Ephesians Prologue

It's been an embarrassingly long time since I've either (a) kept to my daily devotions pledge and (b) updated this blog. It'd be easier to cite defeat, but what's the fun in that? Might as well feel a bit ashamed and try again.

Today I wanted to start reading through one of my favorite NT books, Ephesians. I don't know why Ephesians has stuck out to me to the point where I eagerly point many new Christians to it -- most seminarians I know would prefer to whack someone over the head with Romans or Hebrews. But unlike the dense complexity of those books, Ephesians almost reads like an easy-to-understand owner's manual of Christianity and belonging to the church.

Paul, along with Priscilla and Aquilla, helped to found the church in Ephesus (as documented in Acts 18:19-21). A Jewish convert named Apollos came shortly thereafter to further help build and lead the church (Acts 18:24-26). This city would later be the place Paul called home for almost three years.

Ephesians was written around 62-63 A.D. when Paul was most likely a prisoner in Rome. Ephesus was about 700 miles from Jerusalem, which would be in the western side of modern-day Turkey. It had almost a half-million residents in the first century, making it the largest city of the day. It even had an ampitheater that could seat over 24,000 people! It was a city well-known for its many religions and faiths, including a Jewish population.

Paul used the city as a base of operations for his third missionary journey and most likely wrote 1 Corinthians from there. The church in Ephesus makes a reappearance in Revelation 2:1-7 as a church that persevered yet had forgotten its "first love". The church there remained an important influence over the region until the city's decline in the third to fifth centuries. Today Ephesus is one of the largest sites of Roman ruins, of which only 15% have been uncovered.

Although it appears to specifically mention the church in Ephesus, this letter was most likely intended to be copied and circulated to all of the churches in the region (aka a "circular letter"). Think of a primitive form of e-mail forwarding.

As a book, Ephesians kicks off with the starting point of any Christian: salvation. Paul details what blessings the gospels have in store for believers, how believers should grow in the church, and how believers should live a life in Christ. Interestingly enough, Ephesians 3:3-4 indicate that Paul had already written the church, although that epistle has been lost to the ages.

Ephesians is a letter full of praise, worship, vivid imagry (the "armor of God" passage comes from here), and very practical application for the Christian life. Tomorrow I'll dive into the first chapter.