The Blessing Keeps Returning to Christ

The words “at Ephesus” are missing from the three oldest manuscripts, and in the second century Marcion knew this letter as the one to the Laodiceans. Many therefore think it was a circular letter for several churches of Asia, with Ephesus, the provincial capital where Paul had spent over two years (Acts 19:10), among them.

Ordinary Greek letters opened with chairein, “greetings”. Paul swaps in the near sound-alike charis, grace, and adds peace, the Hebrew shalom, so a routine salutation carries the two words his letters live on. God and the Lord Jesus stand together as one source.

Verses 3 to 14 are a single Greek sentence of about two hundred words. It opens in the form of a Jewish blessing, “Blessed be”, and uses the word three times in a line: blessed, hath blessed, blessings. “Heavenly places” appears five times in Ephesians and nowhere else in the New Testament.

“Hath chosen” is in the middle voice: chose for himself. “Foundation” is katabole, a laying down, as of a first stone. “Without blame” is amomos, the Greek Old Testament word for a sacrificial animal without blemish. Editors disagree whether “in love” ends this verse or begins the next.

“Predestinated” is proorizo, to mark out a boundary beforehand; the English word horizon comes from the same root. “Good pleasure” is eudokia, the word the angels use in Luke 2:14, “good will toward men”, a delight in giving rather than a cold decree.

“Hath made us accepted” is charitoo, a verb built on charis in the same line: “the glory of his grace, wherein he hath graced us”. Its only other New Testament use is Luke 1:28, where Mary is “highly favoured”. “The beloved” works as a title for Christ.

“Redemption” is apolutrosis, release on payment of a price, the language of buying a captive free. “Forgiveness” is aphesis, a sending away, the word the Greek Old Testament uses for the jubilee “liberty” of Leviticus 25:10. The verb is present: we have it now.

“Abounded” is perisseuo, to overflow the measure. “Wisdom and prudence” are sophia, insight into the deepest things, and phronesis, practical good sense; in 1611 “prudence” meant exactly that, not caution. The Greek leaves open whether the wisdom is God’s own or what he gives.

At Ephesus and across the Greek world a mysterion was a secret rite revealed only to initiates. Paul turns the word inside out: a secret God himself now tells openly. The word comes six times in this short letter, and each time what is disclosed has to do with Christ and those gathered into him.

“Dispensation” is oikonomia, the running of a household, God administering history as a steward runs an estate. “Gather together in one” is anakephalaioo, to sum up or bring under one head; Irenaeus built his theology of recapitulation on this verb. The root kephale, head, returns in verse 22.

“Obtained an inheritance” is one verb, kleroo, from the word for a lot cast to divide land. It can mean we received a share, or we were made a share, God’s own portion, as in Deuteronomy 32:9: “the LORD’s portion is his people”. Both readings have defenders.

“First trusted” is proelpizo, to hope beforehand, found nowhere else in the New Testament. The King James renders a word about hope as trust. Those who hoped first are most often taken as Jewish believers, who had waited for a Messiah before the Gentiles heard of one.

The first clause has no verb in Greek; the King James borrows “trusted” from verse 12 to finish it. The word of truth is then renamed as “the gospel of your salvation”. “After that ye believed” can equally mean “when ye believed”, a difference that has fed long arguments about Acts 19:2.

“Earnest” is arrabon, a word Greek borrowed from Semitic trade; its Hebrew form is the pledge Judah left with Tamar in Genesis 38:17. “Purchased possession” is peripoiesis, a people acquired as God’s own, the phrase behind “a peculiar people” in 1 Peter 2:9. Some manuscripts make “which” masculine, treating the Spirit as a person.

Paul says he has “heard of” their faith, an odd phrase toward a church he lived in for years, and one reason the circular-letter view is held. Several of the oldest manuscripts lack the word “love”, reading simply faith in the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints.

“Making mention of you” renders mneian poioumenos, a phrase found in letters of the period for remembering someone in prayer. “Cease not” is Paul’s habitual strength of statement, used again in Colossians 1:9 in almost the same setting.

“The Father of glory” appears nowhere else in Scripture; Stephen’s “God of glory” (Acts 7:2) is its nearest kin. “Knowledge” is epignosis, the compound form, a knowing that recognises and grasps rather than simply collects facts about its object.

Early copies have “the eyes of your heart”, and the King James “understanding” follows later ones. To the ancient Hebrew mind the heart was the seat of thought, not only feeling. “Enlightened” is a perfect participle, and the early church came to call baptism photismos, enlightenment.

Four separate Greek words for power sit in one verse: dynamis, energeia, kratos and ischus, roughly ability, operation, might and strength. “Exceeding” is hyperballo, to throw beyond the mark. “To us-ward” is 1611 English for toward us.

“Wrought” is energeo, the verb form of the “working” just named, so the power is defined by an act. “Set him at his own right hand” draws on Psalm 110:1, the verse of the Old Testament most often quoted or echoed in the New.

“Every name that is named” lands with weight at Ephesus, a city famous for magic. Its Ephesia grammata were magical formulas, and in Acts 19:19 converts burned books of spells worth fifty thousand pieces of silver. “This world” and “that which is to come” are the two ages of Jewish expectation.

The first half is Psalm 8:6, a psalm about humankind now read of one man. “Church” appears here for the first time in the letter; the word ekklesia will come back eight more times, six of them in chapter 5. Christ is given to the church as a gift, not only placed over it.

“Filleth” can be read as middle, the one who fills, or passive, the one being filled. On the second reading, taken by John Chrysostom, the church is Christ’s fulness in the sense that a head is completed by its body. The phrase “all in all” also closes 1 Corinthians 15:28.