partition"

The Architecture

the letter's own verbs: seated, then walk, then stand

Ephesians names no opponent and refutes no heresy: it is contemplative, doxological, cosmic in scope. Its architecture is grammatical: three chapters of pure indicative (what God has done), then three of imperative (what that calling now requires), closing on one final imperative that is entirely defensive. The three governing verbs are the letter's own, sized below by the verses each stage actually occupies (155 verses in all).

Seated
Walk
Stand
123456a6b
Seated · 1:1–3:21Walk · 4:1–6:9Stand · 6:10–24
SeatedEphesians 1:1–3:21 · “made us to sit with him in the heavenly places” (2:6)

Three chapters of pure indicative, what God has done, not what you must do. Chosen before the foundation of the world, redeemed, sealed; dead in trespasses and made alive by grace through faith; Gentile and Jew built into one new man, one household, one temple. Nothing is commanded yet. Position comes before practice.

WalkEphesians 4:1–6:9 · “walk worthily” (4:1, 17; 5:2, 8, 15)

The hinge word arrives at 4:1, “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called”, and Paul keeps returning to it as he moves from unity, to a new self, to love and light, to a Spirit-filled household. Duty, but duty that only makes sense as the shape gratitude takes for what chapters 1–3 already gave.

StandEphesians 6:10–24 · “stand… withstand… having done all, to stand” (6:11, 13, 14)

The letter's final word is military, and it is defensive. The church does not fight for a victory, it stands in one Christ has already won (1:20–21; 2:6). It is told to “be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might,” and every piece of the armor is put on “that ye may be able to stand” against powers already placed under Christ's feet.

Every occurrence: the repetition is the argument

Two of the walk references are marked as pre-echoes. Paul uses the word twice in chapter 2 before he ever commands it, once for the walk they came out of (2:2) and once for the walk God prepared for them in advance (2:10). Both are indicative: a walk already described before a walk is ever required. That is the whole grammar of the letter in one word, and it is why the imperative at 4:1 reads as gratitude rather than demand.

seated
1:20Christ seated far above2:6believers seated with Him
walk
↑ 2:2the old walk: “wherein ye once walked”↑ 2:10the prepared walk: “that we should walk in them”4:1worthily of the calling4:17not as the Gentiles walk: the word falls twice in this verse5:2in love5:8as children of light5:15carefully, as wise
stand
6:11against the wiles of the devil6:13having done all, to stand6:14stand therefore

What Ephesians Alone Teaches

Every spiritual blessing, named one at a time

The letter opens with a single sentence that runs from 1:3 to 1:14 in the Greek, and it is built as praise: 'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ' (1:3). What follows counts the blessings out. God 'chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love' (1:4). He acted 'having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will' (1:5). In Christ 'we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace' (1:7). He is 'making known unto us the mystery of his will' (1:9), which is 'unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ' (1:10). And the believer is marked as God's property until the day of collection: 'ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise' (1:13), a seal that is 'an earnest of our inheritance, unto the redemption of God’s own possession' (1:14). Three times the paragraph stops to say why any of it happened, 'to the praise of the glory of his grace' (1:6).

Ephesians 1:3 · Ephesians 1:4 · Ephesians 1:7 · Ephesians 1:13

Dead men made alive, and grace as the whole ground

Chapter 2 begins with a diagnosis and no softening: 'And you did he make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins' (2:1). The condition described is powerlessness rather than weakness, and it has a history behind it. Those who lived that way walked 'according to the prince of the powers of the air' (2:2) and 'were by nature children of wrath' (2:3). Then the sentence turns on two words: 'but God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us' (2:4). What God did is stated three times with the same prefix, and each time it is done together with Christ. He 'made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved)' (2:5), 'raised us up with him', and 'made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus' (2:6). The conclusion is the most quoted sentence in the letter: 'for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God' (2:8), 'not of works, that no man should glory' (2:9). Works arrive one verse later, in their proper place as the result: 'For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works' (2:10).

Ephesians 2:1 · Ephesians 2:4 · Ephesians 2:8 · Ephesians 2:10

The two made one new man, and the outsiders brought in

Paul tells Gentile readers exactly where they stood before Christ, and the list is a list of things they lacked. They were 'alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world' (2:12). Every item names something Israel had. The remedy is stated as a change of distance: 'ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ' (2:13). Christ 'is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition' (2:14), and the result is a third thing rather than one side absorbing the other, 'that he might create in himself of the two one new man, so making peace' (2:15). Both parties are reconciled in the same act, since he 'might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross' (2:16). The Gentile readers move from strangers to citizens, 'ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God' (2:19), and the building rises on a foundation with Christ at the corner (2:20) until it 'groweth into a holy temple in the Lord' (2:21). The direction of travel matters. Gentiles are brought into a commonwealth that stands, and Paul says elsewhere in the plainest terms, 'God did not cast off his people which he foreknew' (Romans 11:2).

Ephesians 2:12 · Ephesians 2:13 · Ephesians 2:14 · Ephesians 2:19

The mystery, and the church put on display before the powers

Paul uses a word for something once hidden and now told out. The content of it is stated without symbolism: 'that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel' (3:6). He received it directly, 'by revelation was made known unto me the mystery' (3:3), and his commission was to announce it, 'Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ' (3:8). Then comes a purpose clause that reaches past the human audience: 'to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God' (3:10). The congregation of Jew and Gentile sitting together is itself the demonstration, and the audience for it includes spiritual authorities. This was 'according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord' (3:11). The chapter closes on a prayer that asks for strength 'through his Spirit in the inward man' (3:16) and for capacity to take in 'the breadth and length and height and depth' (3:18) of a love that outruns knowledge (3:19).

Ephesians 3:3 · Ephesians 3:6 · Ephesians 3:10 · Ephesians 3:11

One body, and the gifts the ascended Christ gave to build it

The second half opens with a call to keep something that already exists: 'giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace' (4:3). Seven things are then counted as one apiece. 'There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling' (4:4), 'one Lord, one faith, one baptism' (4:5), 'one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all' (4:6). Inside that unity the members differ, because Christ distributed: 'And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers' (4:11). The purpose is stated as a chain, and the equipping runs through the whole congregation: they are given 'for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ' (4:12), which continues 'till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God' (4:13). The alternative is named too, a church that stays infantile and gets 'tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine' (4:14). The way forward is growth into the head, 'speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into him, who is the head, even Christ' (4:15).

Ephesians 4:3 · Ephesians 4:4 · Ephesians 4:11 · Ephesians 4:15

The old man put off, the new man put on, and a household ordered

From 4:17 the letter turns to daily conduct and gives it a shape borrowed from changing clothes. Believers are to 'put away, as concerning your former manner of life, the old man' (4:22) and to 'put on the new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth' (4:24). What follows is specific enough to check against a week: truthful speech (4:25), anger handled before dark, 'Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath' (4:26), honest work in place of theft (4:28), and speech that builds (4:29). The Holy Spirit is treated as a person with feelings about it, 'grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption' (4:30). The positive command is imitation, 'Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children' (5:1), and the standard is the cross (5:2). Two commands govern the rest: 'walk as children of light' (5:8) and 'be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit' (5:18). The Spirit-filled life then produces singing, thanksgiving, and mutual submission, 'subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ' (5:21), which is the sentence the household passage hangs from.

Ephesians 4:22 · Ephesians 4:30 · Ephesians 5:1 · Ephesians 5:18 · Ephesians 5:21

The whole armor, and a war fought against beings

The letter ends where its opening chapters pointed. The command is to draw on strength that belongs to someone else: 'be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might' (6:10), and then 'Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil' (6:11). The reason follows immediately and names the opponent: 'For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places' (6:12). Those are the same authorities the church was displayed before at 3:10 and the same ones Christ was seated above at 1:21. The pieces are then named: 'having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness' (6:14), 'having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace' (6:15), 'the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one' (6:16), and 'the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God' (6:17). Every piece is worn or carried by a soldier standing his ground, and the verb that governs the paragraph is to stand. The last item is not armor at all but prayer, 'with all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit' (6:18), and the first request Paul makes for himself is for words, 'that utterance may be given unto me in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel' (6:19).

Ephesians 6:10 · Ephesians 6:11 · Ephesians 6:12 · Ephesians 6:17 · Ephesians 6:18

Christ in Ephesians

  • TypologyHead over all things to the church. The prayer of chapter 1 ends by describing where Christ now sits. God 'raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places' (1:20), a position defined by what it is above: 'far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named' (1:21). Then two relations are stated together. He is sovereign over everything, and he is given to one body: God 'gave him to be head over all things to the church' (1:22), 'which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all' (1:23). The head and body image runs through the letter and does real work in it. It makes the church a living organism attached to a person rather than an institution named after one, it explains why growth is measured by resemblance to him (4:15), and it is the ground of the marriage passage in chapter 5, where a husband is told to love as Christ loved the church. Ephesians 1:22
  • ProphecyPeace preached to the far off and the near. 'and he came and preached peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh' (2:17). The words come from Isaiah, where God says 'Peace, peace, to him that is far off and to him that is near' (Isaiah 57:19). In Isaiah the promise is God's own healing word spoken over exiles and over those at home. Paul reads the arrival of Christ as that word being spoken in person, and he applies the far and the near to Gentile and Jew, the two groups he has just described being made one. The tense matters. Christ came and preached peace to the far off, though he went in person to neither Ephesus nor any Gentile city, so the preaching in view reaches the Gentiles through the apostles he sent. The peace is the person: 'For he is our peace, who made both one' (2:14). Ephesians 2:17
  • TypologyThe chief corner stone. The church is described as a building under construction, 'being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone' (2:20). Two Old Testament stones stand behind that phrase. Isaiah has God saying 'Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone of sure foundation' (Isaiah 28:16), and the psalm has the reversal the New Testament quotes constantly, 'The stone which the builders rejected' (Psalms 118:22). The corner stone in ancient building was the block that set the angle for two walls, so every course laid after it took its line from that one stone. The image explains the rest of the paragraph: the building is 'fitly framed together' (2:21) because its lines all come from one place, and it 'groweth into a holy temple in the Lord' (2:21) in a city whose pride was a temple of stone. Ephesians 2:20
  • QuotationHe led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. 'When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, And gave gifts unto men' (4:8). The psalm being quoted describes God going up in triumph after a victory, 'Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led away captives; Thou hast received gifts among men' (Psalms 68:18). Paul reads the ascent as Christ's, and the gifts he distributes at 4:11 as the spoil of that victory handed down to the church. The change from receiving gifts to giving them is discussed under the difficulties, since the Aramaic Targum on this psalm and the Syriac version both read the line as giving. The picture is a Roman triumph turned around. A general came home with prisoners behind him and gave presents to the crowd, and Paul says the ascended Christ did the same, except that what he leads captive is captivity itself and what he hands out are people: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Ephesians 4:8
  • QuotationThe two shall become one flesh, and the mystery it carries. Paul quotes the oldest sentence in Scripture about marriage: 'For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh' (5:31). Genesis gives it as the narrator's comment on the making of the woman, 'Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh' (Genesis 2:24). Then Paul says something about the quotation that changes how the whole passage reads: 'This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church' (5:32). Marriage in Genesis was carrying a meaning it could not yet declare, and the union of Christ with his people is what it was carrying. That is why the husband's instruction is measured by the cross, 'Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it' (5:25), and why the church's future is described as a wedding, with Christ presenting her 'not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing' (5:27). Ephesians 5:32

The Argument

the whole letter in three sentences

Author
Paul (1:1): a prisoner (3:1; 4:1; 6:20)
Date / place
c. AD 60–62, Rome, during Acts 28:16–31
Genre
Epistle: doctrine (1–3) then ethics (4–6)
Shape
6 chapters · 155 verses · 3 stages
  1. 1

    God chose and redeemed a people in Christ before the foundation of the world (1); that people was dead in sin, saved by grace through faith, and, Jew and Gentile alike, built into one new humanity, God's own household (2).

  2. 2

    This union is the mystery Paul was given to make known, for which he prays the church would grasp the very breadth, length, height, and depth of Christ's love (3).

  3. 3

    Therefore walk worthily: in unity under Christ's gifted ministries, in a new self, in love and light, inside a Christ-shaped household (4–6:9), and stand armed for the unseen war that union provokes (6:10–20).

Carried by Tychicus (6:21–22), who also carried Colossians (Col 4:7–8): the two letters likely traveled together, and the household code of 5:22–6:9 parallels Colossians 3:18–4:1 almost line for line.

Where Ephesians Points to Christ

head over all things, the mystery, the cornerstone

The cosmic, recapitulating Christ1:10, 20–21

God's purpose is “to sum up all things in Christ” (1:10), the rare verb anakephalaioō, “head up, recapitulate,” used elsewhere in the NT only of the law summed up in love (Rom 13:9). Christ is set “far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion”, every rival power in creation answers to Him.

Christ our peace, the dividing wall broken2:14–16

The “middle wall of partition” almost certainly names the Jerusalem Temple's soreg, the barrier separating the Court of the Gentiles from the inner courts (see Background, below). Christ “abolished in his flesh the enmity” and made two hostile peoples “one new man”, the cross doesn't merely forgive, it fuses.

The cornerstone and the living temple2:20–22

Built “upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone”, echoing Psalm 118:22 and Isaiah 28:16, the rejected-and-tested-stone motif that runs through the whole New Testament.

The Bridegroom who gave Himself5:25–27, 31–32

“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it,” to present her “a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing.” Paul quotes Genesis 2:24 directly, then says of it: “This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church”, the New Testament's most developed marriage typology.

The Victor over principalities6:10–13 (cf. Col 2:15)

Ephesians never states the disarming directly, but presupposes it throughout, the companion letter says it plainly: “having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them.” The church is told to “be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might” against powers Christ has already defeated, not powers it must still overcome.

The Armor of God: the whole panoply, piece by piece →

Themes

six load-bearing lines through the letter

01

Election, before the foundation of the world

Ephesians 1:4–5, 11

The strongest predestination language in the Pauline corpus outside Romans 9, read through two traditions in Contested Points, below.

02

Grace through faith, not works

Ephesians 2:8–9

“For by grace have ye been saved through faith… not of works, that no man should glory.” MannaFest's keystone grace text alongside Rom 3:24 and Titus 3:5.

03

The mystery of one new man

Ephesians 2:14–16; 3:3–6

Not merely that Gentiles are saved, that the church itself is a wholly new entity, neither Jew nor Gentile, “fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus.”

04

Four images of the church

Ephesians 1:22–23; 2:19–22; 4:12, 16; 5:25–32

Body, temple, bride, and (implicitly) new humanity, no other New Testament book stacks all four.

05

The heavenly places

Ephesians 1:3, 20; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12

Five occurrences of epouranios stage the letter's entire cosmic geography, blessing, enthronement, position, angelic instruction, and combat, all one location.

06

Sevenfold unity and the ascension gifts

Ephesians 4:4–6; 4:7–13

“one body, and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all”, a mini-creed under the “walk worthy” imperative, followed by Christ's gifts to His church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers.

Author
Paul (1:1)
Date
c. AD 60–62, from Roman imprisonment
Audience
Ephesian church (and likely a circular letter among the Asian churches)

As the earliest witnesses report them; positions and holders under Who Wrote It.

The world behind this book

The book of Ephesians
Where
Written from house arrest in Rome and carried by Tychicus to Ephesus and, very likely, around a circuit of churches in the Roman province of Asia.

The history, and what it meant to them

The history

Ephesus was the front door of Roman Asia. It was the leading city of the province and one of the great ports of the empire, with the main road from the east ending at its docks. Its harbor has silted up since, so the ruins now sit inland from the sea that made the city rich.

The city belonged to Artemis. Her temple there was counted one of the seven wonders of the world, and the whole economy leaned on her: pilgrims, festivals, wealth stored in the temple, and a silversmiths' guild that made a living selling little silver shrines. When Paul's preaching cut into that trade, the silversmiths packed the city's huge theater and chanted for two hours that Artemis of the Ephesians was great.

Ephesus was also famous for magic. Written spells sold as charms were known around the Mediterranean as 'Ephesian letters,' and Acts records new believers hauling their scroll collections into the street and burning them. That is the setting for a letter that speaks so plainly about unseen powers and about armor for standing against them.

One more piece of stone sits behind chapter 2. Archaeologists have recovered the Greek warning sign from the Jerusalem temple threatening death to any Gentile who crossed the barrier into the inner courts, and Josephus describes the same barrier. When Paul says Christ broke down the middle wall of partition, his readers knew there had been an actual wall.

What it meant to them

Ephesian believers had come out of a religion of fear - spells, charms, and a goddess who had to be kept satisfied. This letter told them they had been chosen before the world was made, made alive with Christ, and seated with him high above every power they used to buy charms against.

It also told a mixed room that it was one room. Jews and Gentiles who had been kept apart by a real barrier in Jerusalem were now one new humanity, built together into a temple God actually lives in. That is why the second half of the letter is so practical: people like that have to learn how to talk, work, marry, and stand together.

Sources cited

  • Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews
  • F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free
  • W. M. Ramsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia
  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, A Commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the Whole Bible

Every work MannaFest builds on →

Who Wrote It, and When

Author
The letter names Paul twice. It opens 'Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God' (1:1), and in the middle of the argument the writer breaks off to say 'For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus' (3:1). The early church received it as Paul's without a recorded dissent. From the nineteenth century onward a body of scholarship has argued that a student of Paul wrote it in his master's name, a normal practice in the ancient schools and one that carried no charge of forgery in the way a modern reader hears the word. The grounds are stylistic and literary: the piled-up sentences of chapters 1 and 3, a stock of words Paul uses nowhere else, and the close verbal overlap with Colossians. The traditional reading holds the field in the manuscripts, in the fathers, and in a substantial body of modern commentary. Both positions are set out below, and the whole of the letter's teaching stands either way.

  • Paul wrote it, from prison, as the letter itself says

    held by the unbroken reception of the early church, where Ignatius writes to the Ephesians early in the second century about the apostle who remembers them in every letter, and Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian all quote the letter as Paul's; every surviving manuscript title; and among moderns Markus Barth (Ephesians, Anchor Bible, 1974), F. F. Bruce (The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians, New International Commentary on the New Testament, 1984) and Harold W. Hoehner (Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary, 2002), who worked through the stylistic tests one at a time and found none of them decisive

    Hoehner's survey also traced the history of opinion and showed that the doubt is modern. No ancient writer questioned the letter's author, and it circulated under Paul's name within living memory of the men who knew him.

  • A student of Paul wrote it in his name after his death, about AD 80 to 90

    held by W. M. L. de Wette, who first argued it in 1826, and in the modern period C. Leslie Mitton (The Epistle to the Ephesians: Its Authorship, Origin and Purpose, 1951), Andrew T. Lincoln (Ephesians, Word Biblical Commentary, 1990) and Ernest Best (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians, International Critical Commentary, 1998)

    The evidence offered is the sentence length, a vocabulary that departs from the undisputed letters, the dependence on Colossians, and the way 3:5 looks back on 'his holy apostles and prophets' as a body already fixed. Readers who take this view still receive the letter as Scripture and read its teaching as apostolic.

  • Paul wrote it, and the features that raise the question follow from what kind of letter it is

    held by commentators who read Ephesians as a circular letter with no local crisis behind it, written in a register close to prayer, so that the long sentences of 1:3 to 1:14 and 3:14 to 3:21 are liturgical rather than argumentative; Bruce and Hoehner both make this case, and it explains the same evidence without a second author

Date
Paul writes as a prisoner four times over (3:1, 4:1, 6:20), and he sends the letter by hand with Tychicus, who carries Colossians on the same errand: 'Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord' (6:21), matched almost word for word at Colossians 4:7, 'the beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow-servant in the Lord' (Colossians 4:7). Colossians sends Onesimus with him (Colossians 4:9), which ties Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon to one errand. The usual placing is the Roman custody Acts describes, where Paul 'abode two whole years in his own hired dwelling' (Acts 28:30), which puts the letter about AD 60 to 62. Two other imprisonments have been proposed for the same group of letters.

  • Rome, about AD 60 to 62

    held by the traditional dating and the majority of commentary in every century; Acts 28:30 gives Paul two years of open custody in Rome with visitors coming and going, and Philippians, written from the same custody, mentions the guard: 'my bonds became manifest in Christ throughout the whole prætorian guard' (Philippians 1:13)

  • Caesarea, about AD 57 to 59

    held by a minority reading resting on the two years Paul spent in custody under Felix at Caesarea before his appeal, noted in older commentary and revived occasionally since

    The difficulty is that a runaway from Colossae would more plausibly disappear into Rome than into Caesarea, and Philemon 22 asks for lodging to be prepared in the Lycus valley, which suits a release expected in the west.

  • An imprisonment at Ephesus in the mid 50s

    held by scholars who note that Paul speaks of many imprisonments and of fighting with beasts at Ephesus, and who find the short distances of the Philemon errand easier from there

    Acts records no Ephesian imprisonment, so this reading is an inference from Paul's own remarks rather than from a narrative.

  • About AD 80 to 90, if a student of Paul wrote it

    held by Mitton, Lincoln and Best, on the authorship position set out above

Audience
The address reads 'to the saints that are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus' (1:1), and the letter is plainly written to Gentile believers, since Paul says 'Wherefore remember, that once ye, the Gentiles in the flesh' (2:11) and calls himself 'the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you Gentiles' (3:1). The complication is textual. The two words that name Ephesus are absent from the earliest and best copies, and the letter reads as though the writer knows the readers only by report: 'having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you' (1:15) and 'if so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of that grace of God which was given me to you-ward' (3:2). Paul spent three years in Ephesus by his own account, 'by the space of three years I ceased not to admonish every one night and day with tears' (Acts 20:31), and this letter greets nobody there by name. That combination has produced the reading that Ephesians was written for a group of churches across the province of Asia and copied for each, with Ephesus, the chief city, giving the copy that survived its title.

  • The letter was addressed to the church at Ephesus and the two words are original

    held by the overwhelming weight of the manuscript tradition, where all but a handful of copies carry the words; every surviving title of the letter in every language; and Hoehner (2002), who argues that no letter of the period circulated without a named recipient and that a blank in the address would be an invention with no parallel

  • It was a circular letter sent to the churches of Asia, with Ephesus one of its stops

    held by James Ussher in the seventeenth century, followed by J. B. Lightfoot and by F. F. Bruce (1984), and now the common reading in English commentary; it accounts for the impersonal tone, the missing greetings, and the earliest copies at once

  • It is the letter Colossians calls the epistle from Laodicea

    held by an old proposal that goes back at least to Marcion, whose collection carried this letter as an epistle to the Laodiceans, and which rests on Paul's instruction to the Colossians, 'that ye also read the epistle from Laodicea' (Colossians 4:16)

    On the circular reading the two suggestions collapse into one, since a letter that went round the province would have reached Laodicea and Colossae on the same circuit as Ephesus.

Occasion
No quarrel, no error and no crisis is named anywhere in the six chapters. Nobody is corrected by name, no opponent is answered, and the only trouble mentioned is the writer's own confinement, 'Wherefore I ask that ye may not faint at my tribulations for you, which are your glory' (3:13). What the letter does is set out what God has done in Christ and what the church now is, and then tell believers how to live inside that. The turn comes at 4:1, where the writer stops describing and starts asking: 'I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called' (4:1). Everything before that verse is what God did. Everything after it is how a household, a congregation and a soldier stand in it. Tychicus carried the letter and was sent to do in person what the paper could not, 'that ye may know our state, and that he may comfort your hearts' (6:22).

The Years of Ephesians

Ephesians timeline

  1. c. 550 BC

    Croesus of Lydia funds the archaic temple of Artemis at Ephesus, and the city grows around the shrine.

  2. 356 BC

    The temple burns and is rebuilt on a larger scale, becoming one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

  3. 133 BC

    Attalus III wills Pergamum to Rome; Ephesus passes into Roman hands and becomes the leading city of the province of Asia.

  4. c. AD 52

    Paul reaches Ephesus for the first time, reasons in the synagogue, and leaves Priscilla and Aquila there.

    Acts 18:19

  5. c. AD 52-55

    Paul spends about three years at Ephesus, teaching daily in the school of Tyrannus while converts burn their books of magic.

    Acts 19:19

  6. c. AD 55

    The silversmiths raise a riot in the theater over the trade in shrines of Artemis.

    Acts 19:28

  7. c. AD 57

    Paul calls the Ephesian elders to Miletus and takes his leave of them, warning of wolves to come.

    Acts 20:17

  8. c. AD 60-62

    Paul is held in open custody at Rome; Tychicus carries this letter, Colossians and Philemon on one errand.

    Ephesians 6:21

  9. c. AD 62-64

    Timothy is left at Ephesus to charge certain men not to teach a different doctrine.

    1 Timothy 1:3

  10. c. AD 95

    The risen Christ addresses the church at Ephesus, commending its labor and naming what it has lost.

    Revelation 2:4

  11. c. AD 140

    Marcion includes the letter in his collection under the title of an epistle to the Laodiceans; Tertullian answers him.

  12. c. AD 200

    Papyrus 46 is copied, carrying Ephesians with the heading to the Ephesians and no place name in the address.

  13. c. AD 364

    Basil of Caesarea reports that the ancient copies he has seen lack the words 'in Ephesus' at the opening of the letter.

Background

the middle wall of partition (2:14): a rare physical corroboration

In 1871 Charles Clermont-Ganneau discovered a Greek inscription near the Jerusalem Temple platform, now in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, warning that any foreigner who passed the balustrade around the sanctuary bore responsibility for his own resulting death. Josephus independently describes the same barrier and warning (Antiquities 15.11.5; Jewish War 5.5.2; 6.2.4). It is a rare case of a New Testament background claim with direct, extant physical corroboration.

Second-Temple Jew-Gentile hostility (Gentile exclusion from the inner courts, rabbinic purity boundaries) makes Paul's “one new man” claim (2:15) a genuinely radical, not merely rhetorical, social-theological claim in its own setting.

Original Language

the letter's keynotes: each word a door

μυστήριον
mystērion
mystery: six uses, the highest concentration in any NT book; a hidden plan now disclosed, not a puzzle
ἐπουράνιος
epouranios
heavenly, in the heavens: the letter's cosmic geography, five occurrences
ἀνακεφαλαιόω
anakephalaioō
sum up, head up, recapitulate: a rare verb, the theological hinge of 1:10
ἐκκλησία
ekklēsia
church, assembly: used overwhelmingly of the whole body of Christ across space and time, not the local congregation
προορίζω
proorizō
foreordain, predestinate: the load-bearing verb of the election debate
χάρις
charis
grace: central to 2:5, 8 and the letter's entire soteriological argument

1:3–14 is, in the Greek, one unbroken sentence (traditionally cited near 200 words), a torrent of praise that resists the breaks English translators must impose. The unbroken syntax mirrors the unbroken chain of divine action it describes: chose, foreordained, redeemed, forgiven, made known, sealed. The seventh keynote, panoplia (the “whole armor” of 6:11 and 6:13) gets a study to itself rather than a tile here: The Armor of God.

Further Reading on Ephesianswith the work named
Chuck Misslerbrief quote

Ephesians commentary materials

the founder's formative teacher. Reads the “mystery” as the disclosure of the Church Age itself, a parenthetical dispensation between Israel's past and future, off the radar of Old Testament prophecy.

R. C. Sproulbrief quote

Chosen by God (1986)

The systematic Reformed treatment of unconditional election that 1:4–11 anchors, grounded solely in God's will, not foreseen faith.

John Piperbrief quote

Desiring God

Both the Reformed-election reading and a softer continuationism on 4:11, the prophetic gift continues as fallible, testable impression, distinguished from the foundational apostolic-prophetic office of 2:20, a verse he engages directly.

Dutch Sheetsbrief quote

Intercessory Prayer

The spiritual-warfare-prayer stream for which 6:10–18 is the central operative text, prayer read as the church's assigned posture inside a conflict already decided.

Bill Johnson · Bill Hamonbrief quote

apostolic-prophetic-network teaching

The fuller continuationist reading of 4:11's five offices, both office and gift fully operative today.

John Wesleypublic domain

Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, on Ephesians

The natural public-domain anchor for the corporate/foreknowledge-conditioned reading of election, held broadly across the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition on 1:4–11.

John Calvinpublic domain

Commentary on Ephesians · Institutes III.21–24

The classic Reformed proof-text treatment of election, and a primary witness on 2:8–9's grace-through-faith.

Matthew Henry · Jamieson-Fausset-Brownpublic domain

Commentary on the Whole Bible · JFB Commentary, on Ephesians

Devotional exposition and concise verse notes on the mystery of 2:14–22, the public-domain floor beneath the letter.

Charles Spurgeonpublic domain

Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit sermons on Ephesians

Preached extensively from this letter, strongest on grace (2:8–9) and on election, the Reformed side of Contested Points.

among the roster's voices none is elevated above the rest: Missler and Spurgeon are through-lines, not authorities over the others. An honest gap: Derek Prince and John Bevere both belong on this letter, the “in Christ,” “in him,” “in whom” identity language of 1:3–14 is their signature ground, and 2:8–9 is where grace-not-performance lives, but no single titled work of theirs has been matched to Ephesians yet, so they are named here rather than cited. The same applies to John Eckhardt on 6:10–18.

Contested Points

the positions, and who holds each

Did Paul write it?

The traditional case

The letter attributes itself to Paul twice over (1:1; 3:1), the early church received it without dispute, and it is listed in the Muratorian Fragment around AD 170. The stylistic differences have ordinary explanations: an amanuensis, a genre that is a circular meditation rather than crisis correspondence, and a subject, cosmic doctrine, that naturally invites different vocabulary than the street-fight prose of Galatians.

The critical case, presented at full strength

Ephesians sits among the six disputed Paulines. Its verbal overlap with Colossians is unusually high, roughly a third of Colossians's words recur here, which points either to genuine reuse by Paul himself or to a later imitator working with Colossians open in front of him. The vocabulary runs denser in abstract and liturgical terms than the undisputed letters, and the ecclesiology reads as more developed: the church universal rather than the church in a given town.

Where the readings stand: Traditional Pauline authorship is held by the great majority of the church across history and by most evangelical scholarship today; the critical case is held by a range of scholars building on the Colossians overlap and denser abstract vocabulary. Of the six disputed-Pauline cases, the stylistic argument against this one is generally judged the weakest, and the letter's early reception was unbroken from the beginning.

“At Ephesus” (1:1), a circular letter?

The textual case

The words “at Ephesus” (en Ephesō) are absent from some of the earliest and best manuscripts (P46, the original hand of Sinaiticus, Vaticanus), which read the awkward “to the saints that are, and the faithful in Christ Jesus”, the ASV's own wording of 1:1 minus those two words, as if a blank were left for a local church's name. Marcion reportedly called it “To the Laodiceans,” matching Paul's own reference to “the epistle from Laodicea” (Col 4:16).

The traditional case

The received text names Ephesus, the letter carries no local greetings or crisis (unlike Paul's other letters, oddly impersonal for a three-year ministry city), consistent with a circular meditation meant for several churches, of which Ephesus, its first and best-known recipient, gave the letter its name.

Where the readings stand: Either reading leaves Pauline authorship and authority intact, a circular letter is still Paul's letter. Scholars who favor the shorter textual reading and those who hold the traditional Ephesian address agree the letter reached Ephesus among its recipients; this page follows the received text as its pastoral anchor.

Election and predestination (1:4–5, 11)

Reformed

“Having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will” describes unconditional election, God's choice grounded solely in His will, not foreseen faith or merit; 1:11's “who worketh all things after the counsel of his will” extends this to comprehensive providence.

Wesleyan-Arminian

Election is corporate, chosen “in him” (1:4), i.e. all who are found in Christ by faith are the elect, without a pre-temporal ledger of named individuals apart from foreseen response. The same chapter makes faith the hinge of receiving the promised inheritance: “having also believed, ye were sealed” (1:13).

Where the readings stand: This is one of the New Testament's genuine cruxes, and both traditions cite this very chapter as their strongest text, the Reformed reading held classically by Calvin and the Reformed confessions, the Wesleyan-Arminian corporate reading held by Wesley and much of the Pentecostal-Arminian stream.

The fivefold ministry offices at work today (4:11 with 2:20)

The testable-impression stream

All five offices stand, and the prophetic word given in the church today is fallible impression that the congregation weighs rather than an addition to Scripture: “despise not prophesyings; prove all things” (1 Thess 5:20–21). John Piper argues this reading on 4:11 and engages 2:20 directly, distinguishing the once-laid foundation from the gift still given.

The apostolic-prophetic-network stream

Both office and gift are fully operative, recognized, and trained for: apostles sent to plant and to father churches, prophets set in the local body under accountability. Bill Hamon and Bill Johnson teach this stream, reading Paul's own time limit in 4:13, the offices are given “till we all attain unto the unity of the faith.”

This site's tradition: This site's tradition holds that all five offices remain operative in the church today. Paul sets their term himself at 4:13, the measure the church has not yet reached, and 2:20 names the apostolic and prophetic witness the household is built on rather than a date when the gifts stopped. The live question is how the prophetic word is weighed, and both streams above submit it to Scripture.

Scripture quoted from the American Standard Version. Built on MannaFest's research brief on Ephesians — public-domain commentators (Calvin, Wesley, Henry, JFB, Spurgeon) quoted in full, modern voices from the founder's approved-voices roster cited briefly.

The Book’s Shape

The letter as a ring, with the mystery and the prayer at the center

proposed structure
  1. AGrace and peace, and every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places1:1-14
  2. BPrayer for knowledge, and Christ seated far above every power1:15-23
  3. CDead in trespasses, made alive together with Christ, saved by grace2:1-10
  4. DThe far off made nigh: two made one new man, a holy temple in the Lord2:11-22
  5. XThe mystery told out, the church shown to the powers, and the prayer to be filled3:1-21
  6. D'One body and one Spirit: the gifts Christ gave to build the body up4:1-16
  7. C'The old man put off and the new man put on, walking in light4:17-5:20
  8. B'The household ordered under Christ, wives and husbands, children and fathers, servants and masters5:21-6:9
  9. A'The whole armor, prayer at all seasons, Tychicus sent, and grace with a love incorruptible6:10-24

Mapped by the two-part division every commentary marks at 4:1, where the letter turns from what God has done to how believers walk, read as a ring around the disclosure of the mystery and the prayer that closes chapter 3; the correspondences between the opening blessing and the closing armor, and between the temple of chapter 2 and the body of chapter 4, are noted across the commentary tradition rather than claimed by any one writer.

Key Words, with Doors

  1. μυστήριονmystḗriona secret now disclosed

    In the Greek mysteries the word named something kept from outsiders. Paul uses it for the opposite motion, a secret God has now told out loud. It appears six times in this letter, as many as in 1 Corinthians and more than in any other New Testament book, and each time the content is stated plainly: the will of God summed up in Christ at 1:9, Paul's own commission at 3:3 and 3:9, marriage read as a sign at 5:32, and the gospel itself at 6:19. The definition is given at 3:6, where the secret turns out to be that Gentiles are fellow-heirs with Israel in Christ.

    Greek · G3466 · open the word study →

  2. πρόθεσιςpróthesisa setting forth, a settled purpose

    The word describes something placed out in front, and in the Greek Old Testament it names the showbread set before God. In Ephesians it carries God's plan as a thing decided in advance and then displayed. At 1:11 believers are 'foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will' (1:11), and at 3:11 the church shown to the powers is there 'according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord' (3:11). Both occurrences were confirmed in the chapters cited.

    Greek · G4286 · open the word study →

  3. ἐπουράνιοςepourániosheavenly, belonging to the upper places

    The phrase the ASV renders 'in the heavenly places' occurs five times in Ephesians and nowhere else in the New Testament in that form. It marks the arena the letter is interested in. Blessing is there (1:3), Christ is seated there (1:20), believers are seated with him there (2:6), the powers are taught there through the church (3:10), and the enemy is there too (6:12). The word says where the decisive action happens, and the same location holds the throne and the fight.

    Greek · G2032 · open the word study →

  4. πλοῦτοςploûtoswealth, abundance

    A commercial word for a large amount of money, used here for what God has and spends. Redemption comes 'according to the riches of his grace' (1:7), the readers are told to know 'what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints' (1:18) amounts to, kindness is shown in 'the exceeding riches of his grace' (2:7), and Paul's message is 'the unsearchable riches of Christ' (3:8). In a port city that measured everything by trade, the word landed on familiar ground.

    Greek · G4149 · open the word study →

  5. δῶρονdōrona gift, a present given freely

    The one occurrence in the letter is the load-bearing word of 2:8, where salvation is 'the gift of God' (2:8). Greek has more than one word for gift, and this one names the object handed over rather than the act of giving or the giver's kindness. The next verse rules out the alternative, 'not of works, that no man should glory' (2:9), and the verse after that puts works where they belong, as the thing the gift produces.

    Greek · G1435 · open the word study →

  6. πλήρωμαplḗrōmathat which fills, a full measure

    The noun means the content that fills a container, and later Gnostic writers took it over for the divine world. Paul had it first and used it for Christ and his church. History runs to 'a dispensation of the fulness of the times' (1:10), the church is 'the fulness of him that filleth all in all' (1:23), the prayer of chapter 3 asks that the readers 'may be filled unto all the fulness of God' (3:19), and maturity is measured by 'the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ' (4:13).

    Greek · G4138 · open the word study →

  7. πανοπλίαpanoplíathe full equipment of a heavy infantry soldier

    The word names the complete kit rather than any single piece, which is why the ASV renders it 'the whole armor' at 6:11 and again at 6:13. Those two verses are its only appearances in the letter. The point of the word is that the equipment comes as a set and is issued by someone else, since it is called the armor of God. Isaiah had already dressed God himself in two of the pieces: 'he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation upon his head' (Isaiah 59:17). What Paul describes is a soldier wearing his commander's own gear.

    Greek · G3833 · open the word study →

The Hard Questions, Honestly

The places a careful reader stops, with the readings named and their holders.

Was the letter written to Ephesus?

The address in most Bibles reads 'to the saints that are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus' (1:1), and the two Greek words behind 'at Ephesus' are missing from the oldest copies we have. Papyrus 46 lacks them, and so do Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus in the hand of their original scribes, with later correctors adding them in the margins.

The evidence, and the readings

Basil of Caesarea, writing in the fourth century, says the ancient copies he had consulted read the verse without a place name. Marcion, about AD 140, knew the letter as an epistle to the Laodiceans. Alongside that, three features of the letter itself point the same way. It greets nobody by name, though Paul lived in Ephesus for three years. It speaks of the readers' faith as something reported to him (1:15). And it says 'if so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of that grace of God which was given me to you-ward' (3:2), which is an odd thing to write to a congregation he founded. Nothing in the letter's teaching depends on the answer, and no manuscript carries any other place name in the blank.

  • The words are original and the letter went to Ephesus

    held by the great mass of manuscripts, which carry the words; every ancient title of the letter; and Harold W. Hoehner (2002), who argues that a letter with a blank address has no parallel in antiquity and that the omission is more easily explained as a copyist's slip in one early line of transmission

  • It was a circular letter for the churches of Asia, and Ephesus supplied the surviving title

    held by James Ussher, J. B. Lightfoot, and F. F. Bruce (1984), followed by much recent English commentary; on this reading Tychicus carried one copy on a circuit and the name of each church was spoken as it was read

    This reading accounts for the earliest copies, the missing greetings and the distant tone at 1:15 and 3:2 with a single explanation, and it fits a letter with no local problem in view.

  • It is the letter from Laodicea that Colossians mentions

    held by Marcion's collection, which titled it so, and later writers who connect it with Paul's instruction 'that ye also read the epistle from Laodicea' (Colossians 4:16)

    On the circular reading this becomes a detail rather than a rival, since a letter for the province would have been read at Laodicea on the same round.

Ephesians, argued in full →

What does 1:4 to 1:11 teach about election and predestination?

The paragraph uses the language of prior choice four times in eight verses. God 'chose us in him before the foundation of the world' (1:4), 'having foreordained us unto adoption as sons' (1:5), acting 'according to the good pleasure of his will' (1:5), and believers were 'foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will' (1:11). Honored teachers have read those verses in more than one way for centuries, and the argument is not settled by any single sentence in the letter. Three features of the text belong to every reading. The choice is made 'in him', so it is stated in terms of Christ from the start. Its stated goal is character, 'that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love' (1:4). And its stated end is worship, 'to the praise of the glory of his grace' (1:6). This site names the readings and their holders and leaves the sentence where Paul left it.

  • God chose particular persons for salvation before creation, and their coming to faith follows from that choice

    held by Augustine in his later works against the Pelagians, John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1559), the Westminster Confession (1646), and in the modern period John Piper and R. C. Sproul, who both taught this reading at length

    The strongest support is the language of the passage itself, which makes God the actor in every clause and never states a condition met by the person chosen.

  • God chose in view of the faith he foreknew, so that the choice is real and human response is genuine

    held by Jacobus Arminius and the Remonstrants, John Wesley in his sermon on predestination and in his published exchanges, and the Wesleyan and Pentecostal traditions that followed him; much of this site's own heritage stands here

    The strongest support is the way Scripture elsewhere pairs God's foreknowledge with election, and the plain address of the gospel invitation to all.

  • The choice is corporate: God chose Christ, and the church is chosen in him, so a person is elect by being in Christ

    held by readers who note that every clause here says 'in him' or 'in Christ' and that the paragraph is addressed to a congregation; the reading has been set out in detail by Markus Barth (Ephesians, Anchor Bible, 1974) and is common among commentators who read Ephesians alongside Israel's election in the Old Testament

Predestination and Election→

Does the one new man of 2:11 to 2:22 mean the church has replaced Israel?

It does not, and the passage says which direction the movement runs. The people addressed are Gentiles who used to be 'alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise' (2:12), and what happens to them is that they are brought near: 'ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ' (2:13). A stranger admitted to a commonwealth does not abolish it. The wall that comes down is named as well, 'the middle wall of partition' (2:14), which Paul immediately explains as 'the law of commandments contained in ordinances' (2:15), the body of regulation that kept the two groups from one table. What is created is described as a third thing built out of both, 'that he might create in himself of the two one new man' (2:15), and both parties are reconciled in one act (2:16). The covenants are called 'the covenants of the promise' (2:12) and are never said to be cancelled. Paul writes elsewhere, in the letter where he handles this question at length, 'God did not cast off his people which he foreknew' (Romans 11:2) and 'For the gifts and the calling of God are not repented of' (Romans 11:29). Any use of Ephesians 2 to argue that the church has taken Israel's place runs against what the paragraph actually says.

  • Gentiles are brought into a covenant community that continues, and God's promises to Israel stand

    held by the reading required by 2:12 and 2:13, held with Romans 11; it is the position of the dispensational tradition, of Chuck Missler in his teaching on the Pauline letters, and of many commentators outside that tradition who simply follow the direction of the text

  • The one new man is a third body in which the old distinction no longer determines standing before God, while Israel's future remains open

    held by commentators who take 2:15 at full strength and hold it together with Romans 11, so that the new man is a genuine creation and the promises to Israel are still in force

  • The church has taken Israel's place and inherits her promises

    held by the supersessionist reading, which has appeared in Christian writing since the second century

    This site does not teach it. It reverses the direction of 2:12 and 2:13, where Gentiles are the ones brought in, and it requires Romans 11:1 to mean the opposite of what it says. The cost of holding it is that the covenants Paul calls 'the covenants of the promise' (2:12) become promises God did not keep.

Why God Is Not Finished With Israel→

Why does 4:8 say the ascended Christ gave gifts when the psalm says received, and what is 'the lower parts of the earth'?

Two questions sit in three verses. The quotation reads 'When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, And gave gifts unto men' (4:8), while the psalm reads 'Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led away captives; Thou hast received gifts among men' (Psalms 68:18). The Aramaic Targum on this psalm and the Syriac Peshitta both render the line as giving rather than receiving, which shows the reading was already current in Jewish circles and was not invented for this argument. On the sense of it, a conqueror who receives tribute distributes it, so the two halves of the picture belong to one scene. The second question is the aside at 4:9: 'He ascended, what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth' (4:9). Readers have taken the descent in three ways, and the sentence is short enough to carry all three grammatically.

  • The descent is the incarnation, and 'the lower parts of the earth' means the earth itself, which is lower than heaven

    held by many commentators from the Reformation onward, who note that the contrast in 4:10 is with 'far above all the heavens' (4:10) and that the whole movement is down to earth and back up

  • The descent is to the place of the dead between the cross and the resurrection

    held by a reading with a long history in the church, held together with 1 Peter 3:19 and with the ancient creeds' clause about the descent; on this reading the captivity led captive is the host released at the resurrection

  • The descent is the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, the ascended Christ coming down to his people

    held by a minority reading argued in modern commentary from the immediate context, where what follows the ascent is the giving of gifts to the church

Are the apostles and prophets of 4:11 still given, and who may hold these offices?

The verse lists what the ascended Christ handed down: 'And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers' (4:11). The purpose clause sets the term of service, and it has not expired: they are given 'for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ' (4:12), and this continues 'till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man' (4:13). Since no congregation has reached that measure, this site teaches that Christ is still giving all five. The Spirit who gave them is the same Spirit who came on the Ephesian believers when 'they spake with tongues, and prophesied' (Acts 19:6). Two genuine questions remain inside that, and both are matters of definition rather than of whether the gifts continue.

  • All five are given today, and 'apostle' names a sent and founding ministry distinct from the Twelve

    held by this site's tradition, and the teaching of the apostolic and prophetic streams; the New Testament itself uses the word of Barnabas, of Andronicus and Junia, and of others beyond the Twelve, which shows the term already had a wider use in the first generation

  • The phrase 'pastors and teachers' (4:11) names one office or two

    held by commentators divided by a point of Greek grammar in the verse; the older reading takes them as a single office of teaching shepherd, and others take them as two ministries listed together because they work together

  • Women hold these offices as men do

    held by this site's own heritage: John Wesley authorizing women to preach, the twelve elders at Azusa Street of whom six were women, the Assemblies of God lifting its restrictions in 1935, and Aimee Semple McPherson, who founded a denomination; the question is presented in full on the women in ministry page

    Derek Prince taught on this subject at length in Women In The Church, Pts. 1 and 2, and his teaching is honored in its own terms. Honored teachers differ here, and each is presented as holding his own position rather than as answering another.

The Fivefold Ministry→

What does 5:21 to 6:9 ask of a household?

The passage addresses three pairs in turn: wives and husbands, children and fathers, servants and masters. It begins with a sentence that governs everything after it, 'subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ' (5:21). Then 'Wives, be in subjection unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord' (5:22), and 'For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, being himself the saviour of the body' (5:23). The instruction to husbands is three times longer and is measured by the cross: 'Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it' (5:25). Fathers are restrained as well as obeyed, 'provoke not your children to wrath' (6:4). Masters are given the same warning as their servants and told the ground of it, 'there is no respect of persons with him' (6:9). Two things are worth noting about the form. Greek and Roman writers on household management addressed the head of the house about his dependants. Paul addresses the dependants directly, as people who can choose, and he puts a duty on the man in every pair. The passage is about a marriage and a household, and what it settles about ministry in the church is a separate question, argued from this text and from others.

  • The husband holds a headship of responsible love, and the wife's response is voluntary submission within it

    held by the reading held across most of church history and taught today in the complementarian tradition; it rests on 5:23 and on the appeal to Genesis at 5:31, and its holders stress that the headship named is the headship of the one who 'gave himself up for it' (5:25)

  • The passage teaches mutual submission, with 5:21 governing the whole and the husband's love defined as self-giving

    held by the egalitarian reading, which notes that the verb in 5:22 is carried over from 5:21 and that the standard set for the husband is the surrender of his own life; it is held across the Wesleyan, Pentecostal and wider evangelical traditions

  • The household code addresses marriage and does not by itself decide who may lead or teach in the church

    held by commentators on both sides of the previous question who keep the two arguments separate, since Paul is describing a home here and treats congregational order elsewhere

    This site's own heritage stands with women in ministry: Wesley authorized women preachers, six of the twelve elders at Azusa Street were women, and the Assemblies of God lifted its restrictions in 1935. Derek Prince taught on the subject at length in Women In The Church, Pts. 1 and 2, and his teaching is honored in his own words. Unity among honored teachers is not sacrificed to this question.

Women in Ministry→

What is the wrestling of 6:12 against?

'For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places' (6:12). Four terms are stacked, and the last phrase puts all four in the same location the letter has used five times for the place where the decisive things happen. This site reads them as what the letter says they are: created spiritual beings in rebellion, under a leader named two verses earlier as 'the devil' (6:11) and at 2:2 as 'the prince of the powers of the air' (2:2). The same vocabulary was used at 1:21 for what Christ is seated above and at 3:10 for the audience being taught by the existence of the church, which makes a demythologized reading hard to carry through the letter consistently. Two further points keep the passage from being misused. The armor listed is defensive except for the sword, and the verb repeated through the paragraph is to stand, so the posture is holding ground rather than launching a campaign. And the paragraph ends in prayer for boldness in preaching (6:19), which is where the fight is actually joined.

  • The terms name real spiritual beings organized under a hostile leader

    held by this site's tradition, the reading of the early church, and the plain sense of 6:12 read with 2:2, 1:21 and 3:10; it is taught by Chuck Missler, Derek Prince and the wider apostolic and prophetic stream, and it is assumed by the language of every writer of the New Testament

  • The terms also cover the human structures those beings work through

    held by commentators who note that the same words are used in Greek sources for civil magistrates and who read Colossians 2:15 alongside this verse; on this reading the political and the spiritual are two ends of one thing rather than alternatives

    Held this way the reading adds a dimension without emptying the verse, since 6:12 still places the opponents in the heavenly places and names the devil as their head.

  • The language is a first-century way of speaking about impersonal forces such as ideology, custom and social pressure

    held by a modern reading that arose with the demythologizing programme of the twentieth century

    The cost is high. It requires the same four words to mean beings at 3:10, where they are taught something, and to mean abstractions here, and it leaves 'the wiles of the devil' (6:11) without a subject.

The Whole Armour of God→

The Text and the Spade

  • Papyrus 46 (Chester Beatty II)c. AD 200

    The earliest substantial copy of Paul's letters carries Ephesians, and it places the letter unusually early in the collection, directly after Romans and the Corinthian letters. Its heading names the Ephesians while the address in 1:1 has no place name at all. That single page is the strongest evidence for the circular-letter reading, because it shows the two states of the text side by side in one manuscript.

  • Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus4th century

    Both great parchment Bibles carry Ephesians complete, and in both the original scribe wrote 1:1 without the words 'in Ephesus'. In both, a later corrector added them. The agreement of these two witnesses with Papyrus 46 across two centuries and different textual families is what makes the omission a serious reading rather than an accident in one copy.

  • Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Claromontanus and the mass of later copies5th century onward

    From the fifth century the words 'in Ephesus' stand in the text without dispute, and every version and every title carries the name of Ephesus. Whatever the original address said, the church read this letter as the Ephesian letter from an early date and has done so ever since.

  • Basil of Caesarea, Against Eunomiusc. AD 364

    Basil says the words are absent from the ancient copies he had seen, and he builds a point of argument on the shorter reading. His remark is the earliest surviving comment by a Christian writer on this exact variant, and it confirms that copies without the place name were still circulating in the fourth century.

  • Marcion's collectionc. AD 140, known through Tertullian's reply

    Marcion included this letter under the title of an epistle to the Laodiceans. Tertullian answered him and insisted the church knew it as the letter to the Ephesians. Whatever Marcion was working from, the episode shows the letter circulating with a contested address within a century of its writing, and it is the earliest evidence that its destination was already a question.

  • The temple of Artemis at Ephesusthe archaic temple from the 6th century BC, rebuilt after 356 BC; excavated by J. T. Wood from 1869 and by later expeditions

    The Artemision was counted among the seven wonders and was the largest Greek temple ever built, standing on a marshy site outside the city and drawing pilgrims, deposits and trade from across the province. Its foundations, column drums and votive deposits have been recovered. The temple explains the riot of Acts 19, where the silversmiths who made shrines saw their business threatened, and it gives point to a letter that calls the church a building that 'groweth into a holy temple in the Lord' (2:21). The readers knew what a great temple looked like, and they were told they were one.

  • The great theater at EphesusHellenistic in origin, enlarged under the emperors through the 1st century AD

    The theater cut into the slope of Mount Pion held a crowd usually estimated at twenty-four thousand and opened onto the marble street running down to the harbor. Acts places the demonstration against Paul in it, and the excavated building matches the account: a space large enough for a city to gather in, a stage from which the town clerk could be heard, and an exit to the harbor road. Standing in it makes the scene in Acts 19 a matter of measurable space rather than a general impression.

  • The temple-warden title on Ephesian coins and inscriptions1st and 2nd centuries AD

    Ephesian coins and civic inscriptions carry the Greek title neokoros, temple warden or temple keeper, as the city's own boast. Acts uses that exact word in the town clerk's speech: 'the city of the Ephesians is temple-keeper of the great Diana' (Acts 19:35). The match between a narrative written in the first century and the official self-description stamped on the city's money is a small point of accuracy, and small points of that kind are how the historical value of a narrative is tested.

The Greek and Roman writing on household management

Greek and Roman, in Aristotle's Politics and in the Stoic writers who followed him4th century BC to the 1st century AD

The parallel

Aristotle opens his discussion of the household with the same three pairs Paul uses, husband and wife, father and child, master and slave, and later Stoic writers turned the scheme into lists of duties. Ephesians 5:21 to 6:9 follows that shape exactly, and Colossians 3:18 to 4:1 gives a shorter version of the same list.

Read honestly

The form is borrowed and the content is turned. The Greek writers addressed the head of the house about his dependants. Paul speaks to the wife, the child and the slave directly, which treats each as a person who answers to Christ. He puts an obligation on the man in every pair, gives the husband the longest and costliest instruction, and tells the master that he has a Master and that 'there is no respect of persons with him' (6:9). The whole set hangs from mutual submission at 5:21, which has no parallel in the Greek lists.

The Ephesia Grammata, the magical formulas named after Ephesus

Greek, and widely copied across the Mediterraneanattested from the 4th century BC into the Roman period

The parallel

Ephesus was famous for written charms whose power was thought to lie in naming the right spirits in the right order. Ephesians piles up names of spiritual authorities in exactly that manner at 1:21 and 6:12, and it says Christ is 'far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named' (1:21). Acts reports what happened when the gospel reached that trade: converts 'brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all' (Acts 19:19).

Read honestly

The vocabulary overlaps and the claim is opposite. A charm worked by knowing a name and using it. Ephesians says every such name is already under the feet of a man raised from the dead, and the equipment it issues is truth, righteousness, the gospel, faith, salvation, Scripture and prayer. Nothing in the armor passage is a formula, and no spirit is addressed anywhere in the letter.

The War Scroll from Qumran (1QM)

Jewish, from the Dead Sea communitycopied in the 1st century BC

The parallel

The scroll describes the sons of light drawn up for battle against the sons of darkness, with angels fighting alongside them and the outcome fixed in advance. Ephesians uses the same pair of images, telling readers to 'walk as children of light' (5:8) and naming the enemy as 'the world-rulers of this darkness' (6:12).

Read honestly

The imagery is shared and the weapons are not. The War Scroll organizes an army with real swords, trumpets and battle lines for a war fought on the ground. Ephesians hands out armor that is entirely defensive apart from the sword of the Spirit, which is identified as 'the word of God' (6:17), and closes the paragraph with prayer. The two texts show a common stock of Jewish battle language, and Paul's list comes most directly from Isaiah, where God himself 'put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation upon his head' (Isaiah 59:17).

The Pulpit on Ephesians

  • Untitled Sermon

    The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1978: “Untitled Sermon” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)

    Charles SpurgeonEphesians 1:12-13

  • Life From the Dead

    The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2267: “Life From the Dead” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)

    Charles SpurgeonEphesians 2:1

  • The Exceeding Riches of Grace

    The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1665: “The Exceeding Riches of Grace” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)

    Charles SpurgeonEphesians 2:7

  • The Agreement Of Salvation By Grace With Walking In Good Works

    The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2210: “The Agreement Of Salvation By Grace With Walking In Good Works” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)

    Charles SpurgeonEphesians 2:9-10

  • The Tabernacle of the Most High

    The New Park Street Pulpit, Sermon No. 267: “The Tabernacle of the Most High” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)

    Charles SpurgeonEphesians 2:22

  • Angelic Studies

    The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 933: “Angelic Studies” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)

    Charles SpurgeonEphesians 3:10

  • True Learning

    The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2719: “True Learning” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)

    Charles SpurgeonEphesians 4:20-21

  • Grieve Not the Holy Spirit

    The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 738: “Grieve Not the Holy Spirit” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)

    Charles SpurgeonEphesians 4:30

Where Ephesians leads

The heaviest chapters, the distinctive words, and the studies that cite Ephesians

2,531 cross-references flow out of its 5 heaviest chapters · 8 words are distinctively its own · 6 featured studies cite it.

Counted from this book's own cross-references, its words, and the studies that cite it.

Heaviest chapter

Ephesians 4Sends 671 cross-references outward: the most connected chapter in the book.

Distinctive word

ἐπουράνιος“above the sky” (G2032): 5 of its 19 occurrences in all of Scripture fall in this book (26%).

Featured study

BridegroomCites Ephesians directly, one of 6 featured studies that walk through this book.

Every study that reaches into Ephesians

37 studies, grouped by shelf

The numeral beside each title is how many passages of Ephesians that study works from.

How God Savesthe whole shelf →
In Christ — the Positional-Truth Thread of Ephesians3×Predestination and Election3×Eternal Security, and the Five Warnings of Hebrews1×Reconciliation1×
The Life of Gracethe whole shelf →
Forgiven, and Forgiving1×Put Off, Put On, MannaFest1×
Life in the Spirit & the Churchthe whole shelf →
The Fivefold Ministry — Ephesians 4:11-133×Baptism in the Holy Spirit — the Acts Evidence1×The Gifts of the Spirit — 1 Corinthians 12–141×
The Holy Spirit, Page by Pagethe whole shelf →
Grieving & Quenching the Spirit · MannaFest1×Who the Holy Spirit Is1×
The Unseen Realmthe whole shelf →
The Armor of God7×Angelology1×Demonology1×Satan1×Spiritual Warfare1×Territorial Spirits1×The Names of Satan1×
The Symbolism of Scripture, What God Madethe whole shelf →
Light1×Water1×
The Symbolism of Scripture, What Men Makethe whole shelf →
The Seal & the Signet2×The Right Hand1×The Sword1×The Whole Armour1×
The Symbolism of Scripture, The World and the People In Itthe whole shelf →
The House1×The Stone1×
How We Got the Biblethe whole shelf →
Archaeology and the Bible (the Evidence Ledger), MannaFest1×How Greek Works, MannaFest1×
Also cited here9 more studies that reach into Ephesians
Taw — The Mark of God2×The Church2×The Pauline Epistles2×Bridegroom1×Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism, MannaFest1×The Bronze Laver1×The Golden Rule1×The Messianic Psalms1×The Tabernacle1×

The Cast

the people, and the two cities the letter passed between

Paul“The prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you Gentiles” (3:1), “an ambassador in chains” (6:20), writing from an assumed apostolic authority to unveil a mystery given specifically to him (3:2–3).
TychicusThe letter's carrier and Paul's personal report (6:21–22), also entrusted with Colossians (Col 4:7–8), later named in 2 Tim 4:12 and Titus 3:12. No person page yet.
EphesusCapital of the Roman province of Asia, a major port, home to the Temple of Artemis (one of the Seven Wonders) and site of Paul's roughly three-year ministry (Acts 19:1–20; 20:31), his longest settled ministry recorded in Acts.RomeWhere the letter was written, c. AD 60–62, during the imprisonment of Acts 28:16–31, one of the four captivity letters, alongside Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon.

Where Ephesians Leads

the studies this hub opens, and every chapter, one door each

In ChristThe en Christō thread: blessed, chosen, redeemed, sealed, seated in the heavenlies, and the mystery of the one new manThe Armor of GodEphesians 6:10–20 taken apart piece by piece: the panoplia, and why every item of it is issued for standing rather than advancingSpiritual WarfareThe wider unseen-realm study behind 6:12: the principalities, the powers, and the world-rulers of this darkness
Ephesians 1Ephesians 2Ephesians 3Ephesians 4Ephesians 5Ephesians 6

Open the Ephesians reader: all 6 chapters →

More Doors from Ephesians

related studies and the reader

mystērion: mysteryepouranios: heavenly placesThe Pauline Epistles: the shelf Ephesians opens widestThe Fivefold Ministry: 4:11's gifts to the church, argued in full