Ephesians 1.1-10.
Eleven years ago I led a year-long bible study on Ephesians.
Seriously, a year. Every Sunday I took about two or three verses and analyzed the pants off ’em. Some of the participants in our group loved it, ’cause they’d never dug into the scriptures to such depth. Others figured I could’ve whipped through that letter in four weeks, ’cause every other bible study they’d been to had done so. Taking 50 weeks (’cause you gotta take a week or two off, y’know) felt to them like overkill.
Meh; maybe. I will say I’ll take considerably less than a year in this go-around. So let’s start.
Ephesians 1.1-3 KWL - 1 Paul, by God’s will an apostle of Christ Jesus,
- to those in Ephesus who are holy and trusting Christ Jesus.
- 2 Grace to you. Peace from God our Father, and master Christ Jesus—
- 3 blessed God, and Father of our master Christ Jesus!
- God’s the one who blesses us,
- in every supernatural blessing in the high heavens, in Christ!
The “to Ephesus” in verse 1 was blank in the original. That’s because Paul’s letters were form letters: His secretaries copied them and sent them to multiple churches. Paul sent this copy with Týhikos,
Paul wrote Ephesians late in his life, as indicated by his being a prisoner
Me, I figure those scholars are trying to make a name for themselves by pitching controversies. (And some of them did succeed, y’know.) The idea Paul never grew more mature in his beliefs, or that he only wrote them down once-and-for-all (or twice, considering the same subjects in Galatians and Romans) is naïve. How many Christian authors do you know who only discuss a subject once-and-for-all? Some of ’em rehash their favorite ideas in every single book. And unless they’re intellectually lazy (and let’s be blunt, a number of ’em are) you’re gonna see those ideas evolve. Not necessarily change, but get deeper. Show greater insight and complexity. Get a little more patient with people who think differently than they. They also grow as writers, too.
Those who assume Paul never grew in maturity, as a Christian and as a writer, tend to be two sorts of people. The ones I bump into most often are
The other sort consists of lazy writers. They don’t try to grow as writers; they figure they know what they’re doing, or they’ve achieved enough success at it, and don’t make any efforts to get any better. And they assume everybody gets that way. Everybody peaks in their thirties, and as they age, they take their younger, unrefined selves, turn that into their persona, and milk it for what they can get out of it. You’ve seen actors and musicians do this. Writers do it too. Christians do it too. More immaturity.
Spirit-led Christians grow. Which is why I like Ephesians: We get to take a look at how Paul grew. Hope we’re growing too.