EPHESIANS 1:1-2 - God's Blueprint for Living

Introduction

A number of years ago Mom and Dad took our family and my sister’s family for a 3-day vacation to Cedar Point, the “Roller Coaster Capital of the World”. Now, of the six of us in our family, probably three of us really enjoy roller coasters; the other three range from “Yeah, I kind of like them” to “Not on your life...”

But there was one coaster there that every last one of us immediately wrote off the moment we saw it—the 420-foot high vertical “Top Thrill Dragster”—that we dubbed “The ‘Nope’ Coaster”. Each morning when we walked into the park, we walked by it going “Nope...” It wasn’t until we were ready to leave at the end of our stay that a few of us finally worked up the courage to try it—and we all survived.

I have to confess this morning that the Book of Ephesians has been my personal “Nope Coaster” for preaching. It has been called “the crown of St. Paul’s writings” and “the divinest composition of man” and “the Queen of the Epistles”. It was said to be John Calvin’s favorite book, and former Princeton Theological Seminary president John Mackay said it was

the ‘greatest’, the ‘maturest’ and ‘for our time the most relevant’ of all Paul’s works. For here is ‘the distilled essence of the Christian religion, the most authoritative and most consummate compendium of our holy Christian faith (Stott, J. R. W. (1979). God’s new society: the message of Ephesians (p. 16). InterVarsity Press.)

In the Himalayan range of the Apostle Paul’s letters, Ephesians stands as one of the highest peaks. It is an intimidating climb through some of the most powerful and influential doctrines and teachings in all the New Testament and a careless or inattentive preacher might plunge his people off of a cliff into error or confusion.

But at the same time, we cannot afford to avoid the message of this book. The Apostle Paul wrote this letter around A.D. 60 to 62, during the time he was under house arrest in Rome (as we read in Acts 28). This was also around the time when the Roman Empire was undergoing some significant upheaval; Emperor Nero had murdered his wife Octavia and shaken himself loose from the restraining hand of his advisers and begun to show signs the cruel and abusive insanity that he would become known for, and wars on the outer reaches of the Empire with the Parthians and the British continued to gnaw away at the Pax Romana. As one commentator put it,

“As the apostle proclaimed God’s order to the post-Augustan Roman era which was marked by ‘a process of social disintegration’, so Ephesians is today ‘the most contemporary book in the Bible’, since it promises community in a world of disunity, reconciliation in place of alienation and peace instead of war.” (ibid., p. 16)

Like the original readers of this letter, we find ourselves in a time of “social disintegration”—everyone is starting to look around and say, “We need to tear all this down and start over!!” From DOGE taking a chainsaw to government bureaucracy to the NCAA kicking men out of women’s sports to massive walkbacks of corporate DEI initiatives to tariff wars to securing the borders, we are all in the mood to take a sledgehammer to the drywall, as it were, and demo everything down to the studs.

But the question isn’t so much “what are we going to tear down today” as what are we going to build to replace it tomorrow? Yes, by all means let’s tear down the rot and corruption and decay of our society; but what kind of society should we be striving for instead? And this is the message of the Book of Ephesians. As John R W Stott puts in his commentary on the epistle: “The letter focuses on what God did through the historical work of Jesus Christ and does through his Spirit today, in order to build his new society in the midst of the old.” (ibid, p. 24). And so the way I want to frame it as we begin this study this morning is to say that

It is THROUGH and IN Jesus Christ ALONE that God’s new SOCIETY has come into BEING

One of the key phrases throughout the book of Ephesians is “in Christ”. and as we work our way through the book, by God’s grace, we will see how Paul traces everything in the book back to the person and work of Christ.

In your handout you will find a brief outline of the book; this will help us keep our bearings as we move through our study:

OUTLINE OF EPHESIANS

  1.  Our new IDENTITY in Christ (1:3–2:10)

  2.   Our new CITIZENSHIP in Christ (2:11–3:21)

  3.   Our new CULTURE in Christ (4:1–5:21)

  4.   Our new RELATIONSHIPS in Christ (5:21–6:24)

This morning as we consider the introduction to the book we will see that even Paul’s opening greeting everything ties back to Christ Himself—many of the themes of the book are reflected in these two verses. First of all, consider that this new society that has come into being has appeared

I. According to the AUTHORITY of Christ (Ephesians 1:1a)

Consider how Paul introduces himself:

Ephesians 1:1 LSB

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God...

Paul writes this letter to the church because he has been

SENT by God Himself (cp. Acts 19:11-12)

Paul makes it clear that he is not writing these things out of his own authority—he is speaking on behalf of Jesus Christ Himself. The church in Ephesus was very familiar with Paul’s apostolic authority—he spent about 18 months there ministering to them, and they saw the apostolic signs of his authority in the miracles he performed:

Acts 19:11–12 LSB

And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that cloths or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out.

God demonstrated that He was speaking through Paul by the signs that he performed. And so as Paul writes in this letter about what God’s new society must look like, we must remember that he is not giving us his own ideas or directions—these teachings are from Jesus Christ Himself.

In this opening verse Paul makes it clear that he has been sent by Christ Himself—he is “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God—he has been

CHOSEN by God Himself (cp. Acts 26:16-18)

Paul did not put himself into the position of apostle; he was not assigned his duties by the church—it came directly from God Himself, as Paul describes it in his testimony before Herod Agrippa in Acts 26—Paul said that God was sending him to the Gentile people

Acts 26:18 LSB

to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.’

Paul serves “by the will of God”—he serves at His pleasure. He is not free to declare what he wants; he can only speak what he has been given to speak. He is not operating under his own authority or seeking to impose his own will or his own preferences on his readers. And this is important to remember when we have our feathers ruffled by this book—that we don’t like the way “Paul” is talking about women and their husbands, for instance—do not forget what he establishes here at the very beginning of this letter: These things are coming from God Himself.

We will see in this study that the kind of society that Paul is commending for us here—specifically, that God Himself is commending to us—it is going to look very different from what the world demands. From marriage roles to race relations, morality to childrearing—we will very often find that the course set for us by God’s blueprint for living will run clean contrary to what many of our neighbors, family members (and even some of our fellow Christians) want a society to look like. But we are not living our lives in order to win the approval of other men—we are living our lives and building our lives according to God’s blueprint for living under the authority of Jesus Christ.

Just as the Apostle Paul was under the authority of Christ as he wrote this epistle, so we are under God’s authority

II. As the PEOPLE of Christ (Ephesians 1:1b)

Consider the second half of verse 1:

Ephesians 1:1 LSB

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus:

There are two phrases that Paul uses to describe his readers: They are saints, and they are faithful. Let’s consider these one at a time. First, Paul refers to his readers (including us) as saints. We have been conditioned to think about “saints” to mean some super-spiritual, extraordinarily perfect Christian. But the way that this word is used throughout the New Testament applies the term “saint” to every believer. To be a “saint” according to the Scriptures means that

You have been SET APART by God (cp. Acts 19:1-10; cp. Eph. 1:13-14)

In Acts 19, we read about Paul’s initial encounter with a dozen “disciples” at Ephesus, who had only ever heard of John the Baptist’s teaching about repentance—they had not heard about the death, burial and resurrection of Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. And so in verse 4 we read

Acts 19:4 LSB

Then Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus.”

When Paul then declared the Gospel to them and they believed in Jesus for their salvation and they were baptized, God validated their profession of faith by giving them the Holy Spirit. Paul refers to that encounter in Ephesians 1:13-14:

Ephesians 1:13–14 LSB

In Him, you also, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, unto the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

This is true not just of the believers in Ephesus in the First Century, but it is true of every believer.. Though the need for tongues and miracles ceased with the completion of the New Testament, everyone who places their faith in Christ for salvation is set apart by the Holy Spirit Who indwells them.

Paul writes to the “saints” in Christ who are faithful in Christ. You have been set apart by God in the New Birth, and as a result

You live in COSTLY FAITHFULNESS to Him (cp. Acts 19:23-41)

The Greek word “faithful” can be read two different ways in this verse. A Christian can be “faithful” as in “full of faith”—full of trust in God, actively depending on Him and resting in His promises. And the word “faithful” can also be used to describe a Christian’s trustworthiness—that they are faithful to do what they have been called to do.

And I think both senses can be applied here in this verse—the Christians Paul was writing to were living in a city where faithfulness could be dangerous, after all. In Acts 19:23-41, for instance, we read about the riot that broke out over Paul’s preaching the Gospel—so many people were turning to Christ from the false goddess Artemis that it was ruining the businesses in town. It cost something for the believers in Ephesus to stand firm in their commitment to Christ.

In the same way, beloved, it costs something to live according to God’s blueprint here in Ephesians. The new society that God has established in and through Christ is thoroughly counter-cultural. As we will see in the course of our study, the society God is building through Christ and His people does not play well with the false gods of secularism and it subdues and constrains the strong gods of patriotism and kinship. To fashion your life and your home and your relationships and your worship according to this book will get you in trouble from all sides, but your life is not your own. You have been purchased by the blood of Christ and set apart by His Spirit; you are called to live a costly faithfulness in the midst of this dark hour as aliens and strangers, as citizens of a new civilization built on Christ.

It is through and in Jesus Christ alone that God’s new society has come into being. It comes according to the authority of Christ, we pursue it as the people of Christ, and we are enabled to do so

III. On the basis of the WORK of Christ (Ephesians 1:2)

Look at verse 2 with me—it is Paul’s favorite greeting with which he begins all his letters:

Ephesians 1:2 LSB

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Just as the Holy Spirit has regenerated us in the New Birth as saints and has set Himself upon us as a seal of the promise of our salvation, so He comes to us from God the Father and God the Son to bring us grace and peace. (And so Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all represented in Paul’s greeting—the Spirit is the grace and peace!)

Beloved, the only way that you can be faithful to pursue God’s blueprint for living here in Ephesians is because of the Holy Spirit’s work that applies the work of Christ to your life. Consider the ways in which

You have received God’s GRACE

Paul will come back to the grace of God over and over in this epistle—everything in the life of a believer comes back to God’s freely bestowed grace to us when we were as wicked and corrupt as could be:

Ephesians 2:4–5 LSB

But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

It was “the surpassing richness of His grace” (2:7) that rescued us from our spiritual death in our sin, and it is by that same grace that we are gifted to serve Him:

Ephesians 4:7 LSB

But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

You have received God’s grace, and

You live in God’s PEACE

God’s grace means that He took the initiative to save us when we had no ability to save ourselves; and His peace is what He took the initiative to do—reconcile sinners to Himself and to each other in His new community. (Stott, p. 27)

Paul describes the Gospel as the “gospel of peace” in Ephesians 6:15; he reminds us that Christ Himself is our peace (2:14), and that He made peace between the races “through His cross, having in Himself put to death the enmity” (Eph. 2:16). He reminds us that we must be

Ephesians 4:3 LSB

...diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Here then is the most concise summary of the message of the Book of Ephesians: “Peace Through Grace”. We have peace with God and with one another because of the grace of God. And in that grace and peace we come together in a new society brought about by and through Jesus Christ.

So as we work through this book together over the coming weeks, how shall we pursue this blueprint for living that God has set before us in the book of Ephesians? The first commitment we must make is to come to this book understanding it for what it is—it is the very word of God communicated to us by the apostolic authority of His appointed messenger. Once we have determined through careful study and proper exegesis the meaning of the text, we must resolve to do what it says.

Never forget that there is more than one kind of disobedience—there is the kind that says, for example, “I don’t like the way Paul talks about husbands being the head of their wives in Ephesians 5:23”—and so they go on to re-interpret, disregard or outright dispute the Scriptures by their behavior, insisting that women are equal to or even superior to men, and then structuring their home life in such a way that they ignore God’s blueprint for marriage.

But there is the other end of the spectrum that sees that opposition to God’s teaching in Ephesians and reacts to it in an equally unhealthy way: “Well, in our home, my wife doesn’t have any say in decisions, because I AM THE HEAD!!!” But going beyond what the Scripture says and imposing your own “industrial strength” application of Ephesians 5:23 is just as disobedient. We are neither in a position to reject or water down what is written here, nor are we free to go beyond what is written here.

Another commitment that we must make as we study this book is to continue to challenge our modern notion of salvation as a solitary experience. You’ll notice as we move through Ephesians that we will be re-visiting a number of passages that we just examined earlier as part of our series on fellowship in the church. And for good reason—one of the central pillars of Paul’s argument in this book is the corporate nature of our salvation.

We have all been brought up to look at our salvation in Christ as a purely solitary endeavor—I come to Christ and get saved so that I can go to Heaven when I die. And that is true—your repentance and faith in Christ through the New Birth is absolutely an individual event: You are not a Christian because your mom and dad are; you are not a Christian because your grandmother was so religious and prayed for you every day. You are a Christian because you came to realize the depth of your sin and guilt before God and you cried out to Him for forgiveness on the basis of Jesus’ death on the Cross. No one does this for you; no one else can make you a Christian.

So yes—we become Christians one at a time. But what God’s blueprint in Ephesians reminds us is that our salvation has not just guaranteed us a spot in Heaven; it also joins us to Christ, Who in turn joins us to all of His people. Christianity is by its very nature a corporate faith—as we have observed before (and as we will be reminded in this book) that it is impossible to obey a great number of the “one another” commands to Christians in the New Testament all by yourself. Loving, serving, submitting, admonishing, sacrificing, encouraging—all of these commands require there be someone else besides you in the mix. So following God’s blueprint for living means that you commit yourself again to fostering and nurturing that fellowship that you have with your fellow members of Christ’s Body, the Church.

It is through and in Jesus Christ alone that God’s new society has come into being. This is the vital link between Paul, his readers and his message—Paul is “an apostle of Christ Jesus”, the readers are themselves “in Christ Jesus” and the blessing of grace and peace comes to them “from the Lord Jesus Christ”. There is no other blueprint for living than life in Jesus Christ. There is no other way to rebuild the ruins of our society than through the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is, indeed, either Christ or chaos—for your own life, for your family, for your marriage, for your neighborhood, for your fellowship, for your world.

Rescue for our sorry mess of a society is not going to come through government reform or economic forces or an Executive Order defining two genders for government policy. Rescue is only going to come as the people of Christ, acting under the authority of Christ, faithfully proclaim the free and unmerited grace of Christ to forgive sin and the peace of Christ to reconcile men to God and to one another. The only remedy for the mortal illness of our dying society—the only hope for our wretched condition—is found in the fact that God sent His own Son—fully divine and fully human—to take all of our wretchedness on Himself and die under the wrath of God in our place so that we can be at peace with Him. There is no sin you have committed that His grace will not forgive; there is no guilt or shame, no hatred or animosity that His peace will not heal. Everything that can be done has been done; the price has been paid, the way is open, the promise is sure. All you need to do is come—and welcome!—to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Ephesians 6:23–24 LSB

Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION:

Take some time to read through the book of Ephesians this week. What are some parts of the book you find challenging to understand or apply? What are some of the topics the Apostle Paul addresses that might be unwelcome in our society today?

What does Paul say about himself in the opening verse of Ephesians? How does his role as an apostle “by the will of God” inform the way we are to read this book?

What does it mean to be a “saint”? How does the believer’s identity in Christ define his relationship to the world and the commands in Ephesians?

What are the two ways that the phrase “faithful believer” can be understood? How can you grow in both kinds of faithfulness as you submit to God’s Word this week?