- Chapters
- 6
- Verses
- 0
- Where it sits
- The Letters of Paul
What it is
Unusual among Paul’s letters in having no local crisis to solve. It is calm, liturgical in its rhythms, and concerned with one enormous idea: that God is gathering everything in heaven and on earth into one under Christ, and that the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile into a single body is the visible proof of it.
The earliest manuscripts do not have the words in Ephesus in the first verse, which is part of why many think it was written to circulate among several churches in Asia rather than to one.
Known for
2:8–10. 5:21–33, on marriage. 6:10–17, the armour of God.
A note for Orthodox readers
Ephesians 5:20–33 is the epistle at the Orthodox marriage service, where marriage is set out as an icon of Christ and the Church. There is a live pastoral discussion among Orthodox writers about whether verse 21 — submitting to one another — should govern how the rest of the passage is heard. That is a discussion, not a doctrinal dispute.
Where it sits
Disputed. The grounds are worth knowing: very heavy verbal overlap with Colossians, long sentences unlike Paul’s usual Greek, a doctrine of the Church that is universal rather than local, and the uncertainty over the address. Many who doubt Pauline authorship still date it before AD 90. The Orthodox Church receives it as Scripture and reads it as Paul’s in the Liturgy.
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