Introduction

Several years ago the Los Angeles Times reported the story of an elderly man and wife who were found dead in their apartment. Autopsies revealed that both had died of severe malnutrition, although investigators found a total of $40,000 stored in paper bags in a closet.

For many years Hetty Green was called America’s greatest miser. When she died in 1916, she left an estate valued at $100 million, an especially vast fortune for that day. But she was so miserly that she ate cold oatmeal in order to save the expense of heating the water. When her son had a severe leg injury, she took so long trying to find a free clinic to treat him that his leg had to be amputated because of advanced infection. It has been said that she hastened her own death by bringing on a fit of apoplexy while arguing the merits of skim milk because it was cheaper than whole milk.

The book of Ephesians is written to Christians who might be prone to treat their spiritual resources much like that miserly couple and Hetty Green treated their financial resources. Such believers are in danger of suffering from spiritual malnutrition, because they do not take advantage of the great storehouse of spiritual nourishment and resources that is at their disposal.

Ephesians has been given such titles as the believer’s bank, the Christian’s checkbook, and the treasure house of the Bible. This beautiful letter tells Christians of their great riches, inheritances, and fullnesses in Jesus Christ and in His church. It tells them what they possess and how they can claim and enjoy their possessions.

During the great depression of the 1930s, many banks would allow their customers to withdraw no more than 10 percent of their accounts during a given period of time, because the banks did not have enough reserves to cover all deposits.

But God’s heavenly bank has no such limitations or restrictions. No Christian, therefore, has reason to be spiritually deprived, undernourished, or impoverished. In fact, he has no reason not to be completely healthy and immeasurably rich in the things of God. The Lord’s heavenly resources are more than adequate to cover all our past debts, all our present liabilities, and all our future needs—and still not reduce the heavenly assets. That is the marvel of God’s gracious provision for His children.

In this epistle Paul speaks of “the riches of His [God’s] grace” (1:7), “the unfathomable riches of Christ” (3:8), and “the riches of His glory” (3:16). He calls the believer to “attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ” (4:13), to “be filled with the Spirit” (5:18), and to “be filled up to all the fulness of God” (3:19).

In this book the word riches is used five times; grace twelve times; glory eight times; fulness, filled up, or fills six times; and the key phrase in Christ (or in Him) fifteen times. Christ is the source, the sphere, and the guarantee of every spiritual blessing and of all spiritual riches, and those who are in Him have access to all that He is and has.

In our union with Jesus Christ, God makes us “fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17) and to be of “one spirit with Him” (1 Cor. 6:17). When we are “in Christ,” He is not ashamed to call us brothers (Heb. 2:11) and will share with us all that He possesses, “an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven” for us (1 Pet. 1:4).

Our riches are based on Christ’s grace (1:2, 6-7; 2:7), His peace (1:2), His will (1:5), His kind intention (1:9), His purpose (1:9, 11), His glory (1:12, 14), His calling (1:18), His inheritance (1:18), His power (1:19), His love (2:4), His workmanship (2:10), His Spirit (3:16), His gifts (4:11), His sacrifice (5:2), His strength (6:10), and His armor (6:11, 13).

THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH

Also because we are in Christ, we are in His Body, the church. Ephesians focuses on the basic doctrine of the church—what it is and how believers function within it. This truth about the church was revealed to Paul by God as a mystery (3:3). As Paul explains, “When you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit” (vv. 4-5).

This mystery, which had been hidden even from Israel, God’s chosen people, is “that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (v. 6). In Christ, Jew and Gentile alike would henceforth be one in His Body, the church.

God’s disclosure of His truth may be divided into three categories. In the first category are the truths He reveals to no one, “the secret things [that] belong to the Lord our God” (Deut. 29:29). His limitless truth is far beyond man’s finite mind to fathom or comprehend. In His wisdom and sovereignty God has chosen not to disclose certain truths to any man at any time.

In the second category are those truths God has chosen to reveal to special people throughout history. All men can know something of God’s nature, “because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made” (Rom. 1:19-20). But the deeper and fuller truths of His nature and will are unknown and incomprehensible to unbelievers.

The special people to whom God reveals His will and plan are not an elite group of seers or prophets but are believers. The revelation He has given through His prophets and apostles is for all of His people, for every person who belongs to Him by faith. “The secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him, and He will make them know His covenant” (Ps. 25:14). The Lord “is intimate with the upright” (Prov. 3:32). “Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret counsel to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). Those who received revelation directly from the Lord made it known to the people.

In the third category are those truths that God kept secret for a period of time but finally disclosed to His people in the New Testament. Here God gives new truth for a new age, truth about which even the godliest of Old Testament saints were unaware. These new truths are the mysteries (mustēria), the once-hidden but now revealed truths God gives in His New Covenant.

That is the category of truth Paul reveals to such a great extent in Ephesians—especially in the truth about the church of Jesus Christ, which God eternally designed to include both Jew and Gentile. Knowledge of that mystery is one of the great riches that only believers of this present age possess.

Matthew told us that Jesus did not speak to the multitudes “without a parable, so that what was spoken through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, ‘I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden since the foundation of the world’” (Matt. 13:34-35). When Jesus’ disciples asked why He spoke in parables, He explained, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted” (Matt. 13:11; cf. 11:25). Paul echoes the same truth in 1 Corinthians: “A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (2:14). Believers and unbelievers can hear or read the same truths from God’s Word, yet be affected in completely different ways. What is clear and meaningful to the believer is incomprehensible nonsense to the unbeliever.

The “mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” refer to the truths revealed in the present form of God’s kingdom. The Old Testament speaks much of God’s kingdom and of His rule over it. The coming Messiah was shown as a ruling Messiah, the great Anointed One whose eternal reign was prophesied even in the book of Genesis. As he pronounced blessings on his sons, Jacob said to Judah, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples” (Gen. 49:10).

Both John the Baptist and Jesus began their ministries by proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2; 4:17). Jesus was born a King, acknowledged by the magi to be a King, feared by Herod as a rival King, and even questioned by Pilate about His kingship. Jesus offered His kingdom to Israel if she would accept Him as her King. But because Israel rejected Him, she forfeited the kingdom, and for Israel it was postponed. Because the Jews declared, “We do not want this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14), that Man would not reign over them. Consequently, He has delayed establishing His earthly kingdom until Israel is saved and He comes again to reign on earth for a thousand years (Rev. 20:4).

Meanwhile the King is absent from earth. Yet, from heaven Christ now rules His earthly kingdom. Whereas He will rule the entire world externally during the Millennium, He now rules internally, in the lives of those who belong to Him. The present form of the kingdom is the sphere of salvation by grace through faith. He is King over those who have confessed Him as sovereign Lord. The blessings that will be externally dispensed during the Millennium are now internally dispensed to believers. Just as Christ will be outwardly enthroned in Jerusalem during the Millennium, He now is inwardly enthroned in the hearts of His saints. As in the future kingdom He will dispense grace, so He does even now to those who trust in Him. As He then will bring external peace to the whole world, He now brings internal peace in the lives of believers. As He will then bestow joy and happiness externally, He now internally bestows those blessings upon His own people.

Of this interim, internal kingdom the Old Testament saints knew nothing. It is a parenthesis in the divine outworking of redemption, which until the New Testament was a secret. The kingdom of which the Old Testament speaks, and which will be fully manifested in the Millennium, now exists in a kind of a preliminary and partial fulfillment. As Peter explained in his Pentecost sermon, the remarkable events that had just taken place in Jerusalem (Acts 2:1-13) were a preview of that which the prophet Joel prophesied of the millennial kingdom: ‘“And it shall be in the last days,’ God says, ‘that I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all mankind’” (v. 17; cf. Joel 2:28).

Within the central mystery of the kingdom are other revealed mysteries (see Matt. 13:11). One is the mystery of the indwelling Christ, “the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations; but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:26-27). Other mysteries are that of God in flesh, the incarnation of the Son of God, a truth not fully revealed in the Old Testament (Col. 2:2-3); the mystery of Israel’s unbelief and rejection of the Messiah (Rom. 11:25); the mystery of iniquity (2 Thess. 2:7); the mystery of Babylon—the terrible, vile, economic and religious system of the end times (Rev. 17); the mystery of the unity of believers (Eph. 3:3-6); the mystery of the church as Christ’s bride (Eph. 5:24-32); and the mystery of the rapture (1 Cor. 15:51-52). The mystery age will be completed when Christ returns in glory (Rev. 10:7).

THE CHURCH AS CHRIST’S BODY

The rich doctrine of the church as Christ’s Body is a metaphor that shows the church not as an organization but as a living organism made up of many interrelated and mutually dependent parts. Christ is the head of that Body, and the Holy Spirit is, as it were, its lifeblood.

The New Testament uses many metaphors for the church that the Old Testament uses of Israel. They are both called a bride, or wife (Hos. 1:2; cf. Jer. 3:20; Rev. 21:2), a family household (Ps. 107:41; Jer. 31:1; Eph. 2); a flock (Isa. 40:11; cf. Ps. 23; Luke 12:32; Acts 20:28-29), and a vineyard or vine branches (Isa. 5:1-7; John 15:5). But the Old Testament never speaks of Israel as God’s body. That is a distinct and formerly unrevealed figure for God’s people in the New Covenant. Christ’s church is His present reincarnated Body on earth.

It is only this outward incarnation of Christ that the world sees. Consequently, the church should be just as whole and full statured as Jesus was when He ministered on earth. Members of the Body of Christ are inextricably united in their Lord, and when one member malfunctions, the whole Body is weakened. When its members disobey the Head, the Body limps and stumbles. Yet when its members faithfully respond to the Head, the church manifests the Lord’s beauty, power, and glory.

The Body functions through the use of spiritual gifts and through the responsibilities of fellowship and mutual ministry. When the church is faithful, Christ comes to full stature in His present earthly Body. When the church is not faithful, the world’s view of Christ is distorted, the church is weakened, and the Lord is dishonored.

THE AUTHOR

Paul, whose original name was Saul, was of the tribe of Benjamin and probably was named after Israel’s first king and her most prominent Benjamite. Saul was well educated in what today are called the humanities, but his most extensive training was in rabbinic studies under the famous Gamaliel (Acts 22:3). He became an outstanding rabbi in his own right and was a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling Jewish council at Jerusalem. He also became probably the most ardent anti-Christian leader in Judaism (Acts 22:4-5). He passionately hated the followers of Jesus Christ and was on his way to arrest some of them in Damascus when the Lord miraculously and dramatically stopped him in his tracks and brought him to Himself (Acts 9:1-8).

After spending three years in the desert of Nabataean Arabia, Paul jointly pastored a church in Antioch of Syria with Barnabas, Simeon, Lucius, and Manaen (Acts 13:1). During this earlier ministry Saul came to be known as Paul (Acts 13:9). The new man took on a new name. From Antioch the Holy Spirit sent him out with Barnabas to begin the greatest missionary enterprise in the history of the church. At that point Paul began his work as God’s unique apostle to the Gentiles (Acts 9:15; Rom. 11:13).

DATE AND DESTINATION OF THE EPISTLE

Sometime between 60 and 62, Paul wrote this letter from prison in Rome (see 3:1) to the believers whom he had pastored. Because the phrase who are at Ephesus is not in many early manuscripts, and because there is no mention of a local situation or individual believer, many scholars think this letter was an encyclical, intended to be circulated among all the churches in Asia Minor (including those in Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, and Sardis, as well as Ephesus). It may be that the letter was sent first to Ephesus and therefore became especially associated with that church.

The first three chapters of Ephesians emphasize doctrine, and the last three chapters emphasize behavior. The first half is theological, and the second half is practical.