It should be easy to recognize the sender and recipient. This is especially true when writing on a scroll. If the sender is at the end of the letter, you would have to unroll the entire roll to find the sender. This seems cumbersome. In the period in which the New Testament is set, the sender and recipient were therefore placed right at the beginning of the letter:

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to all the saints who are also believers in Christ Jesus.”
Eph 1:1

It has already been pointed out in a previous article that the words “in Ephesus” were a later addition. The letter was probably written as a general circular letter to various churches and was not addressed specifically to the church in Ephesus. Therefore, the correct target group is simply “to all the saints who are also believers in Christ Jesus“.

Paul

The apostle does not write with his Hebrew name “Saul”, but with the Greek variant “Paul”, which the Acts of the Apostles introduces at the beginning of his ministry (Acts 13:2, cf. Acts 13:9). This harmonizes with the fact that as an apostle to the nations (Rom 11:13) he was on his way to the nations, or non-Israeli peoples. He had been given a task for this.

The name Paul comes etymologically from the word for “pause”, “pause”, “stop” or “cease” (Greek pauō). The Greek pauō is used in roughly the same chapter: “that I may not cease to give thanks for you and to make mention of you in my prayers” (Eph 1:16). Some Bible teachers have pointed out that this could have to do with Paul’s commission and the time in which, on the one hand, today’s church is called out, but on the other hand, God’s ways with Israel are temporarily “paused” or “stopped”. The apostle writes something like this in Romans 9-11.

Paul’s special mission could not be compared with anything that Jesus or the 12 apostles had proclaimed. Recognizing the difference is a key to a better understanding of the New Testament. Let’s listen to how he then describes his task.

Apostles of Christ Jesus by the will of God

Apostle

Paul was an “apostle”, i.e. a “messenger”. He was a messenger of Christ Jesus and by the will of God. As an apostle, he is in line with the 12 apostles, which corresponds to a certain authority. However, this authority is not to be sought in Paul himself, but in the one who sent him out: Christ Jesus.

Paul

In the New Testament, it is primarily Paul who links the function “Christ” with the name “Jesus” (cf. Mt 1:16). He uses both the order “Jesus Christ” and “Christ Jesus”. Outside of Paul’s letters, the phrase “Christ Jesus” occurs only a few times in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, while “Jesus Christ” is found somewhat more frequently in other texts of the New Testament and still occurs after Paul’s letters.

Christ Jesus

The link denotes the Jesus to which reference is made. Which Jesus? “Whom they call Christ!”. It is a more precise designation and specification. The name Jesus is linked to a task. This is how he was recognized in Israel.

“And behold, there was a man named Simeon in Jerusalem; this man was righteous and reverent. He looked out for the promise of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. Now he had been instructed by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death until he had seen the Lord’s Christ.”
Luk 2:25-26, cf. Mt 27:22

The word Christ corresponds to the Hebrew Messiah, which means anointed one. In the Tenach, the Old Testament, kings, priests and prophets were “anointed” for their task. That’s how you read:

“How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, Him who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the adversary, for God was with Him.”
Acts 10:38

“The Spirit of my Lord is upon me, wherefore he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to send away the afflicted with deliverance, and to proclaim a acceptable year of the Lord (cf. Isa 61:1-2).”
Luke 4:18-19

“After God spoke many times and in many ways to the fathers through the prophets in ancient times, in the last of these days He speaks to us in the Son, whom He has made ransom holder of all things and through whom He also made the eons. [ … ] Therefore God, your God, anoints you with oil of gladness: far above your associates (Ps 45:7-8).”
Heb 1:1-9

As can be seen from the first quote, literal oil is not a prerequisite. Oil only has an illustrative function. It is essentially about spirit and strength. That is what characterized Jesus. That makes Him the Christ. Incidentally, you don’t anoint yourself. As can be seen from the quotations, Jesus was anointed by others, especially by God.

Development of the message

In a Jewish context, following the promises of the prophets, an anointed one, a Messiah, was to establish the messianic kingdom. The prophet Daniel already spoke of a kingdom that would one day be established by God on earth:

“And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will not be destroyed forever, and whose dominion will not be left to any other people; it will crush and destroy all those kingdoms, but will itself endure forever.”
Dan 2:44

“And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the highest places. His kingdom is an eternal kingdom, and all rulers will serve and obey him.”
Dan 7:27

It is the God of heaven (Dan 2:44) who will do this under the whole heaven (Dan 7:27), i.e. on the whole earth. When Daniel wrote this down, the kingdom was still a long way off. However, when Jesus enters the scene, Matthew writes that the “kingdom of heaven” has now “come near” (Mt 4:17). For Jewish listeners at the time, this was a crystal-clear reference to the promises in the book of Daniel. This is the messianic expectation described by Isaiah as follows:

“The increase of dominion and peace will have no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and uphold it by judgment and by righteousness, from now until eternity. The zeal of Yahweh of hosts will do this.”
Isa 9:7

However, this idea is not to be found in Paul. Paul lives after the cross and has a task for the nations (Eph 3:1-11), whereas in the Gospels Jesus explicitly addressed only Israel (Mt 15:24; Rom 15:8). Paul also says later that if we knew Jesus according to the flesh, i.e. from the time of the Gospels, we no longer know him in the same way (2 Corinthians 5:16). This is not a break with the Jesus of the Gospels, but a break with the time of the Gospels and the message that was proclaimed in them.

A lot has changed. The cross and resurrection took place, and Paul was called as the 13th apostle with a previously unknown gospel, which he called “my gospel” (Rom 16:25-26). These differences should make it clear that we should not simply mix texts from the Gospels with quotations from Paul’s letters, but rather pay careful attention to the differences.

Christ or Messiah?

The concept of Christ never had the same ring for believers in the nations, who did not expect a messianic kingdom, as the word “Messiah” had for Jewish ears. Nevertheless, Paul used this term, but the context and therefore the meaning was slightly different. He never simply spoke of “Jesus” in Ephesians, but of “Christ Jesus” (Eph 1:1), “Lord Jesus” (Eph 1:15), or often also of “the Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:2). Likewise, the apostle regularly speaks of “the Christ” (Eph 1:10) and many things that we have “in Christ” (Eph 1:3ff). This is unknown in the Gospels, for example.

So none of these places are about a messianic kingdom on earth, of which the prophets had spoken. Jesus proclaimed a “gospel of the kingdom” (Mt 4:23), but this was postponed after the resurrection (Acts 1:6-8). The apostles all became witnesses of the resurrection after the ascension (Acts 1:21-22; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4). Therefore, as mentioned above, Paul could insist that we should no longer know Jesus according to the flesh. The change in the message becomes visible through names such as “Christ Jesus”. The term first appears in Acts 3:20, i.e. after the Gospels.

Apostle by the will of God

Paul was not a would-be evangelist. He did not seek to be in the limelight. He was a Jewish intellectual with a good pedigree and the best education (Phil 3:4-6). However, the apostle was not a self-appointed guru. Paul was an apostle “by the will of God”. He has described his career elsewhere as follows:

“But when it seemed good to God (who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by His grace) to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him as the gospel to the nations, I did not immediately submit it to flesh and blood.”
Gal 1:15-17

One could argue that Paul came up with this himself. One could think of a self-presentation. However, he emphasizes here, as in other places, that it was by grace. Paul does not boast in himself, but he boasts in his God, through his Lord. God had “called him by his grace”. God calls. This is how Paul experienced it. So he sets out on his journey, just as Abram once set out on his journey through faith. It wasn’t self-righteousness along the lines of “said it himself, therefore done!”, but it was the experience of God’s work, after which he could say “heard, done!”.

The statement “according to the will of God” could also refer to the time “when it seemed good to God to reveal his Son in me”, as it says in Galatians. The “will of God” then corresponds to His work in time, i.e. God’s decision to bring about something through this Paul. This is also echoed later in the letter when Paul writes:

“For if you have heard of the administration of God’s grace which has been given to me for you, since by a revelation the mystery has been made known to me.”
Eph 3:2-3

Paul to all the saints who are also believers in Christ Jesus

This is about the recipient. Paul is addressing “saints who are also believers in Christ Jesus”. This is not an exclusion criterion, as if there could be saints who are not believers in Christ Jesus, but all believers are also called saints and all saints are believers “in Christ Jesus”. The term “saint” for believers can be found in many places.

What connects writers and recipients

In the first verse of Ephesians, the term “Christ Jesus” appears twice. On the one hand, Paul says that he is an “apostle of Christ Jesus” and immediately afterwards he addresses the “saints who are also believers in Christ Jesus” (Eph 1:1). In both cases, it’s about a relationship. On the one hand of Paul as an “apostle”, on the other the people of the churches, who are “saints, also believers”. They are placed in relation to “Christ Jesus”. Whatever characterizes these people and also Paul himself, he places in this letter in a very specific relation to “Christ Jesus”. That is what connects us here in this letter. It is this aspect that describes the outlook and insight. The reason that Paul, as an apostle, can write this letter is because it is important for the recipients.

The term “Christ Jesus” is therefore not just a personal designation, but stands for everything that is proclaimed, believed and shared here. It is about the Jesus who is called Christ, but also about more than that. It is about the reality after the cross, about the gospel of grace and about the fact that the nations are now “in the Spirit joint lot holders and a joint body and joint partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus” (Eph 3:6), i.e. together with the believers from Israel. That is far more than was ever envisaged in the Gospels. However, it is also more than was explained in the earlier letter to the Romans.

When Paul begins with the term “Christ Jesus” in Ephesians, it is an introduction to a very broad and new understanding. What takes place before our eyes is a focus on a specific message. When we get to know this message in Ephesians, we can also recognize that this message is unique and was previously unknown.

Who is in Christ Jesus

The saints are also believers in Christ Jesus. Thus saints (set apart) and believers (trusting) are one and the same and receive these things because they are “in Christ”. The people there and we do not have these designations as qualities of our own actions, but receive them as a result because we are “in Christ”. Only in Christ do these designations have a reason and an opinion. Those who want to be “holy” and “faithful” themselves may want to build on their own achievements. Paul places the church in dependence on Christ. What we have, we have “in Him”. What is in Christ is with Him and safe there. We do not have to perform, but we trust that everything in Him is sufficient. This frees us from our own efforts and thus corresponds to the nature of grace, a message with which Paul was specifically concerned (Eph 3:1-2).