Commentary on Ephesians 1:3-14

Ephesians 1:3–14 offers a panoramic vision of what God’s love has brought into reality. In Greek, the passage is only one sentence, comprising just over 200 words. The New Revised Standard Version breaks it into six sentences. Try reading the passage in one breath and you’d be gasping by the end—that is part of Paul’s point: Jesus Christ makes plain that God’s plan is to bring everything together into the unity for which it was created. 

Believers in Jesus have been let in on the plan. Life in Christ is more than individualistic assurance that we will be taken care of on the day of judgment; it is the realization that we have been drawn into the drama of the universe’s restoration. Glimpsing the astonishing, comprehensive plan for wholeness that our lives are caught up in will make us breathless indeed!

Because of its massive theological vision, this text can be a challenge to preach. Many preachers will feel drawn to one image or phrase that they feel they can get a handle on and communicate effectively. No matter what form the sermon takes, preachers attending to this text should not shy away from the vision of God Paul offers—one that leaves people responding in the only way possible when we catch a glimpse of the glory we have been drawn into by grace: “Blessed be God!” (verse 3).

Several details of the passage can illuminate the preacher’s study, reflection, and preparation:

The subject of the long sentence is, unsurprisingly, God (verse 3). There is only one finite verb in the entire passage: “chose” (verse 4). This reflects the passage’s broader emphasis on God’s initiative in creation, redemption, and fulfillment. The passage unfolds by recording the way God has blessed us and drawn us into redemption by adopting us in Christ. By faith in Jesus, believers are now participants in the very life of God. 

Twelve times Paul refers to things that have taken place “in Christ” (or “in him,” or “in the Beloved” [New Revised Standard Version: “the One he loves”]). Paul’s language is consistently inclusive: the blessings of God belong to “us”; “we” have been chosen [literally “called”] to live for the praise of God’s glory (verses 11–12). Only as he concludes does Paul encourage the church directly: “In him you also heard the word of truth” and were “chosen” (verses 13–14). To come to faith is to be caught up into a drama, and Paul wants his readers—us—to get a glimpse of the larger story, and to be confident that we are in it together. 

It is common for the openings of Paul’s letters to preview the themes he will expound further on. While casting an expansive vision, these opening verses of Ephesians anticipate topics developed later in the letter: the initiative of the Father to redeem people and draw them into his family (2:1–10; 3:14–21); the priority of God’s grace (2:5–10; 3:7–10; 4:7–16); the family of God as marked by a unity that foreshadows the ultimate redemption of all things (2:11–22; 4:1–16) and that even now reflects in some ways the story of that redemption (5:22–6:9). 

Paul is a Jew writing to Gentiles (2:11; 3:1), but racial privilege is no source of division in the family established by the Father, Son, and Spirit (2:11–22). Paul’s inclusive language (we, us) is grounded in the unity of the body of Jesus Christ.

Several themes of Ephesians 1:3–14 are particularly important:

1. The plan of God the Father has been disclosed through our relationship with the Messiah (see also 1:16–23; 3:1–13). This plan reveals that believers are caught up in a drama involving every atom of creation, everything seen and unseen, everything spiritual and earthly. For many people, predestination makes God a micromanager. In Ephesians, predestination has nothing to do with a competition between human and divine will. God’s purposes and plan are the ground of our lives. The purpose of our stories becomes clear only when we see them in the light of revelation. 
2. The incarnation and resurrection of Jesus have opened Paul’s eyes to the manner in which God is surely reclaiming his lordship over everything (1:19–23). The ethnically unified church is a sign to the world and to all the spiritual forces that oppose God that the redemption and harmony of all of creation are unfolding even now (3:7–10). When Paul surveys the glory of God’s plan, he admits that the only story that can make sense of his life is the story of God the Father redeeming all of creation under the lordship of Jesus.
3. Brought into the plan of God, believers are adopted. Paul says this explicitly in verse 5, and it norms all of the family language in the letter as dependent upon the model of the Father-Son relationship that is central to God’s own life and the basis for the metaphor of adoption (verse 5; see also 4:13). Paul’s repeated expression that believers are “in Christ” captures how the Christian life is not hermetically sealed off from God or from Jesus. We are not alone; rather, we are now caught up into the life of God. 
4. The Christian life is first and foremost a response of praise. Paul sets out praise as the fitting response to adoption (verses 5–6), election (verse 12), and the inheritance of the Spirit as the seal of God’s promise (verse 14). Interestingly, these references to praise reflect, respectively, the work of the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. Together, they emphasize the grace of God toward believers, and toward all of creation.

Paul’s vision of God as energetically, redemptively, and relationally engaged in the world runs counter to the disenchanted worldview that dominates the West today—what the philosopher Charles Taylor has described as a world enclosed in “the immanent frame.” Preachers can take heart that Paul’s original audience would have been stunned by the cosmic scope of his theological vision. Today’s preachers continue to herald this astonishing announcement. 

References

Lynn Cohick, Ephesians, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020).

For further reflection on ministry and discipleship in a disenchanted world, see: Andrew Root, Faith Formation in a Secular Age (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017).