1. THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS I. THE SALUTATION, II, 2 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of Some very ancient authorities omit at Ephesus. I. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, through the will of God. These opening words are exactly the same as in the twin epistle to the Col. (1 1), where see comment. The name of Timothy, which is associated with that of Paul in Colossians, is omitted here. As this is a general epistle, a final comprehensive statement of the meaning and aim of the Christian revelation from the point of view of the ideal and the absolute, Paul doubtless wanted it to have as little as possible of the personal or the incidental. To the saints. The epistle was not written for the general public, for just anybody and everybody, but for a certain class of people, a small select circle, the members of which had a common secret, a common experience; who had been enlightened with a new light, initiated into a new life and order; who had been called out, set apart; citizens of a commonwealth not of this world, but of heaven. At Ephesus. These words were not written by St. Paul and were not in the original copy. They were afterwards introduced into this place by a process which is described in the Introduction. See also comment on Col. 4: 16. This letter was for the Gentile Christians of a certain region. And the faithful in Christ Jesus. Leaving out the words at Ephesus, these words are to be taken in close connection with the word saints, and they give a more specific description, a closer identification, of those called saints. For the word saints means those set apart for God, and might be applied to the Jews. Compare 2: 19. So he says, "To the saints, those who are also faithful in (or believers in, Acts 16: 1; 2 Cor. 6: 15) Christ Jesus." I: I 2. faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. peace from GOD FOR II. AN OUTBURST OF LOFTY PRAISE TO 3. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 2. Grace to you and peace. Same as in Col. 1: 2, where see definition of these words. And the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is here joined with God as the source of grace and peace. Such distinction is never bestowed upon angels or any other being except Christ. This is perfectly natural to one to whom Christ was what he is shown to be in the epistle to the Colossians, written immediately before this God is the Father of Christian believers, having made them his children by giving them through his Spirit the nature and the feeling of children (Rom. 8: 15, 16). Christ is Lord, having become the Head of the church (1: 22; Col. 1: 18) and having won the right to their submission and obedience. one. This outburst of praise extends through twelve verses in a single intricately yet skilfully constructed sentence of fathomless import. At first we fail to find a trace of order or method. "It is like the preliminary flight of the eagle, rising and wheeling round, as though for a while uncertain what direction in his boundless freedom he shall take. The Apostle seems to be swept along by his theme, hardly knowing whither it is bearing him. He cannot order his conceptions or close his sentences. And so this swelling doxology runs on and on; in Christ . . . in whom . . . in Him . . . in Him . . in whom in whom . . . in whom. The will of God, the will of God, working itself out to some glorious issue in Christ this is his theme." After the prelude of praise in verse 3, Paul sets forth the glorious salvation in Christ: (1) As already predestined by God in his love, in eternity, verses 4, 5. (2) As brought about by the death of Christ and realized in the conscious experience of believers, 6, 7. (3) Made known to them as being in fulfilment of the divine purpose to reunite the universe in Christ, 8-10. (4) As realized according to the predestination of God, through their faith and the sealing of the Holy Spirit, both by Christians in general and the readers in particular, 11-13. (5) As issuing in final redemption, 14. 'Standing midway between the eternity past and to come, the Apostle looks backward to the primary source of man's salvation when it lay Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual 4. blessing in the heavenly places in Christ: even as a silent thought in the mind of God, and forward to the time when it shall have fulfilled its promise and become an eternal consummation. In this grand evolution of the divine plan three stages are marked by a refrain, thrice repeated, To the praise of his glory, to the praise of the glory of his grace (6, 12, 14). St. Paul's anthem is thus divided into three strophes: He sings the glory of redeeming love in its past conception, its present bestowments, and its future fruition. The paragraph, forming but one sentence and spun upon a single golden thread, is a piece of thought-music a sort of fugue in which from eternity to eternity the counsel of love is pursued by St. Paul's bold and exulting thought. The middle thought, that of God's actual bounty to believers, fills a space equal to that of the other two. But there is a pause within it (at verse 10), which in effect resumes the idea of the first strophe and works it in as a motif to the second, carrying on both in full volume till they lose themselves in the third and culminating movement. Throughout the piece there runs in varying expression the phrase 'in Christ,' 'in the Beloved,' 'in Him,' 'in whom,' weaving the whole into subtle continuity. The theme of the entire composition is given in verse 3, which forms no part of the threefold division we have described, but stands as a prelude to it as follows: 'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: who hath blessed us: In every blessing of the Spirit, in the heavenly places, in Christ'” (Findlay on Ephesians in the Expositor's Bible). This verse is a sort of prelude to the lofty strain that follows through verse 14, a comprehensive summary, containing implicitly all that is unfolded in order in the verses following. See 3. Blessed be the God .. who hath blessed us. Paul pronounces his blessing on God because God has bestowed his blessings on us. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The same designation is used by Paul in Rom. 15: 6; 2 Cor. 1: 3; 11: 31. also Jn. 20 17. For meaning see comment on verse 17 of this chapter. With every spiritual blessing. The word spiritual defines the kind and nature of the blessings bestowed by God on those who believe in Christ. They are spiritual as opposed to natural, material, or temporal. They belong to the invisible realm of the spirit rather than the visible realm of nature and sense. The word every measures the scope of the blessings and includes, objectively, every gift or bestowment from the grace that first "conceived the plan" to final glorification; and subjectively, in experience, everything from prevenient grace to complete sanctification. In the heavenly places. There is no word in the original for places. The Greek delighted in a he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before In certain suggestive indefiniteness, while we practical moderns are intolerant of anything that does not define to the utmost details. This phrase of Paul, thus defined, probably means blessings that belong to the realm of the heavenly as opposed to the earthly. There is an example of the contrast fully stated in Phil. 3: 19, 20. Christ. These blessings have their ground in Christ; that is, apart from him there would be no such blessings for us. They include the favorite Pauline conception of union with Christ: these blessings have no ground apart from Christ and can be realized, experienced, only on condition of union with Christ: the blessings, then, that God has blessed believers with are spiritual as opposed to material or temporal, they belong to the realm of the heavenly and not of this world, and they are objectively grounded in Christ and can be subjectively experienced only on condition of union with Christ. In verses 4, 5, 6a, Paul declares what God did for believers in eternity past, before the creation of man or the foundation of the world. In verses 6b-12 he enumerates the actual bestowments of the grace of God in the experience of believers in time. In verses 13 and 14 he turns his thought to the hope of the future and the God-sealed certainty of final fruition. 4. Even as he chose us. Let it not be forgotten that Paul is writing in a sort of confidential intimacy to those who had responded to the call of God, who had "come out from among them and were separate," who were thus God's set apart ones, who had been enlightened, who had had a common but revolutionary and transforming experience, who had been initiated into the new order of those that knew the secret of God. So he is talking secrets, the sacredest secrets, secrets that the world did not know and could not know because they were apprehended through a spiritual sense, as Paul says in 1 Cor. 2 : 14-16. He is writing secret things to those who could understand, just as Jesus spoke secrets to the inner circle of the Eleven in the Upper Room, as he could not have spoken to the promiscuous crowd without. Without keeping this in mind, it is impossible to enter into the spirit and meaning of this transcendent passage or indeed of the epistle as a whole. The words, as he chose us, are to be taken in connection with and dependence upon those going before, thus: He blessed us with every spiritual blessing in accordance with and pursuance of the previous fact, that he chose us in eternity. He chose us, and then in accordance with that choice he blessed us with all spiritual blessing. And he chose us that we should be holy and without blemish before him. This was the purpose for which he chose us. In him. That is, he |