The letter begins with a section putting strong emphasis on the divine action in bringing salvation. Paul refers to the spiritual blessings in Christ that believers enjoy and goes on to speak of God as having chosen them before the creation of the world (Eph. 1:4; see also v. 11). Their salvation did not take place because they earned it but because God planned it, a truth that is otherwise expressed in terms of predestination that is linked with God’s will and pleasure (1:5) and again with his plan (1:11). This opening also includes references to sonship through Christ, redemption through his blood, and sealing with the Holy Spirit (1:5, 7, 13). This massive emphasis on the place of the divine is expanded with continuing references to grace.
Christ’s saving work is stressed in the opening, a work that has significant implications for Christology. This emphasis persists throughout the letter: it is plain everywhere that who Christ is and what he does is at the heart of the Christian way. It is he who brings about the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile in the church, in the notable section on the breaking down of hostility and the making of peace between them (Eph. 2:11-22). Christ “himself is our peace” (2:14). This is more than the overcoming of human hostility. Part of Christ’s work is “to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ” (1:10). The powers in the heavenlies are to know “the manifold wisdom of God” through the church (3:10). There is an importance in Christ’s saving work that we cannot fathom, and there is an importance in the very existence of the church that we are not able to comprehend.
Ephesians emphasizes the importance of the Christian’s growth in knowledge, and this is expressed in a variety of ways. Sometimes it comes out in simple statements about knowledge, as when Paul says that God “made known to us the mystery” (Eph. 1:9; cf. “the mystery of the gospel,” 6:19). “Mystery” (musthvrion [mysterion, G3696]) does not mean something difficult to work out (as in our use of the term) but something impossible to work out. In Paul’s use, however, there is mostly the further thought that what we could never work out for ourselves God has now made known (cf. 3:3 and the making known of God’s “manifold wisdom” [3:10]). It is significant, accordingly, that the word occurs more often in Ephesians than in any other book of the New Testament; this book emphasizes the divine disclosure. The same basic idea may be conveyed with the concept of enlightenment: “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know...” (1:18), which is to be seen against the background of the darkness of the Gentiles (4:18). The readers are “light in the Lord” and they are to live as “children of light” and “find out what pleases the Lord” (5:8-10); they are to“understand what the Lord’s will is” (5:17). No one who has grappled with the thought of this letter can doubt the importance of growing in knowledge.
One of the important things the readers must know is expressed in the prayer that they may be “rooted and established in love” and be able “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:17-19). The word ajgavph (agape, “love”, G27) occurs more often in this book than in any other in the New Testament except 1 Corinthians and 1 John. The reader sees the wonderful thing that Christian love is and the importance of living in love in a world that knows so little of it.
The church is “a holy temple in the Lord,” a building in which Christ is “the chief cornerstone” and in which “God lives by his Spirit” (Eph. 2:20-22). From another point of view, church members are both “fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household” (2:19; cf. 1:5), a household that derives its name from the Father and that has members in heaven as well as on earth (3:14-15). The bringing of Gentiles as well as Jews into membership of the one body is explained as a mystery (3:4-6), a deep and hidden truth that none of us could have worked out but that has now been revealed by God. There is a unity that believers should strive to preserve (4:3); indeed, Paul draws attention to a whole series of unities, including one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father, one body and one hope, one faith, one baptism (4:4-6), even though there are diverse gifts of apostles, prophets, and others in the church (4:11-13). Clearly the writer wants his readers to catch the splendid vision of one church, thoroughly united in the Lord, though it contains members of various races and is equipped by God to render significant service in this world.
A considerable section of the letter is given over to an emphasis on the importance of lives lived in conformity with the salvation that God has given believers. The kind of life the Gentiles live is contrasted with the new life believers live (Eph. 4:17-5:21); the darkness of the old way is set over against the light there is in the Lord (5:8). This has important entailments for specific groups—wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters (5:22-6:9). Wives are to be subject to their husbands, though we should bear in mind that the verb “submit” is not found in 5:22; it must be understood from the preceding verse, so that the submission of wives is one example of the wider duty of believers to submit to one another. Paul has much more to say about the obligations marriage lays on husbands. They are to have a Christlike love for their wives. This is not merely an erotic passion but a sacrificial love like the love with which Christ gave himself up for the church. Such a love prevails over other ties, such as those that bound a man to his parents. This kind of love leads Paul to speak of “a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church” (5:32). The section on the Christian’s armor is a further incentive to wholehearted Christian service as well as a reminder that there is full provision made for those who engage in Christian service (6:10-18).
In this letter we cannot miss the supreme place of God, who brings salvation despite the unworthiness of sinners. Nor can we overlook the greatness of Christ or the fact that the church, his body, occupies an important place in God’s working out of his great purpose.