Biblical Theology XLV: Ephesians

Ephesians is a Pauline work written to summarize God’s work and purpose for the individual Christian life and community. He begins by arguing that God has blessed believers with every spiritual blessing because he chose them to be holy and blameless in His sight (1:4). This phrase lets the reader know what the book is about, i.e., God’s purpose to make the saints holy in Christ. This is the means through which they will glorify God, a thematic element in the first three chapters and creates an inclusio that binds those chapters together (1:6, 12, 14; 3:21). 

Theology: The first three chapters of Ephesians deals with how God makes His people holy positionally in Christ, and is a monergistic work accomplished by God. Unification with Christ, as the One to whom all things are given, is the means of the believer becoming holy and blameless in God’s sight. Hence, the prepositional phrase “in Him” is repeated over and over again within the first three chapters (1:1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11; 2:21-22; 3:12). All things can be summed up in Christ (1:9). The Spirit of God is given as a down payment until full redemption takes place (1:13-14). 

To make His people holy, God first predestines His people to be holy and blameless (1:4), predestines to adopt them as sons (v. 5), made us alive together with Christ (2:5), and seated us with Christ in the heavenly places as those who will inherit all things (v. 6). He does this by gifting a salvation by grace through faith to His people (2:8-9). He includes, not only Jews, but Gentiles into this group (2:11-19), making them into one new people (v. 15), bricks in a holy dwelling, who will grow as a holy temple in which God dwells (2:19-22). 

The means through which this is all accomplished is through the preaching of the gospel (Chapter 3), and the purpose is to showcase the wisdom of God to all authorities in the invisible realm (3:10), and so the church is to be the display of God’s work to accomplish His redemption and holiness of His people to the praise of His glory, which means that God’s glory is in the church which is in Christ (3:21).

Hence, the first work is all God’s. He predestines His people, places all of His people in His Son, gifts them salvation when they are dead in their sins, places them into a new group as adopted sons who are citizens of His kingdom and heirs of all things. We might summarize this as God’s work in regeneration/justification, even though much more is going on here than we typically associate with those words.

Ethics: The second half of Ephesians, Chapters 4-6, convey how the people of God who have been redeemed participate in becoming what they have been positionally made to be in Christ, i.e., holy and blameless. This is the sanctification that results from God’s work, which is to live worthily of the call to which Christians have been called (4:1). The means of becoming holy is the church to which Christ gave gifts so that believers would grow together into the maturity of love in the truth (4:1-16). 

Believers are called to no longer live as unbelievers live, but to live in the holiness to which they have been called. What feeds the rebellion of unbelievers is ignorance and deception (4:17-19). What feeds holiness is faith in the truth in the community of the Spirit, i.e., the church (vv. 20-25). In fact, another inclusio is created between the beginning of Chapter 4 and the armor of God in 6:10-20. This sandwiches in the commands to live according to the new man who has been made in the likeness of God, a restoration of the image of God in man (4:22-24). 

The commands, of course, expand the applications of the gospel and the moral law in love and forgiveness and holiness of living. They address all aspects of life, i.e., interpersonal relationships, speech, sexuality, treatment of family members, work, money, etc. As in all of the New Testament, these are the works that come forth from an inward transformation of the believer that is now compelled to live in love (5:1) when he was united to Christ through God’s work displayed in Chapters 1-3. 

Thus, the goal of God’s predestination, i.e., our holiness in being restored to the image, is fulfilled both in His work through Christ on the cross and via resurrection and the continued work of the Spirit through the church.