An Exposition Of Ephesians Chapter 1 Series

Bible Studies in Ephesians Sermon 1

Copyright 1987 by Bob Marcaurelle Ephesians 1:1-2

THE QUEEN OF THE EPISTLES

Ephesians has been called the “Queen of the Epistles”. . . “The Alps of the New Testament”. . . “The Third Heaven Epistle”... “The divinest composition of man” (Coleridge). It was John Calvin’s favorite. When John Knox was dying the book he wanted read to him was Calvin’s Sermons On the Letter to the Ephesians. Dale Moody says Ephesians is “at the peak of Paul’s theology.” Ephesians inspired John Bunyan’s immortal The Pilgrim’s Progress and furnishes the thoughts found in many of our hymns.

I. A PAULINE LETTER (1:1)

Conservative scholarship has held through the centuries that Ephesians was written by Paul (1:1) while he was in his first Roman imprisonment in the city of Rome (Acts 28). The date was somewhere around A.D. 61-63 and during this time Paul wrote his four “Prison Epistles” - Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon. Ephesians and Colossians, being so similar, were probably written very close together, perhaps at the same time. Let’s go back and reconstruct the scene as best we can.

The Book of Acts ends with Paul in prison. While there he receives news from the Lychus Valley in Asia Minor. There is trouble in Colossae. A heresy, later to develop into Gnosticism - a denial of the humanity of Christ, which John faced in First John - had reared its ugly head. Since this heresy involved such things as the worship of the angels (Col. 2:18) and the belief that the body was evil (Col. 2:21 - 23), Paul emphasized that the Jesus who came in human form was the Cosmic Lord of Creation, the fulness of God and the head of the Church. The theme of Colossians was the absolute supremacy of Jesus Christ over everything. Paul put heresy down by uplifting Jesus up.

The remarkable thing is that 55 verses of Colossians are also found in Ephesians. Ephesians seems to be an overflow of Colossians. It is an expansion of its terse, abrupt, argumentative ideas. Colossians is the sketch and Ephesians is the finished picture. While meditating and composing the Letter to the Colossians, the Holy Spirit seems to have given Paul insight into the power of this cosmic Christ to unite this divided and warring world. God’s purpose was nothing less than “to bring all creation together, everything in heaven and earth, with Christ as head” (Eph. 1:10, TEV).

This truth, born of the Holy Spirit, exemplified by the power of Rome to unite the world it conquered, and passing through the soul of the great Apostle was expanded, written out and became known as The Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians. Paul called for his faithful fellow worker Tychicus (Eph. 6:21, Col. 4:7) and gave him both Letters. One was intended for Colossae and dealt with the situation there. The other, while taken to Ephesus as the capitol of the province and the center of evangelism for the province (Acts 20:25) was intended as a general letter to be taken to and read to all the churches.

II. A PRISON LETTER

The style of Ephesians is so different from Paul’s other Letters that some have denied that Paul even wrote it. The difference in style however, may be explained by the difference in Paul’s situation and purpose. Paul’s earlier and later writings came in the midst of intense missionary activity. They were the heat from his fire, samples of his arguments and paragraphs from his sermons. They were full of fire and energy and knockdown blows. But in the Prison Epistles there was a calmer spirit of meditation and thought. We have here, says Hayes, the products of the sage rather than the soldier.

III. A COMPREHENSIVE LETTER

Ephesians is perhaps the most comprehensive and far reaching of all Paul’s writings and perhaps of all the Biblical Books. It is the last lengthy theological discussion we have from Paul’s pen. Here the aged prophet formulates his faith and hope for the last time and his creed is a mountain of praise and an ocean of truth. The big word “all” occurs no less than fifty - one times. His thought ranges from the doctrine of election (1:11) to the discipline of children (6:4). The sweep of his thought takes in Gentile and Jew, heaven and earth, past, present and future, time eternity. Paul sits in his prison cell, says Hayes, but he sits at the same time in the heavenly places with Christ.

IV. A PURPOSEFUL LETTER

It is said of Huxley, the great scientist, that he once hailed a carriage in Dublin, and being late for an important conference, shouted to the coachman, “Drive fast!” He took off through the cobbled streets. Finally, Huxley stuck his head out and shouted, “Man, do you know where you are going?” “No,” he answered back, “but I’m driving fast.” Paul drives the truth home fast but he is not caught up in emotion or oratory. His Ephesian Letter has a theme is UNITY IN JESUS CHRIST. This world is sadly divided. There is little peace within men, between men or between men and God. Jesus is God’s agent of reconciliation (2:13). But his work is done through His body, the church (4:16). Our task, according to Ephesians, is to tear down walls and build bridges.