I. - Introduction to Ephesians

Summary

Ephesians is unlike many of Paul’s letters in that it neither polemicizes nor defends. It celebrates. Other letters may also start with a benediction of God for God’s interventions or a thanksgiving and prayer over the addressees, but then the shoe drops on the hearers concerning all the things that are going wrong among them and need remediation. Not so here. An opening paragraph of praise to God celebrates God’s primordial choice of the hearers, in company with all who are “in Christ,” for the marvelous destiny of adoption into God’s household, of being made “holy and blameless in love” in God’s estimation, of being redeemed from their former sins through Christ’s offering of himself, of being sealed with God’s Holy Spirit for their future and final redemption as God’s own possession (1:3–14). The fact that the addressees have been incorporated in this marvelous mission of God leads to thanksgiving and prayer on their behalf, that their own minds and hearts would be opened even wider to grasp the hope that God has set before them, the scope of God’s redemption among the peoples of the world, and the magnitude of the life-giving power of God at work among them, a magnitude to be gauged by Christ’s exaltation from the grave to the right hand of God above every competing authority (1:15–23).