Ephesians 1:1-2 (NIV)
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul begins his letter to the Ephesian Church with the simple declaration that he is an apostle of Christ Jesus. Apostle is a Greek word that means “sent one”. It was often used of a royal official who had been given a message to deliver or a mission to perform on their behalf.
Paul had both a message and a mission. When he was stopped in his tracks outside the city of Damascus, diverted from his murderous mission against the Christians in the city, acting as an apostle, an emissary, of the Jewish leadership, he was also miraculously saved (Acts 9:1-20). Over the next three days, Jesus revealed to him his new calling. He was now an emissary, an apostle, of the Messiah, with the message of the gospel to take to both Jews and gentiles, kings and peasants (Acts 9:15, 22:21, 26:15-19), and the mission of making disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20).
Paul was very clear that he had not chosen this office of his own accord. Instead, he had been called to it, assigned to it by God Himself. And he had been faithful to that calling ever since, as the Ephesian Christians knew, because he had brought the gospel to them.
This letter is addressed to “the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus”. This did not mean that Paul was writing to a small, elite subset of the Ephesian Christians, the faithful saints, as opposed to the larger percentage that might be considered just “normal” Christians. There was no two-tiered system of Christianity in the early Church. Instead, every disciple of Jesus was understood to be a saint, a holy one, a person who had received Jesus as their Savior and Lord, and had thus been transformed into a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), and set apart as God’s people. Because of that, the words Christian, disciple, and saint, were virtually synonymous. This letter was simply intended for the Christians, the saints, who lived, worked and worshiped in Ephesus.
Paul begins the body of the letter by blessing the Ephesians with grace, that is favor and blessing, and peace, both coming directly from God the Father, and from Jesus. This grace and peace were assumed to be operative in the Christians in Ephesus, so Paul was not praying for something that they lacked, as much as he was reminding them of what they already had, and requesting that both facets of God’s love and favor would continue to be powerfully present in their lives.
Father, it is kind of amazing how much Paul packed into these three small phrases. And it all centers on You! He was faithful to his calling as an apostle because that calling came from You. The Church in Ephesus, like all Churches, was composed of living saints because You had saved those people from their sins and had transformed them. And the only real source of grace and peace is You. Jesus gave His disciples a peace that was completely unlike the peace that the world delivers (John 14:27), not mere lack of conflict, but a restored relationship with You that makes everything else work out right, and that opens the door to every unimaginable blessing. What a great reminder! Thank you, Lord! Amen.