Latest / Reformed Thinking / Chosen in Christ: The Opening Word of Ephesians (Ephesians 1:1) | Harold W. Hoehner

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Chosen in Christ: The Opening Word of Ephesians (Ephesians 1:1) | Harold W. Hoehner · Reformed Thinking

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Usually when we talk about a medical diagnosis, there is an
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expectation of precision. It is.
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It's a lot like engineering, right?
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You break your arm, the X-ray shows that jagged white line,
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and the doctor points at the film and says, well, there it
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is. Right.
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Yeah, it is very binary. You have a fractured bone or an
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intact bone. The evidence is clean.
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And, you know, we find a lot of comfort in that.
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We really do. We like things to be neatly
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categorized and immediately visible to the naked eye.
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It's just human nature. But then you step into the world
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of textual history, specifically ancient biblical manuscripts,
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and suddenly that pristine X-ray machine is just broken.
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We are looking at a diagnostic landscape that is quite honestly
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murky. Yeah, very murky.
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You have fragments, you have copies of copies, and you have
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all these geographical mysteries.
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So welcome to reform Thinking. This is a deep dive where we
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take specialized source material and extract the core insights
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for you. And today we are focusing on
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microscopic details. We are looking at just the first
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2 verses of the Apostle Paul's letter to the Ephesians,
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specifically chapter 1 verses one and two.
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Our source material is Harold W Hohner's massive exegetical
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commentary on Ephesians. OK, let's unpack this.
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The goal for you, the listener, is to understand how these tiny,
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seemingly insignificant elements, like the specific
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order of a name, a highly debated city destination, and a
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standard ancient greeting, carry vast historical weight and
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theological gravity. What's fascinating here is that
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we will look at the text, the physical ancient manuscripts,
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the grammar of the Greek language, and, you know, the
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cultural backdrop of the 1st century Mediterranean world to
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make sense of it all. Let us start with the very first
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words of the letter, because before we even figure out where
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this letter is going, we need to look at whose name it carries,
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the English text reads, you know Paul, an apostle of Christ
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Jesus. The source material points out
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something fascinating about how the name Jesus and the title
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Christ are arranged. Paul actually shifts how he
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presents this combination based entirely on the audience he's
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addressing. The cultural tightrope Paul had
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to walk is fascinating. We must consider the Jewish
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context first. To a Jewish audience in the 1st
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century, identifying the crucified Jesus as the
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anticipated Messiah was considered, well, outright
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blasphemous. Wait.
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Really just straight up blasphemous.
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Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
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Paul talks about this tension directly in his letters.
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Like in Galatians one and 1st Corinthians 1, the concept of a
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crucified savior was a massive stumbling block.
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It was highly offensive. So if I am putting myself in the
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shoes of a 1st century Jewish listener, I have this centuries
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long expectation of a conquering king, right?
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Someone who is going to overthrow the Roman occupation
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and restore the nation of Israel.
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Spot on. That was the prevailing hope.
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Right. And then a man who was executed
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by the state on a Roman cross is, well, it's the absolute
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opposite of that expectation. Precisely that is the hurdle.
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So when Paul was preaching in synagogues to Jewish audiences,
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his primary objective was intensely persuasive.
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He had to convince them that Jesus of Nazareth was in fact
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the Son of God and the Christ. He had to prove it.
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Yes, he had to prove the Messiahship from the Hebrew
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Scriptures. The focus was on convincing them
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that the historical man was the fulfillment of all those ancient
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promises. But when you look at his letters
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to predominantly Gentile audiences, people who you know
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did not grow up going to the synagogue, the approach changes
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completely. The source text notes that he
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does not highlight Jesus's status as the Christ with that
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same aggressive persuasive angle.
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The Gentile audiences did not possess that same centuries long
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anticipation of a Jewish Messiah.
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They lived in a totally different theological framework.
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Right, they had a different baseline.
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Yeah, they certainly needed salvation, but the specific
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title of Messiah or Christos in Greek did not carry the same
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inherent controversy or burning expectation for them.
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So for a Gentile, they are not arguing over whether Jesus fits
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the prophetic profile of the anointed one.
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They are just trying to understand who this rescuer
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actually is. That's it.
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And this brings us to how Paul writes the name.
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We see him using terms like Jesus Christ and sometimes
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Christ Jesus. I look at that and think of a
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modern title, for instance, President Lincoln or Doctor
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Smith. You have a title and you have a
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proper name and they emerge. Does flipping it from Jesus
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Christ to Christ Jesus change the underlying meaning, or is it
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just a stylistic quirk? To answer that, the commentary
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brings in the research of a scholar named Dahl.
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Dahl argues that the terms Jesus Christ and Christ Jesus are
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entirely interchangeable in Paul's writings.
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Oh, interesting, so there's no real difference?
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Well, you see Jesus Christ used in the openings of Romans and
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Galatians, but you see Christ Jesus used just a chapter 2
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later in those same letters because they can be swapped so
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freely. Dahl proposes that Christ is not
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functioning as a fixed proper name.
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Rather, Jesus is the proper name, the historical identifier,
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and Christ is an attached title. OK, that makes total logical
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sense. Christ translates to the
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anointed one. It is a job description,
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basically a designated role. And we find linguistic evidence
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supporting this. Throughout the New Testament
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documents, titles are consistently attached to the
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proper name. You see phrasing like Jesus is
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Lord or Jesus Christ is Lord of the Lord Jesus Christ, but you
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almost never encounter the phrase Lord Christ.
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Complete. Really.
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Why is that specific combination missing?
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Because it creates A redundancy. Lord is a title and Christ is a
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title. Saying Lord Christ is similar to
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saying President Commander in Chief.
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I see right? It stacks 2 functional titles on
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top of each other without providing the proper name of the
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person holding those offices. The only exceptions the
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commentary points out are found in Romans 16 and Colossians 3.
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What happens in those verses? Well, in those specific verses,
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submitting to the Lord Christ is being heavily contrasted with
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submitting to other earthly Lords or masters.
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The redundancy is deployed as a rhetorical device to stress
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supreme authority. So Paul takes the proper name
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Jesus, the historical man from Nazareth who walked the earth,
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and inextricably links it to the title Christ, the anointed
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provider of salvation. By fusing the name and the title
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together so tightly, Paul makes it impossible for the reader to
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separate the historical man from the theological rescuer.
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That fusion is vital. Christ is inseparably united to
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Jesus. It functions simultaneously as a
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name and a title referring to God's anointed one.
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This changes how we understand Paul when he says believers are
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in Christ Jesus. It means they are united with a
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specific historical person who provided salvation.
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They are not aligning themselves with an abstract philosophy or
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the set of moral guidelines, right?
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They're united to a historical individual who holds a cosmic
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title. If we look at the broader
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picture, Paul is establishing his authority in the very first
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breath of the document. He calls himself an apostle of
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this feast entity. He is sent by the historical
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Jesus, who is the cosmic Christ that establishes the baseline
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for everything he's about to write.
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OK, so we have established who is sending the letter and under
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what authority. Naturally, we want to know who
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is receiving it. But this is where we run into a
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massive historical roadblock. Really do.
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If you open a standard Greek New Testament today, like the NA-27
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or the UBS 4 and you look at Ephesians 1.1, you will see the
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words in Ephesus in Greek and Ephesus sitting inside brackets.
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What do those brackets actually indicate?
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In the discipline of textual criticism, brackets indicate
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significant scholarly doubt. They tell the reader that
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there's a debate over whether those specific words were in the
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original manuscript penned by the author.
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It flags a textual. Problem.
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We need to look at the physical manuscripts, what scholars call
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the external evidence. We have older manuscripts that
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omit the words, and we have an enormous number of manuscripts
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that include them. Let us start with the omissions,
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because they are pretty striking.
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The words and Ephesus are missing from the absolute oldest
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Alexandrian manuscripts we possess.
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We are talking about Papyrus 46, which dates to the 3rd century,
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and Codex Vaticanus, known by the symbol B from the 4th
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century. They are also missing from a
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specific minuscules such as 6 and 1739.
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Furthermore, Origen, the early Church father from the 3rd
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century, excludes the phrase, although he explicitly notes
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that removing it creates severe grammatical issues in the
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sentence. Wait.
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Before we go further, we need to clarify some terminology.
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What is a papyrus compared to a codex, and what is a minuscule?
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Let us define the tools we're looking at.
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That is a helpful pause. A papyrus, like Papyrus 46, is a
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document written on material made from the pith of the
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papyrus plant. It was the standard writing
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material of the ancient Mediterranean, but it is highly
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fragile and degrades easily. So falls apart, right?
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A codex, like Codex Vaticanus is a book made of vellum or animal
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skin, which is much more durable.
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When we talk about minuscules, we are referring to the style of
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handwriting. Handwriting styles.
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Got it. Yeah, the earliest copies were
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written in unscholes, which are large capital letters with no
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spaces between the words. Minuscules are manuscripts
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written in a smaller cursive like script that developed
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later, allowing scribes to write faster and fit more text on a
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page. I appreciate that clarification.
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Now I am looking at this logically.
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If the absolute oldest manuscripts we possess, this
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Papyrus 46 and Codex Vaticanus omit the city name, shouldn't we
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automatically trust them? Doesn't older always be more
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accurate since they are closer in time to the original author?
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That is a very common logical assumption, but it is
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incomplete. To understand ancient manuscript
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survival, we have to talk about geography and climate.
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The Alexandrian manuscripts, like the ones omitting the city,
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come from Egypt. OK, Egypt has an incredibly
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arid, dry climate. That dry sand acted as a perfect
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preservative for fragile papyrus over thousands of years.
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Conversely, manuscripts in damp climates like Greece, Italy or
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Asia Minor simply rotted away. Oh.
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Wow, so an older manuscript from Egypt survived primarily because
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of the weather, not necessarily because it was the those
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pristine or universally accepted version of the text.
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That is the core issue. A newer manuscript from a
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different region, say a 9th century minuscule from the
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Byzantine family, might be a direct, highly faithful copy of
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a 1st century manuscript that has long since turned to dust
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due to humidity. That makes total sense.
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You cannot way the age of the physical parchment in isolation.
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You have to evaluate the geographical spread and the
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genealogical families of the texts.
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We can think of it like genetic ancestry testing, right?
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If a specific genetic trait appears in widely separated
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branches of a family tree, say cousins living in totally
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different continents, it is highly likely that trait comes
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from the original shared ancestor.
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Right. Exactly.
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I mean precisely. Even if the oldest surviving
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grandparent does not possess that trait, the widespread
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distribution across different branches points back to the
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source. That analogy perfectly
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illustrates textual families, and the geographical spread
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regarding an Ephesus is staggering.
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The omission is strictly limited to the Alexandrian text type,
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specifically the localized region of Egypt, but the
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inclusion of the words in Ephesus is geographically vast.
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How vast are we talking? The inclusion covers all the
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major text families across the ancient world.
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You find it in later Alexandrian manuscripts like Codex
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Alexandranus from the 5th century.
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You find it in early Coptic and Vulgate versions.
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So it's everywhere. Yes, you find it solidly in the
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Western manuscripts which originated around Rome and North
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Africa, including Codex Claremontanus and Old Latin
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translations. And you find it universally in
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the Byzantine manuscripts from the East, along with Syriac and
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Gothic translations. Additionally, a wide array of
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early Church Fathers, including Chrysostom, Jerome, and
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Pelegius, utilized texts that included in Ephesus.
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Relying on just a few early manuscripts from one specific
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dry region of Egypt seems highly improbable when the rest of the
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ancient world spanning multiple text families, languages and
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continents included the words in Ephesus.
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It is like finding 3 typos in the first run of a newspaper
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printed in one city, while millions of other copies
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distributed across the globe have the correct spelling.
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Furthermore, there is an interesting detail even within
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the Egyptian texts. The earliest manuscripts that
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omit the words and Ephesus within the actual sentence still
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feature the superscription at the top of the scroll to the
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Ephesians. Also the title is there.
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Yes, from the earliest recorded history, this document was known
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as the Ephesian Letter. The source material also brings
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up a weird historical footnote about a man named Marcion.
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Tertullian, who was another early church father, noted that
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Marcian supplied the phrase to the Laodiceans instead of
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Ephesians. Marcian is a notorious figure in
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early church history. He was a second century figure
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who heavily edited biblical texts to fit his own specific
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non orthodox theology. The bit of a rogue editor, then.
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You could say that it remains heavily debated whether Marcian
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actively altered a text that originally said Ephesus to, say,
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Laoditia, or if his personal copy happened to be blank and he
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filled it in, or if Tertullian was simply arguing with him
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about the superscription right. Regardless of Marcion's
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motivations, the external manuscript evidence heavily
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favors the inclusion of in Ephesus due to the overwhelming
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geographical and genealogical distribution despite the raw age
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of those few Egyptian papyri. The physical evidence points
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toward inclusion, but we have another layer of evidence to
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examine. We need to look at the internal
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evidence. This involves studying the
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grammatical logic of the Greek language, and understanding the
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psychology of ancient scribes is like trying to solve a crime by
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profiling the behavior of the copyists.
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Scholars utilize 2 main tools for this transcriptional
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probabilities and intrinsic probabilities.
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Transcriptional probability analyzes the habitual behavior
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of scribes now. So.
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Generally speaking, scribes tended to add words to clarify a
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difficult sentence rather than delete words.
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Therefore, shorter and more difficult readings are often
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preferred by scholars working under the assumption that a
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later scribe tried to fix an awkward sentence by making it
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longer and smoother. If that rule holds true, you
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would argue for the omission. The shorter reading, the one
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without an Ephesus is definitely the harder, more awkward
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reading. It would argue for the omission,
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except for an overriding principle known as Griesbach's
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rule. Johann Grusbach was an 18th
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century textual critic. He established that if the
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shorter reading utterly lacks sense, or if it breaks the
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author's known grammatical style, then the longer reading
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must be preferred. You do not choose a reading that
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produces absolute gibberish just because it happens to be
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shorter. Wait, hold on.
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If scribes usually add words to fix things, why wouldn't a
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scribe see a grammatical mess in his copy and just invent the
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words in Ephesus to fix it? Why do scholars assume the
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difficult reading is the wrong one here, rather than an
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original difficult reading that ascribes smoothed over?
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That is an excellent question. The answer lies an intrinsic
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probability, which means looking at the author's consistent
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grammatical habits. We have a large sample size of
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Paul's letters. Taking an emphasis out of this
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specific sentence creates massive, insurmountable
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grammatical difficulties in Greek.
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Really, how bad is it? Well, Paul has a standard,
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highly consistent grammatical style for his greetings.
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He regularly places the city name in the date of case right
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after the participle to those who are.
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Let us do another quick terminology check.
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Yeah. What is the date of case and
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what is a participle? Sure.
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In Greek, nouns change their endings depending on how they
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function in the sentence. The date of case is generally
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used to show the recipient of an action or the location of
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something. It is the grammatical equivalent
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of saying to or in. OK, got.
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It a participle is a verbal adjective like running or being.
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In Paul's greetings, he uses the participle of those who are and
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follows it immediately with a location in the date of case.
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We see this exact identical structure in Romans 1.7 and
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Philippians 1.1 could. You give an example of those.
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He writes to all those in Rome who are loved by God and to all
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the Saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi.
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The grammar demands a location. So if you RIP the city location
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out of Ephesians 1.1, the entire sentence structure collapses.
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The translation would literally read to the Saints who are that
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is believers in Christ Jesus. It is incredibly.
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Awkward. It really is.
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The participle who are is left hanging with no location.
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It feels like a piece of the puzzle is entirely missing.
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Because the sentence is virtually unreadable without a
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location, some scholars proposed what is known as the encyclical
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letter theory. This theory suggests that Paul
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intentionally left a blank space in the original document.
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A blank space, yeah. The idea is that this was a
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circular letter meant to be carried by his trusted envoy,
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Taikikus. Taikikus would travel along the
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Roman roads from town to town, stand before different
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congregations, and literally fill in the blank with the local
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city name as he read it aloud. I have always found this theory
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fascinating. It is like playing a game of
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ancient Mad Libs. It assumes Paul wrote a generic
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form letter with a space to pencil and a local address to
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the Saints who are in in search your city.
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All right, exactly. But as we look closer, there are
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severe flaws in this logic. If it was a circular letter
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meant for multiple cities across Asia Minor, where is the
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physical evidence to support that?
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That is the fatal flaw. We should have manuscript copies
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addressed to multiple different cities.
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We should have a copy saying in Smyrna or in Pergamum, but we
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only possess manuscripts that say in Ephesus.
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Every single manuscript that has a city named in that verse names
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Ephesus and nowhere else. Furthermore, Paul never utilized
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this form letter method in any of his other writings.
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He did not write generic, one-size-fits-all letters.
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His letters are always highly specific to the communities he
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is addressing. When you look physically at the
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surviving papyri, no extant manuscript contains a literal
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blank space. No manuscript has the Greek
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preposition in just floating on the parchment without a city
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attached to it. That really pokes a hole in that
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theory. It does.
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The physical and textual evidence simply does not support
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the encyclical theory. The internal evidence, both the
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habits of Scribes and the intrinsic grammar of Paul,
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firmly supports that the text originally included in Ephesus.
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So it was just a mistake. Yeah, the omission found in
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those few Egyptian manuscripts was almost certainly an
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accidental scribal error, perhaps a copyist skipping a
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line or misreading A faded source document that
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subsequently got passed down locally within that specific
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Egyptian region. The sheer weight of the evidence
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settles the destination, the letters going to the Ephesian
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church. This brings us to the greeting
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itself in verse 2. Grace to you and peace from God
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our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Right? On the surface, to a modern ear,
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it sounds like standard polite fluff.
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It feels like the 1st century equivalent of starting an e-mail
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with. I hope this e-mail finds you
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well. It might sound routine or
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formulaic to us today, but evaluating the cultural context
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of the 1st century reveals a highly calculated, deeply
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intentional theological statement.
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Well, I shouldn't say deeply, but a very intentional
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theological statement. Paul is doing something
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revolutionary with his language here.
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He uses this exact same phrasing consistently across his letters
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to the Romans, the Corinthians, the Galatians, and the
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Philippians. He is actively standardizing
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this greeting for the Christian churches, and to establish this
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new standard, he had to consciously reject the existing
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cultural norms of his day. Let us examine the Greek norm
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first. In the Greco Roman world, after
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stating the name of the writer and the recipient, a standard
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letter opened with the word rejoice, the Greek word cherain.
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We see this convention all over the ancient world.
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Even within the biblical text we see it used.
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The Roman official Claudius Lysias uses it in Acts 23.
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The Jerusalem Council used it in their official letter in Acts
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15. James used it to open his
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epistle. Paul as a highly educated Roman
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citizen and addedly knew this standard formula.
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So if Paul is writing to a Gentile audience in a major
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Greco Roman city like Ephesus. How does he say hello?
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Does he use their standard Greek greeting to build rapport?
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He deliberately discards it. He completely throws out
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terrain. He also consciously discards the
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Jewish norm. What was the Jewish norm?
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The standard Jewish greeting, strongly rooted in the synagogue
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was mercy and peace. We see this formulation in the
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book of Jude and heavily in non canonical Jewish texts like the
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Book of Jubilees and the Apocalypse of Baruch.
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Paul occasionally utilized mercy in his personal pastoral letters
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to Timothy, but it was not his standard greeting for the
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gathered churches. He drops the standard Greek
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rejoice and he drops the standard Jewish mercy in peace.
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It is comparable to a modern business e-mail abandoning the
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generic devil tentacle base to whom it may concern in favor of
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a highly specific customized blessing that immediately
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establishes a totally new community identity for the
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reader. He is inventing a new
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vocabulary. He merges Greek and Semitic
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concepts to forge a completely distinct Christian vocabulary.
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He takes the Greek concept of grace and the Semitic concept of
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peace, and he entirely redefines them around the historical event
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of the cross. Let us look at grace first.
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The Greek word he uses is chorus.
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Karis is a monumental word in the New Testament.
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The source text notes it appears 155 times in the New Testament,
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100 times in Paul's letters alone, and 12 times just in this
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short letter to the Ephesians. It functions as the Greek
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translation of the Hebrew word hen.
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In the Hebrew concept of hen means unmerited or undeserved
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favor, but Paul packs karis with highly specific historical
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theological meaning. For Paul, grace is the
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undeserved favor of God that provides salvation for sinners
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specifically through Christ's sacrificial death.
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That's a lot of weight for one word.
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Yes, when Paul uses charis in this greeting, a verb to be is
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implied in the Greek grammar. He is stating may grace be to
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you. It is an active, dynamic
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blessing. The commentary insists this is
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not a religious cliche. It is the entire gospel message
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distilled into a single word. The gospel in one word.
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That is a brilliant summary. And then he pairs this concept
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of grace with peace. He uses the Greek word Irene,
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which is translating the vast Hebrew concept of Shalom.
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I want to spend some time here because Shalom is so much
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broader than our modern English definition of peace.
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It is significantly broader. In modern English, peace usually
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just means the absence of conflict.
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If two countries are not actively shooting at each other,
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we say they are at peace. But in the Hebrew Scriptures,
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Shalom devotes well-being in the broadest possible sense.
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How proud. It is used to describe material
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prosperity, physical health, peaceful sleep, harmony between
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nations, and in the end, eschatological salvation.
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It is a holistic, comprehensive state of restored well-being.
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And we have to contrast this with the environment the
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Ephesians were actually living in.
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They lived in the Pax Romana, the Roman peace.
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The contrast is stark. The Pax Romana was a peace
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achieved through brutal military subjugation.
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The Romans conquered surrounding nations, crushed rebellions with
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terrifying violence, including crucifixion, and enforced a lack
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of conflict through absolute control.
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The Roman message was submit to the Emperor and you will have
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peace. So Paul takes this concept of
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Shalom and presents it to a culture living under the Pax
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Romana. He is telling them that true
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holistic well-being does not come from the tip of a Roman
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spear, and it does not come from Caesar.
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It comes from the unmerited favor of the God who sent a
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crucified Savior. The theological engineering here
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is brilliant. Paul establishes a new
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theological reality right in the opening sentence.
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He pairs grace, the undeserved rescue, the unmerited favor that
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pulls you out of the wreckage, with peace, the holistic,
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restored, flourishing state of the rescued individual.
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It sets the entire agenda for the letter.
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You cannot experience the true peace of God without first
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receiving the unmerited grace of God.
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Grace is the root cause and peace is the resulting fruit.
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It is a totally new vocabulary designed for a totally new
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community. He's not just saying hello, He
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is summarizing their entire existence and identity in
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Christ. Looking back at the progression
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of our discussion today, we have covered an enormous amount of
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ground. We trace the inseparable fusion
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of the name Jesus Christ, proving that in Paul's mind, you
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cannot separate the historical man from the theological
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rescuer. We solved the textual mystery of
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the Ephesian destination. We examined how the vast
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geographical spread of the manuscripts across the ancient
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world, combined with the internal grammatical logic of
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the Greek language, heavily outweighs the localized omission
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found in a handful of older Egyptian papyri.
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And we impact the theological weight of a simple grace and
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peace greeting, watching Paul forge a new identity for his
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readers by redefining cultural terms around the cross.
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For you, the listener, I hope this deep dive demonstrates that
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every single word in these historical documents carries
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specific intention and purpose. Nothing is wasted.
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The precision is there, even if it requires digging through the
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history to see it. As a final thought, I want to
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return to a specific detail from the commentary regarding that
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word grace. The text noted that Grace Karras
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is not exclusively about unmerited favor for initial
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salvation. It also denotes active
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enablement for the believer. Enablement.
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Yes, we frequently think of grace purely as a pardon for
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past wrongs, a wiping of the slate.
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But if grace is also an active daily enablement, a constant
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supply of energy rather than just a cancelled debt, how might
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viewing grace as ongoing fuel alter the way you face
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tomorrow's obstacles? That changes the perspective
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entirely. It means the tank is never
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empty. Coming back to where we started,
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this ancient text is not a broken X-ray machine giving us a
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murky picture. It is an incredibly high
25:38
resolution scan. You just have to know how to
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read the layers. Every layer reveals something
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intentional. Thanks for joining us for this
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deep dive on reformed thinking. Keep reading, keep questioning,
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and keep looking closely at the details.