Ephesians - Lesson 1

I. Opening & Prayer

Welcome to this course on Ephesians. My name is Dr. Jarvis Jermaine Williams. I’m a professor of New Testament interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It’s my joy and privilege to be able to share with you from Ephesians.

I want to open us up with prayer. Then we’ll begin walking through some basic, introductory matters and then get into the text of Ephesians, verse by verse. Let’s pray together: 

Our Father in heaven, we are thankful for the power of the gospel that Paul outlines and explains and expresses as he writes this letter to the Ephesians. We thank you that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places, that we are resurrected from the dead, that we are right now as we think and pray and begin to study this letter, we are reigning with Jesus right now over all the principalities and powers of the air, and we’re thankful that Jesus has defeated the principalities and powers of the air in his cross and resurrection. And so, Father, we pray that as we do this study together, that you would transform our hearts and our lives. We pray that our hearts would be moved to worship, that we would not simply learn more information about the Bible, but that we would be moved to doxology, to praise as Paul moves us to praise in the first few verses of the letter. So, Father, may the devil be reminded through this teaching that he has been defeated and may he be shamed and may Christ be exalted. We ask all these things in Jesus’s name. Amen. 

II. Authorship & Date

The first thing I want to do is think with you a bit about some basic introductory matters of the letter. In terms of authorship, who wrote the letter to the Ephesians? Well, in my view, Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians. You see it in the first chapter and verse, where he says, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus…” But you might not know there are scholars and other interpreters who don’t think Paul wrote the letter. But I believe, as many other Christian scholars believe, that Paul wrote every letter in the New Testament that bears his name. I don’t want to overwhelm you with unnecessary information about why certain scholars don’t think he wrote the letter, but I do want to give you some reasons why we should firmly and strongly affirm that Paul, in fact, wrote the letter. 

Number one, he says he wrote it. Now, that’s not going to convince scholars of the New Testament. But for those of us who believe in biblical authority, for those of us who believe in biblical inerrancy, we believe that when the Bible makes a claim, we must submit to that claim. So, in Ephesians 1:1, Paul says that he’s Paul and he is an apostle of Christ Jesus. He goes on to state that he’s writing to this group of Christians in the city of Ephesus. So, for one, we think Paul wrote it because the letter says that he did. 

Another good reason for us to think that Paul wrote the letter is because he talks about some similar theological themes in the letter that he mentions in other letters that every scholar virtually believes that he wrote. For example, he mentions this very beautiful doctrine of election and predestination in Ephesians 1:4–5. He says very plainly that God chose us in Christ in him before the foundation of the world. Then he makes reference in verse 5 to predestination as well. Likewise, in books like Romans, for example, Paul talks about election and predestination in Romans 9. Not everybody agrees, of course, on what Paul means by election and predestination, but virtually everybody who takes the Bible very seriously agrees that he says something about election and predestination. For those who agree that he wrote Romans, which is virtually everybody who’s ever studied the New Testament, we have a piece of evidence that he likewise talks about predestination and election in a letter that he wrote and in a letter that some say he did not write, namely Ephesians.

I think another reason why we think Paul wrote the letters is because he uses similar theological statements, theological discourse in the letter. Another reason is because, just give you one more, is that he talks about some similar themes. Now, this is related to the previous point, but this is a very important point I think that’s worth mentioning. He talks about the same theme in Ephesians as he talks about in other letters that everyone agrees he wrote, as well as other themes that he talks about in those letters. For example, he talks about the theme of unity of Jews and Gentiles in the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Let’s just take, for example, Paul’s letter to the Galatians. He makes a very strong and compelling argument in that letter that in Christ Jesus, Jews and Gentiles are sharing in this spirit-empowered transformative work of the gospel. He argues that God in Christ has, in fact, redeemed Jews and Gentiles from the curse of the Law so that Jews and Gentiles, in Galatians 3:13–14 for example, would receive the blessing of Abraham, which is, he says in 3:14, the Spirit. Likewise, he talks about a similar theme in Romans. But in Ephesians 2, which we’ll get to eventually, Paul makes a compelling, strong argument once again, for this Jew and Gentile unity. That in Christ Jesus, Jews and Gentiles, though we are different—we don’t share the same ethnic identity in Christ—we are unified and we have an equal experience of the blessing of Messiah and the promises that God made to Israel.

Another argument that I’m making here as to why Paul wrote the letter is that he uses similar theological themes in letters that everyone agrees that he wrote as well as in this letter he wrote to the Ephesians. That’s enough of that. 

So, who wrote the letter? According to Ephesians 1:1, Paul wrote the letter. I’ll say more about who Paul is and we’ll talk a bit about his life in a moment. But for now, let’s just think about the introductory matters regarding authorship. Paul is the author.

Second, when did he write the letter? Again, another debated conversation in reading the letter to the Ephesians is this issue of dating. It’s difficult for us as modern readers of ancient texts to date the letters with 100% certainty because we don’t have the same kind of copyright things that we have today, when we think about ancient texts. But scholars have suggested—those of us who hold to a more traditional reading of the letter—that Paul very likely wrote this letter at the end of his ministry around the 60s sometime during some type of imprisonment that he experienced in his life. Then when we think about the dating of it, he’s writing the letter around the same time he’s writing perhaps Colossians when he is a prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ because he preaches the gospel. 

III. Purposes & Themes

Third, let’s think for a moment about why he wrote the letter. With some letters, it’s easier to discern the purpose of the letter or the message of the letter than it is for other letters. In my reading, I think Galatians is easier to discern. Romans is a bit easier to discern in comparison to Ephesians. So, it’s hard to look at Ephesians and to know clearly in a simplistic way why Paul wrote the letter. But as we look at the letter as a whole, I think we see some themes that emerge that perhaps give us some insight into why he wrote the letter.

In terms of the reason he wrote the letter, I want to think about it in terms of the purposes of the letter. What are the purposes for which he wrote the letter? I think number one, to give you a few—and we’ll think about these more carefully as we walk through the text—he wants to emphasize that Jesus Christ is the head of the church. Now, there’s some debate about what that word “head of the church” might mean. But in my view, it means he is the sovereign Lord over the church. He has authority over the church. 

Second, he writes to talk about what is the essence of the church. Have you thought about that question before? What is the church? Well, it’s the building. Well no, we meet in a building, and if we didn’t have—and I thank God for buildings as well. But if we didn’t have a building in which to meet, we would still have the church as long as we have brothers and sisters who are trusting in Jesus Christ alone for the hope of eternal life and for the forgiveness of sins, who are committing themselves in a covenant to sit under the authority of pastors, to be in a context where there are deacons, and as well, a place where the gospel is preached and the ordinances are celebrated. That’s what we mean. That’s what I mean when I talk about the church. We’re not talking about the building. We’re talking about the people and the reasons for which the people gather and what they do when they gather as the church. 

So, in Ephesians, Paul thinks about what is the essence of the church. What is it? And then, third, he thinks about the unity of the church. Ephesians 2 is a very strong passage. We live in a divided world for all sorts of reasons, and every time I face Ephesians 2, I’m convicted afresh because in my own heart, there’s divisiveness. There can be reasons for which I don’t want to be unified in the gospel. But in Ephesians, Paul strongly argues that in Christ, there’s unification. There is a oneness that we share in Christ that we don’t have outside of Christ, even with those with whom we don’t share natural unity. That’s a glorious truth of this letter, and that’s one reason he wrote the letter. 

Fourth, he also talks about what sort of people make up the church. Now, for Paul, the church is not just for a certain group of sinners. It’s not just for Jews. In fact, in Ephesians, he emphasizes it’s for Jews and Gentiles. I think he’s largely writing to Gentile Christians here, and that’s a very powerful point because Jews—historically, they were the ones who received the Law of God from Sinai. God gave them a clear revelation from Sinai as to how to follow him, to honor him, to love him, whereas Gentiles were permitted to enter into that covenant at Sinai by means of adopting, at some level, a Jewish way of life. The Gentiles were permitted to enter by means of trusting in the one and true God of Israel, and when necessary, for males especially, getting circumcised. You have people in the Old Testament, for example, who enter into this covenant community. I think of a female—for example, Rahab the harlot, who is a woman of great faith. But she’s a Gentile. She’s not a Jew, and yet she’s grafted in, included in, on the terms of the Law of God. 

But you read in the New Testament that God is now redefining the boundary markers for his people, and that the people of God aren’t Jews who receive the Law. Gentiles enter into that covenant with Jews by means of some form of Torah observance. But now that Christ, the Jewish Messiah has come, he has fulfilled all those promises for Jews, and he’s extended those promises to Gentiles. Now Jews and Gentiles in Christ are now part of this unification of the gospel. They are part of the people who now make up the church. The church is not simply Jews or simply Gentiles. It’s Jews and Gentiles in Christ. 

So, Paul writes to tell us what sort of people make up the church. Sinners from every tongue and tribe and people and nation make up the church who are trusting in Jesus Christ alone.

Five—there are two more purposes for writing—he also talks about the human family and the church. Ephesians 5, for example, has a very powerful message about what it means to be a husband and a wife, a message that we, today in our culture need to hear afresh regularly because we don’t have a clear sense in our culture of what it means for a man to be a man or a woman to be a woman. We’ve devalued the importance of the family and marriage and how God designs the family to be the system, the organism within which he provides stability and procreation, and the skills needed to flourish in a society wherein there’s a lot of chaos and a dishonoring of the family.

In Ephesians 5, we have that very beautiful passage. But not only a passage that talks about the family, but more specifically, a passage that talks about how the husband and wife should relate to one another. Now, as a man, I want to press into what Paul largely says in the letter, which is how men ought to love their wives. We’ll talk about the wife submitting part, but as a man, it’s easy to talk about that. It’s not easy to talk about my role as a husband to lay down my life for my wife as Christ laid down his life for his church. That is, in fact, gospel living in the context of Christian community, within the context of a marriage.

Paul wrote the letter to help these Ephesians understand what it means to be part of the family of God and the human family and the church. He has exhortations as well about slaves and children and so on and so forth, which we’ll talk about in that section. Then finally, he talks about spiritual warfare in the church.

Now, I’m a Baptist. I’m not only a Baptist, but I’m a Southern Baptist. And sometimes we Southern Baptists might get a little anxious talking about things such as demons or demonic powers. But Paul makes it very clear, as did Jesus in the gospels, that the demonic realm is very real and how spiritual warfare works and operates. In a very advanced, industrialized, Western context, it might look different than how it operates in a context where there’s not as much access to the gospel. But one thing I want us to see when we get to chapter 6, and one thing Paul says in this letter, is about spiritual warfare and the church. He says we are brothers and sisters, every waking moment and sleeping moment of our lives. We are part of a spiritual battle, like it or not. We are enlisted into warfare. One reason I think Paul uses these warfare-like images in his writings is that we are enlisted to fight against the devil and his lies.

These Ephesians, who were saved from paganism and magic and all sorts of idolatry, need to be reminded that they, in fact, are still part of a warfare that consists of the demons and the devil wanting to compel them back into a way of life that’s antithetical to the gospel by which they have been saved. So, Paul talks about spiritual warfare and the church. 

So why did he write the letter? At least for those six reasons.

IV. Historical Context from Acts 19

My next point takes us to number four on my outline. Let’s think briefly about the historical context of Ephesians. Now, I don’t want to once again overwhelm you with unnecessary information. There are good commentaries out there that will speak in more detail than I will about the context. But there are a couple of things I think would be helpful for us before we enter a verse-by-verse exposition related to the cultural context in which Paul is writing this letter. One would be, for example, for lack of a better word, the ‘religious’ context into which he writes the letter.

When we think about Ephesians, we have to remind ourselves of some of the experiences that Paul had as a missionary there because of the religious context into which he entered. So, I want to turn with you to Acts 19 for this part of my conversation with you and think about what we call the ‘Artemis cult’ and the ‘imperial cult.’ Let me just say a couple quick things about that.

One thing about Ephesus was it was a very important city in the ancient world, a very important city in terms of commerce and economics. It was also a Jew as well as a Gentile community. A lot of Gentiles lived there, but there were some Jews there as well. It was also known in part for the worship of this pagan goddess known as Artemis. In fact, there was a temple erected in her honor. She was a goddess that was known as a protector, a goddess of chastity, of virginity. With the particular worship of this goddess and other gods and goddesses in the ancient world also came a certain pattern of living that these Ephesians would have participated in. There were other cultic experiences that they had related to the worship of pagan deities that would have included patterns of immorality. These patterns were not necessarily attributed to worshiping the goddess of Artemis but attributed to worshiping other deities in this Greco-Roman pantheon of gods. Then you also had, in the Ephesian context into which Paul ministered and wrote, this imperial cult where the emperor and his family would be venerated as gods. The expectation would have been throughout the empire to worship the emperor.

When you see things such as we’ll see in Ephesians 1, where Paul says that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead and seated him over every ruler and every power, he’s talking about both earthly and demonic powers that would include the power of these goddesses and these gods, including the powers of these emperors. That would also include the powers that are invested into the social structures of the day in terms of politics that were linked to worshiping certain deities in the ancient world that God raised Christ up over all of these powers as the sovereign king, son of God.

I want to see this with you by looking at a particular text in Acts 19. When I’m reading to you from a translation, I’ll move from the NIV to the ESV. Sometimes I’ll work from my own translation from the Greek text itself. So, it might sound a little bit different from what you’re reading if you’re reading the NIV, but it also might sound more like the ESV. In this particular example, I want to read from the NIV from Acts 19. So go ahead and turn your Bibles there.

Let’s get a little taste of what I’m saying about these cults and some of the things that Paul experienced while there, which will help us get a better sense of the context into which he’s writing when he pens these words to the Ephesians. As you know, Paul has been going on various missionary journeys. By the time you get to Acts 19, he’s already established churches in various places throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. We find him here in Acts 19, in Ephesus. It’s a rather long passage, but I want to read much of it here, if not all of it, to give you a little taste of what’s going on. Starting in 19:1, “While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ They answered, ‘No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.’”

Now, there’s an interesting point to be made here about what’s happening. But this is a class on Ephesians, not on Acts. So, I’ll avoid answering the question of what he means by, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit?” Their answer gets us to the primary point I want to make here with respect to the cultural context into which he’s preaching and teaching and into which he wrote the letter. In verse 3, they responded by saying they received “John’s baptism.” In verse 4, “Paul said, ‘John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.’ On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. There were about 12 men in all.”

In verse 8, “Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God.” 

The first historical point I want to make here is what I’d already mentioned. We see in verse 8 that there were some Jews there in Ephesus. Now, of course, part of the synagogue experience consisted of Gentiles who were adjacent to Judaism or were adjacent to a Jewish way of life. But I think it’s reasonable also to say based on the context that there are also Jews there in the synagogue and, based on what we know about why one can form a synagogue in the first place. So, he’s talking to largely Jewish people in the synagogue. 

He entered the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months. And this is what he spoke about: “arguing persuasively about,” hear this language, “the kingdom of God.” You should hear imperial overtones here.

I made a point before I read the text that one thing that Paul is dealing with is the reality that these Ephesians were converted from a context in which they would have worshiped the emperor, this imperial cult. The emperor is the king of the empire, if you will. And Luke tells us that Paul is preaching about the kingdom of God. One thing he preached about the kingdom of God pertained to who was the king. The king is the Messiah, Jesus Christ, not the emperor, not Nero or any of those other emperors during Paul’s ministry. But King Lord Jesus Christ is the king of the kingdom of God. 

Paul is emphasizing this kingdom anchored in the king in Acts 19:9, “But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and they publicly maligned the Way.” It’s a word, ‘the Way,’ that is— It’s a word to describe the Christian Way. In fact, here they’re doing the same thing that Paul did before he gave his life to Jesus Christ. They resisted the preaching about the king, Jesus, and about his kingdom. “So, Paul,” the text continues, “left them. He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.” In verse 10 it says, “this went on for two years.” 

Just a quick word here. Notice the patience with which this brother evangelized. I don’t have a lot of patience. A fruit of the spirit is patience. But I don’t have a lot of patience. But in ministry and pastoring, in being a witness for the gospel, we need—yes, the spirit to empower us—but we need patience as we are praying for people to give their lives to Jesus. Pleading with them and perhaps never seeing any results or maybe seeing results two or three or four or five—or, in my case, for some people I’ve been sharing my faith with, 29 years later we see a response. Here we see Paul was laboring, preaching, and teaching for two years. Notice in the text of verse 10, “so that all the Jews and Greeks…” Ah, there it is again! Jew-Gentile stuff is happening in Ephesus when he’s there. He’s not giving us an abstract lecture in Ephesians 2 about Jew-Gentile unity. In Ephesus, when he preached in the synagogue, when he preached in the lecture hall, he had in his face, real Jew-Gentile division. The gospel is the key unifying component to these Jews and Gentiles who are alienated from each other religiously or ethnically. Paul is laboring to compel these Jews and Gentiles to believe. And so, they hear the word of God in the province of Asia.

Of course, God does “extraordinary miracles” according to Acts 19:11. It’s an interesting story here. Through Paul in verse 12, God does extraordinary miracles “so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.” Here we see Paul at some level practicing some form of healing and exorcisms. He’s not walking around promoting his own ability to do these things. But the Lord is supernaturally working as he’s preaching the word of God, as he’s preaching about King Jesus, as he’s preaching about Jesus perhaps invading this world and bringing in and ushering in God’s kingdom and establishing a kingdom of God that clashes and destroys and triumphs over the kingdom of man. He is demonstrating God, that is through Paul, real life miracles that are more powerful than these sons of Sceva in a moment who are likewise exorcists to demonstrate that for Paul, his ability to do these things is anchored in the resurrection of the crucified and risen Lord. 

We see, in Acts 19:13–15, some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits. They tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “in the name of the Jesus,” notice this, “whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out. Seven sons of Sceva and a Jewish chief priest were doing this. One day the evil spirit answered them,”

I love verse 15. This is hilarious, “Jesus, I know, and Paul, I know, but who are you?” I think, based on the text, one reason they asked the question is because these people do not know Jesus and Paul is preaching a message about Jesus. They’re wanting Paul’s power, but not his Jesus. But the demons respond by saying, “We don’t know you, but we know Paul because Paul is anchored in the authority of Jesus Christ.” I think that’s supported by the fact that when you see in the rest of the text that Paul’s gospel is proven to be a gospel that gives him this power and they don’t have such a gospel.

Notice in Acts 19:16, “Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house, naked and bleeding,” whipped by demons. Then in verse 17, “When this became known to the Jews,” here it is again. Just hear, hear some of the themes in Ephesians I’ve briefly mentioned, “When this became known to the Jews and the Greeks…” When you think Greek, think Gentile. By ‘Greek,’ I think at the very least, Paul means here, ‘Gentile.’ It is true that Jews were in Greece, but my point is this: He seems to make a distinction that a Jew is someone who is a descendant of Abraham’s offspring linked to the Law of Moses and has a sign of circumcision, which is both part of the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 17, and folded within the Mosaic covenant in Leviticus 12:3. Of course, that sign applies only to males. Also, a Jew is someone who might not be in the land, which they’re not in these passages, but they’re linked to that land by these genealogical promises that God gave to Israel, whereas Gentiles are not part of these natural ethnic promises. So, these Greeks are Gentiles and they’re living in Ephesus. They were all seized with fear. The name of the Lord Jesus—hear it clearly, the name—not the name of King Caesar, but the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor.

“Many of those who believe now came and openly confessed what they had done.” In Acts 19:19, “A number of who had practiced sorcery”—here’s the point about magic: They “brought their scrolls together. They burned them publicly and, when they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to 50,000 drachmas.”

This way, the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power. So far, not only do you see— not only do you see the imperial cult emerge here because Paul is preaching the kingdom of God, the gospel of the kingdom of God. You also see that there are magical things happening here with these people who are practicing sorcery, which Paul condemns in Galatians. You have people who are workers of magic, workers of evil, doing demonic things. You also have the reality of Jew-Gentile unity emerging in the text. Not everybody was happy. 

I’m going to skip some verses here and jump into Acts 19:23–24a, “About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of…” Here it is: “Artemis.” Do you remember that name? Artemis, remember, is this goddess who was worshipped, venerated, believed to be a protector of the Ephesians, believed to be someone who is the goddess of the hunt, and some other things as well. Artemus was believed to be protector of chastity and virginity and womanhood. One problem that Paul’s gospel presents for him is it pushes against the empire. It pushes against Jew and Gentile disunity. It pushes against magic, and it pushes against worshipping the goddess Artemis. In verse 24, “A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis…” Hear that very carefully. You had people who were employed for the purpose of creating idols. So, when Paul preaches the gospel about King Jesus, he not only goes after the goddess, he goes after the economy because the worship of her provided some financial stability for some within the community. When Paul preaches this gospel and these Ephesians convert, the response is not one that is favorable.

You notice it keeps going. Luke writes in Acts 19:25, “He called them together, along with the workers in related trades, and said, ‘You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business.’” This is one of those who’s a silversmith. This is Demetrius speaking and, in verse 26, “And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that…” Hear this carefully: “…that gods made by human hands are not gods at all.” Notice the essence of Paul’s message. He’s not simply saying, “Yes, you must give your life to Jesus.” But he’s also saying these gods are not gods. Even Artemis is not a god. Even that temple erected in Ephesus—that’s big and beautiful and one of the massive ancient wonders of the world. Paul is saying that temple represents a weak god, no god at all. And as a result, the economy is shaken because people began to convert and began to leave their business. So, he says further—notice: “There is danger…” in verse 37 [recte 27], “not only that our trade will lose this good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshipped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.”

Paul’s point is there is no majesty. There’s only a temple that you’ve built. You can’t see this god, yet you have an image of her or images of her, but she didn’t become incarnate and take on flesh and live with you and die a vicarious, substitutionary death for your sin, and then rise from the dead by her heavenly Father. You serve an idol that’s no god at all. They say, basically, that’s what Paul is saying. Then in Ephesians 19:28, “When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting.” Notice what they do. They began worshiping Artemis, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.” In verses 29–30, “Soon, the whole city was in an uproar. The people seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s traveling companions from Macedonia, and all of them rushed into the theater together. Paul wanted to appear before the crowd, but the disciples would not let him.” Some of Paul’s friends—I’m paraphrasing now—had to convince him not to enter in. This went on for a couple hours. In Acts 19:35–36, the city clerk finally quieted down the crowd, exhorting the Ephesians to have order but also saying, “Fellow Ephesians, doesn’t all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? Therefore, since these facts are undeniable, you ought to calm down and not do anything rash.” 

I end my point here to ask, do you feel the theological weight about what Paul is going to say in this letter? The weight is he’s not in an office writing abstract theology for the sake of simply recapitulating information about God. He is a missionary in Acts 19 on the ground, and he’s no longer in Ephesus. He’s writing a letter to these Ephesians to remind them how they must live, to remind them of the God whom they serve, and to remind them how they must operate as the church in a context wherein all the anti-God powers—Artemis, the economy, the emperor, sin, the devil—are against them.

That’s a little taste of the historical context of the letter. I’ll make one more remark on this front, then we’ll move into our exposition of the letter. Notice in Ephesians 1:1 that he says he wrote to those “who are in Ephesus.” Now, there’s a big discussion about whether those words ’in Ephesus’ were there. There’s manuscript evidence that suggests yes. There’s other manuscript evidence that suggests no. But in my view, Paul wrote it to the Ephesians based on some things that I just said to you from Acts 19 and based on those themes popping up in the letter itself. So, as I teach the letter, I’m teaching it as he is writing to the Ephesians to whom he spent time ministering and preaching the gospel. He spent years there serving them, preaching and teaching, and then those with whom he shared fellowship and deep love for as expressed in Acts when those Ephesian elders come and pray for him and weep with him as he tells them they’ll never see him again as he goes on and does other missionary journeys. 

V. Questions

Dr. Williams: Any comments or questions? 

Student: Dr. Williams, you were talking about Paul’s ministry and how that invaded the kingdom of darkness and, in the process, there were miracles happening and different events like that. Why do you think we don’t see those today as much when people have their ministries or when we’re doing things that invade the kingdom of darkness today? Why do you think we don’t see those as much in the ministries that are going on today? 

Dr. Williams: It’s a great question. There could be many reasons why we don’t see them to the degree that we see them in the Book of Acts. I think one reason could be because in Acts, this was a pioneer movement. There were no churches until the Christian movement began to penetrate beyond Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and the ends of the earth. Of course, Jesus did miracles to give evidence and proof that the kingdom of God had in fact invaded this present evil age because the king, Jesus himself, had arrived. But when he leaves, he is leaving the disciples. Later followers, his Spirit, and his apostles go out as those upon whom he’s establishing the churches to give a witness to the fact that Jesus is risen from the dead to a group of Jews and Gentiles who resist that for different reasons. 

I think one reason why the miracles are so [inaudible] in the Book of Acts and the New Testament is because of the early stages of the Christian movement and because of the time frame and salvation history within which those miracles are happening. Secondly, I believe, however, that miracles still do happen in a very powerful way that we don’t always see manifested in every aspect of the Christian life. I think there are things that happen medically that we have no explanation for, and God works a miracle.

Now, that’s a different kind of a miracle than the apostles casting out demons or touching someone and they’re healed. But that is a miracle, nevertheless. I think also we see miracles when people are delivered supernaturally from addiction. I think that’s a miracle, but not the same kind of miracle. 

With respect, though, to the kind of miracles that we see in the Gospels and in Acts, I think— This is just a guess, I can’t prove this, perhaps in parts of the world where there’s less of a gospel witness, where the darkness is much stronger than perhaps in the West where there is a more gospel witness, that you would expect some more unusual miracles to take place, like the ones we see in the Gospels and in Acts. Where you hear stories—I hear stories from missionaries of people who are of one religion, and they have a dream or vision, and they come to faith in Jesus Christ, and that’s a miracle. So, I wonder if all of those reasons together could perhaps provide an answer for why what we see in Acts is not normally what we see in certain parts of our Christian experience in the West.