Ephesians 1:1–2 · WEB Classic
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We can read the opening of a letter the way we read the return address on an envelope. Paul wrote it. Christians received it. Grace and peace. Very nice. Now where does the teaching start? The trouble is that Paul has already started teaching, and we have nearly walked past him because the first two verses looked familiar.
He identifies himself as an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God. He identifies the people receiving the letter as saints and faithful in Christ Jesus. Then he gives them a greeting whose source is God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. His authority, their identity, and the blessing he wishes them all belong to a relationship with the same Lord. These are ordinary words in a Christian greeting because the realities they describe are supposed to be ordinary Christian knowledge. Familiarity does not make them unimportant.
The man Jesus sent
An apostle is a commissioned messenger. Paul’s authority comes from Christ, whose message he has been sent to proclaim. He has not merely spent enough years discussing religion to become entitled to an audience. He writes as someone entrusted with a responsibility by the risen Jesus, and his claim can be examined within the history Scripture gives us.
That history begins in a rather inconvenient place for anyone trying to turn Paul into an example of religious potential finally being recognized. When Saul appears in the account of Stephen’s death, he approves of what is happening. Acts then describes him ravaging the church, entering houses, and dragging men and women away to prison (Acts 7:58–8:3). His enthusiasm was substantial. Unfortunately, so was the evil he was doing with it.
By Acts 9 he has obtained letters authorizing him to bring followers of Jesus from Damascus to Jerusalem as prisoners. He is not traveling there to investigate whether Christianity might offer a useful addition to his existing convictions. He intends to arrest Christians. The Lord confronts him on that journey, and the question Jesus asks establishes whose people Saul has actually been attacking: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4).
The Christians Saul has dragged away belong to Jesus. What he has done to them concerns their Lord personally. Saul asks who is speaking, and the answer removes any possibility that he has merely offended the wrong religious organization: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). The man convinced that he was defending God has been fighting the risen Messiah.
Jesus sends Ananias to him, and Ananias understandably has a concern. We sometimes read these accounts so quickly that everyone’s response becomes obvious in retrospect. Ananias did not have the completed book of Acts open on the kitchen table. He knew Saul’s reputation, knew what had happened to other Christians, and had been told to go and meet him.
Acts 9:13–16 · WEB Classic
But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he did to your saints at Jerusalem. Here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go your way, for he is my chosen vessel to bear my name before the nations and kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name’s sake.”
That is a reasonable objection from a man who knows the difference between visiting someone and volunteering to be arrested. Saul has permission to bind people who call upon Jesus’ name, and Ananias is one of the people who calls upon Jesus’ name. The assignment does not become less alarming because the Lord gives it in a calm voice.
The Lord’s answer explains Saul’s commission. He will bear Christ’s name before the nations, kings, and the children of Israel. The man who intended to silence Christian testimony will become one of its commissioned witnesses. His previous hostility will not become a credential he can boast about, but neither will it prevent the Lord from showing mercy and giving him a task.
Notice also what Jesus says about suffering. Saul is not promised that this new assignment will solve his circumstances and introduce him to a much more comfortable class of acquaintances. He will suffer for the name he has opposed. Apostolic authority and costly service belong together in the commission itself. Ephesians’ reference to Paul as a prisoner is entirely consistent with the assignment Acts describes.
Paul remembers his former life when explaining his ministry to Timothy. His account does not become more flattering with distance from the events.
1 Timothy 1:12–15 · WEB Classic
I thank him who enabled me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he counted me faithful, appointing me to service, although I used to be a blasphemer, a persecutor, and insolent. However, I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. The grace of our Lord abounded exceedingly with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. The saying is faithful and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.
Paul can identify the evil plainly because mercy has answered it. He does not explain that he was basically a good man whose impressive commitment merely needed a slight adjustment in direction. He names blasphemy and persecution, then names the grace of the Lord who received him. Christ came to save sinners, and Paul knows that claim from the receiving end.
That gives the opening of Ephesians its proper weight. “Through the will of God” identifies the source of his commission. The message does not become Paul’s private property because Christ has entrusted it to him, and the authority does not make him independent of the Lord who sent him. He has received both mercy and responsibility.
It also establishes a distinction between Paul’s actual commission and our ability to acquire a religious title. Ordering business cards with “Apostle” above your name does not add another chapter to Acts. The church’s foundation cannot be manufactured by improving the stationery. Paul’s authority rests upon Christ’s commissioning and the witness entrusted to him; a teacher serves faithfully by receiving and explaining that witness.
Holy people in an unholy world
Paul addresses saints and faithful people in Christ Jesus. Saints are God’s holy people, those set apart to belong to him. The word does not describe a small collection of Christians who have finally become so impressive that the rest of the congregation can begin admiring them from a safe distance. It describes the believers receiving the letter.
The language has a history. At Sinai, God identified Israel as a people he had brought to himself. Before they could present a successful record of covenant obedience, he reminded them of the rescue he had already accomplished.
Exodus 19:4–6 · WEB Classic
‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession from among all peoples; for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.”
The order is important. God had acted against Egypt, carried Israel, and brought them to himself. His rescue established the setting for the covenant obedience he required. They did not escape Pharaoh by compiling a sufficiently impressive record of good behavior. They had been delivered, and their life together was to correspond to the God who had delivered them.
Their holiness was therefore inseparable from belonging. God claimed them as his own possession and called them a holy nation. That did not mean every Israelite’s conduct had suddenly become admirable. Anyone who has read what happened with the golden calf can put that idea down before it injures somebody. The holy people still had to learn, obey, receive correction, and turn from conduct that contradicted their calling.
Leviticus 19 makes the relationship explicit: “You shall be holy; for I, Yahweh your God, am holy” (19:2). The chapter brings holiness into the actual life of the people, including their treatment of parents, their honesty in business, their dealings with workers, and their care for vulnerable neighbors. God’s holiness was not a subject for reverent discussion that could be kept safely away from the way they paid people.
That background helps us hear Paul’s address. People belonging to Christ are saints, and their conduct matters because they belong to him. They do not earn that belonging by achieving a condition in which instruction is unnecessary. They receive a holy calling whose implications must be learned and practiced.
Corinth makes the point difficult to miss. Paul addresses that church as those “sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints” (1 Corinthians 1:2). He then deals with factions, pride, sexual immorality, lawsuits between believers, and a gathering at the Lord’s Supper in which the conduct of some humiliated others. Calling them saints was not Paul’s way of announcing that he had heard excellent reports about everything happening there.
He was addressing people who belonged to Christ and needed to stop living in ways that contradicted that relationship. The identity supplies the reason for correction. We should not flatten the word into moral perfection, and we should not empty it of moral obligation. Saints can need a letter, and some of them may need to read it more than once.
The believers associated with Ephesus lived in a world where that belonging could become inconvenient very quickly. Acts 19 describes people who had practiced magic publicly burning their books. Those books had value. Renouncing the old practices meant giving something up, rather than merely adding a Christian vocabulary to the same life.
Luke also records the disturbance connected with the worship of Artemis. Demetrius, a craftsman whose trade depended upon that worship, objected to the effect of Paul’s message. He spoke about the danger to the craftsmen’s business and the danger that the goddess would be dishonored. The concerns arrived in the same speech, and we should notice the order in which he introduced them (Acts 19:23–27).
A religious argument can defend a profitable arrangement. Demetrius did not need to choose between worrying about the business and speaking passionately about the goddess; the two concerns supported each other. The gospel challenged a way of life woven into the city’s religion, reputation, and income. Belonging to Jesus could place a person at odds with habits and loyalties his neighbors regarded as perfectly normal.
There is a textual question about the address itself. The WEB Classic includes “at Ephesus,” while some early manuscripts, including Papyrus 46 and the original text of Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, omit the city’s name. The letter may have circulated more widely among churches in Asia Minor. Its broad address and limited personal greetings fit that possibility, although they do not establish a particular delivery route. Ephesus supplies a genuine setting within Paul’s ministry without requiring us to treat every sentence as an answer to a uniquely Ephesian problem.
The readers’ decisive identity is “in Christ Jesus.” Whether a person came from a Jewish household, the worship of Artemis, or some other setting, belonging to Christ established a relationship that could not be reduced to the old background. They were actual people with histories and responsibilities, now called to live as the Lord’s people together.
Faith also has its object in him. Confidence in our own sincerity cannot save us, and enthusiasm about religion cannot substitute for trusting Jesus. Saul’s earlier career has already supplied a rather severe demonstration of what religious conviction can accomplish when it is directed against the truth. The question is not simply whether we believe something strongly. It is whether the Lord we trust is the Lord who has revealed himself.
Grace and peace from the Father and the Son
Paul greets these believers with grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace locates their relationship with God in his generosity. Paul has received mercy, and the people he addresses depend upon the same gracious Lord. Neither the messenger nor the congregation can explain their standing by presenting God with a list of reasons he was fortunate to acquire them.
Peace reaches deeper than a pleasant mood. Someone can have a quiet afternoon while remaining unreconciled to God, and someone reconciled to God can have an afternoon that is anything but quiet. Paul’s prison is a fairly effective obstacle to making peace synonymous with comfortable circumstances. What Christ gives cannot be measured by whether the day has gone according to our preferences.
The Father and the Son stand together as the source of the blessing. Paul is Christ’s messenger; Jesus is the Lord through whom the people belong to God. The greeting does not introduce him as one more religious adviser offering help from the sidelines. He stands with the Father as the source of the grace and peace the church receives.
That makes both grace and belonging practical. A church can put “grace” on the sign while treating people with contempt, just as a man can describe himself as peaceful because everyone in the house has learned not to disagree with him. Paul’s greeting concerns gifts from God that should shape the people receiving them. We have been welcomed through Christ, and the people beside us who belong to him are not intruders in a household we own.