Ephesians 1:1,2

Address and Salutation. In the form of his Epistles, especially in the opening address and in the conclusion, Paul follows the methods of letter writing which were customary in the ancient world, in particular in Greece and Rome, in his own time. We now possess a considerable collection of ancient letters, especially communications of a business kind and letters of familiar intercourse. Not a few of these belong to the periods immediately preceding and following the birth of Christ. They help us to a better understanding of some things in Paul's Epistles. They also let us see how he infused the new spirit of Christianity into the old accustomed heathen forms of epistolary correspondence.

This Epistle opens in Paul's usual way, with a greeting in which both the writer and the readers are specifically designated. At the same time the address has certain features of its own, which have their explanation in the circumstances. Παῦλος. In the Epistles which he addresses to Churches, Paul usually associates some one else, or more than one, with himself in the superscription Sosthenes in 1 Corinthians; Timothy in 2 Corinthians, Philippians and Colossians; Silvanus and Timothy in 1 and 2 Thessalonians; “all the brethren” in Galatians. The only exception is the Epistle to the Romans. In Philemon, too, a letter of a personal and private character, though meant also for the Church in the house of the recipient (Ephesians 1:2), he names Timothy with himself. But in the present Epistle no one is conjoined with him in the greeting. It is difficult to suppose that he was absolutely alone at the time when he wrote this letter. The explanation lies probably in the fact that the Epistle was written as a communication of a general character, intended to go round a considerable circle of Churches. ἀπόστολος. Usually this term has the definite, official sense of a delegate, a messenger with a commission. Occasionally it has a wider and less specific meaning, as in Acts 14:4; Acts 14:14; 1 Corinthians 9:5-6; Galatians 2:9, and probably Romans 16:7; 1Co 15:5; 1 Corinthians 15:7; 2 Corinthians 8:23; 1 Thessalonians 2:6. In the Gospels, while it occurs oftener in Luke, it is found only once in each of the other three. In the LXX it occurs once, as the representative of שָׁלוּחַ (1 Kings 14:6). In later Judaism it denotes one who is sent out on foreign service, e.g., to collect the Temple-tribute. See Light., Galatians, pp. 92 101. Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ. This order is to be preferred, with the RV and TTrWH, to the Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ of the TR and the AV. The genitive may be the ordinary possessive genitive, “an apostle belonging to Christ Jesus”; or it may be the genitive of derivation or source, “an apostle sent by Christ Jesus,” the term ἀπόστολος retaining something of its original sense of one sent by another. The former is the more probable view, looking to the analogy of such phrases as οὗ εἰμι (Acts 27:23). The name Χριστός, which in the Gospels preserves its technical sense of “the Christ” in all but a few instances (e.g., Matthew 1:1; Matthew 1:18; Mark 1:1; John 17:3), has become a personal name in the Pauline Epistles. The combination “Jesus Christ,” or “Christ Jesus,” which is rare in the Gospels, occurs frequently in the Book of Acts and most frequently in the Epistles.

There is a variety in the way in which Paul designates himself in his Epistles that is of interest and has its meaning. In some he gives only his name, and makes no reference to his being either an apostle or a servant of Jesus Christ. So in 1 and 2 Thessalonians. In one (Philemon) he describes himself as a “prisoner of Jesus Christ”. In one (Philippians) he is “servant” only; in two (Romans and Titus) he is both “servant” and “apostle”. In seven (1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and here in Ephesians) it is only the apostleship that is instanced, but in each case with a further statement of how it came to him. διὰ θελήματος Θεοῦ. So also in 1 and 2 Corinthians, Colossians and 2 Timothy. In Galatians we have οὐκ ἀκʼ ἀνθρώπων, οὐδὲ διʼ ἀνθρώπου, ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, καὶ Θεοῦ πατρός, κ. τ. λ.; and in 1 Timothy: κατʼ ἐπιταγὴν Θεοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν καὶ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ (RV); cf. κατʼ ἐπιταγὴν τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Θεοῦ, with reference to the commission to preach (Titus 1:3). The phrase used here in Ephesians defines the apostleship as an office which came to Paul neither by his own will nor by the act of any man, but by direct Divine call and appointment. His Epistles certainly reflect his consciousness of this fact. His work, his discourses, his letters all alike reveal the conviction that he was in actuality what he had been declared to be in the message to Ananias “a vessel of election” (Acts 9:15). This is the main idea in the defining sentence and its equivalents. They vindicate Paul's authority, indeed, when that is challenged, but they express primarily the fact that it was by grace he was what he was (1 Corinthians 15:10). τοῖς ἁγίοις. Those addressed are designated first by a term which expresses the great Old Testament idea of their separation. It does not immediately or distinctively denote their personal piety or sanctity in our sense of the word, though that is dealt with as going with the other. It expresses the larger fact that they are set apart to God and taken into a special relation to Him. In three of the Epistles of the Captivity (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians) it takes the place which the Church has in the superscriptions of the earlier Epistles (Thessalonians, Corinthians, Galatians). The reason for the variation is not easy to see. It has been supposed to be due to the desire to give “a more personal colouring to the Epistle as if addressed to the members of the Church as individuals rather than as a body” (Abbott). The distinction, indeed, is not carried through the two groups of Epistles; for in Philemon it is again “the Church,” not “the saints”. τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν Ἐφέσῳ. The local definition ἐν Ἐφέσῳ (on which see more in the Introduction) is inserted by the vast majority of manuscripts, both uncial and cursive, and Fathers, and, as far as we know, by all the Versions. It is supported also to some extent by the fact that in the oldest manuscripts the title of the Epistle is προς Εφεσιους; by the apparently unanimous tradition of the Early Church that this Epistle was addressed to the Ephesians; by the absence of all evidence indicating that the Epistle was claimed in ancient times for any other Church definitely named; and by certain parallels in Ignatius. On the other hand, it is omitted by the two oldest and most important uncials, [13] and [14] (in which it has been inserted by later hands); it is expurged from the cursive 67 by a corrector who seems to have had an older document before him; it did not belong to the text of the manuscripts followed by Origen early in the third century, nor to that of those mentioned by Basil about a century and a half later. The omission is supported also to some extent by a statement made by Tertullian regarding Marcion; and more decidedly by the general character of the Epistle (its lack of personal references, salutations to individuals, etc.), as well as by the difficulty of understanding why the phrase should have been dropped if it did belong to the original text. Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort and others, therefore, bracket it in their texts; Tregelles brackets it in his margin and the Revisers give it as an alternative reading in their margin.

[13] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.

[14] Codex Sinaiticus (sæc. iv.), now at St. Petersburg, published in facsimile type by its discoverer, Tischendorf, in 1862.

If ἐν Ἐφέσῳ is retained, all is plain. If the hypothesis is accepted (on which see Introduction) that a blank space was left after the τοῖς οὖσιν to be filled in with the names, each in its turn, of the particular Churches in the Province of Asia to which the letter came in its rounds among the congregations, all still remains plain. But if the clause is omitted and if the hypothesis mentioned is not accepted, a difficulty arises in dealing with the combination τοῖς οὖσιν καὶ πιστοῖς. There are far-fetched expedients which need only to be named in order to be dismissed such as Origen's notion that the τοῖς οὖσιν has a transcendental sense, meaning that the saints ARE, as God is called I AM, and expressing the idea, as it may be, that they are those who have been called out of non-existence into real existence or an existence worthy of the name; and the somewhat similar idea that the τοῖς οὖσιν denotes the reality of their sainthood: “the saints who are really such”; or the reality of their sainthood and faith: “the saints and believers who are truly such”. The choice lies between two explanations, viz., (1) “to the saints who are also believers in Christ Jesus,” and (2) “to the saints who are also faithful in Christ Jesus”. The former gives to πιστοῖς the special New Testament sense which it has in such Pauline passages as 2 Corinthians 6:15; Galatians 3:9; 2 Timothy 4:3; Titus 1:6. It takes the term to be added in order to complete the description of the readers as Christians not merely set apart, as might be the case with Jews (the τοῖς ἁγίοις by itself not going necessarily beyond the OT idea and the Israelite relation), but specifically believers in Christ. The latter gives the adjective the sense of trustworthy, steadfast, which is its classical sense, but which it also has in a later passage of this Epistle (Ephesians 6:21), in other Pauline Epistles (Colossians 4:9; 1 Timothy 1:12; 2 Timothy 2:2), and occasionally elsewhere in the NT (e.g., 1 Peter 5:12; Hebrews 2:17). The term thus defines the readers, who are understood to be Christians, as faithful, constant in their Christian profession. This is favoured by the designation of the brethren in Colossians 1:2, which is the closest parallel and in which the πιστοῖς seems to have the sense of faithful. It is objected that, if this were the meaning, the πιστοῖς should have been followed by the simple dative Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, as in Hebrews 3:2. In like mannet it is objected to the former explanation that in connecting the πιστοῖς immediately with the ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, “believing in Christ Jesus,” it has usage against it, πιστὸς ἐν not being found in that sense in the NT although we find πίστις ἐν occasionally in Pauline passages (Ephesians 1:15; Galatians 3:26) and πιστεύειν ἐν at least once elsewhere (Mark 1:15). But in point of fact the ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ is best taken here in the definite Pauline sense which it has as an independent phrase expressing a distinct and profound idea that of fellowship or union with Christ, or standing in Him. It is doubtful whether it is meant to qualify both the ἁγίοις and the πιστοῖς (so Abbott, etc.). More probably it qualifies the nearer adjective, and expresses the fact that it is in virtue of their union with Christ that the readers are πιστοί. Their constancy has its meaning and its life in their fellowship with Him. Of the two explanations the second is to be preferred on the whole (with Lightfoot, etc.), although the first has the support of Meyer, Ellicott, etc.