the individual Christians; children are to love their parents as individual Christians are to love Christ
and the church. The full and general realization of this domestic ideal would be heaven on earth.
But how few families come up to this standard.^1160
Ephesians and the Writings of John.
Paul emphasizes the person of Christ in Colossians, the person and agency of the Holy Spirit
in Ephesians. For the Holy Spirit carries on the work of Christ in the church. Christians are sealed
with the Holy Spirit of promise unto the day of redemption (Eph. 1:13; 4:30). The spirit of wisdom
and revelation imparts the knowledge of Christ (1:17; 3:16). Christians should be filled with the
Spirit (5:18), take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and pray in the Spirit at all
seasons (6:17, 18).
The pneumatology of Ephesians resembles that of John, as the christology of Colossians
resembles the christology of John. It is the Spirit who takes out of the "fulness" of Christ, and shows
it to the believer, who glorifies the Son and guides into the truth (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13–15,
etc.). Great prominence is given to the Spirit also in Romans, Galatians, Corinthians, and the Acts
of the Apostles.
John does not speak of the church and its outward organization (except in the Apocalypse),
but he brings Christ in as close and vital a contact with the individual disciples as Paul with the
whole body. Both teach the unity of the church as a fact, and as an aim to be realized more and
more by the effort of Christians, and both put the centre of unity in the Holy Spirit.
Encyclical Intent
Ephesians was intended not only for the church at Ephesus, the metropolis of Asia Minor,
but for all the leading churches of that district. Hence the omission of the words "in Ephesus" (Eph.
1:1) in some of the oldest and best MSS.^1161 Hence, also, the absence of personal and local
intelligence. The encyclical destination may be inferred also from the reference in Col. 4:16 to the
Epistle to the church of Laodicea, which the Colossians were to procure and to read, and which is
probably identical with our canonical Epistle to the Ephesians."^1162
Character and Value of the Epistle.
Ephesians is the most churchly book of the New Testament. But it presupposes Colossians,
the most Christly of Paul’s Epistles. Its churchliness is rooted and grounded in Christliness, and
has no sense whatever if separated from this root. A church without Christ would be, at best, a
praying corpse (and there are such churches). Paul was at once the highest of high churchmen, the(^1160) For a fine analysis of the Epistle, I refer to Braune’s Com. in the Lange Series (translated by Dr. Riddle). He adopts a
twofold, Stier and Alford a threefold (trinitarian) division. See also Dr. Riddle’s clear analysis in Schaff’s Popular Com. on the
New Test., III. (1882). p. 355. I. Doctrinal Part, chs. 1-3: The church, the mystical body of Christ, chosen, redeemed, and united
in Christ. II. Practical Part. chs. 4-6: Therefore, let all the members of the church walk in unity, in love, in newness of life, in
the armor of God. But we should remember that the Epistle is not strictly systematic, and the doctrinal expositions and practical
exhortations interlace each other.
(^1161) ἐν Ἐφέσῶ is omitted in the Sinaitic and Vatican MSS. Marcion retained the Epistle under the title "To the Laodicenes," as
Tertullian reports. Dr. Hort says: "Transcriptional evidence strongly supports the testimony of documents against ἐν Ἐφέσῶ."
The arguments of Meyer and of Woldemar Schmidt (in the fifth ed. of Meyer on Colossians) in favor of the words are not
conclusive.
(^1162) This was already the view of Marcion in the second century. Meyer, however, in loc., insists that another letter is meant,
which was lost, like one to the Corinthians. The apocryphal Ep. to the Laodiceans (in Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. N. T., I. 873 sqq.),
consisting of twenty verses, is a mere fabrication from the other Epistles of Paul. It was forbidden by the Second Council of
Nicaea (787).
A.D. 1-100.