Lights On · Study 1 of 20

Ephesians, twice a week: Wednesdays and Fridays

Welcome to Ephesus

Ephesians is mail to small house churches living in the shadow of a famous temple.

Acts 19:23–41 · Ephesians 1:1–2; 6:21–22 · CEB

Pastor Andrew StrombeckWednesday, October 28, 20267-minute read

The short version

If you only have a minute.

Ephesus was a huge, proud city devoted to the goddess Artemis. Her temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
Paul spent about three years there, and small churches meeting in homes grew up there.
Ephesians was written to be read out loud to those churches. Almost every "you" in it means "you all."

Read it slowly

Acts 19:25–28

25 He called a meeting with these craftspeople and others working in related trades and said, "Friends, you know that we make an easy living from this business.
26 And you can see and hear that this Paul has convinced and misled a lot of people, not only in Ephesus but also throughout most of the province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands aren't really gods.
27 This poses a danger not only by discrediting our trade but also by completely dishonoring the great goddess Artemis. The whole province of Asia—indeed, the entire civilized world—worships her, but her splendor will soon be extinguished."
28 Once they heard this, they were beside themselves with anger and began to shout, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!"

Common English Bible; highlight added. Read all of Acts 19 →

The study

Before we read the letter, stand in the city

01 · Two hours of shouting

Picture the city's outdoor theater, packed with people. A silversmith stirred up his fellow craftsmen, and now the whole city is in an uproar. Most of the crowd "didn't know why they had gathered." Then a Jewish man tries to speak, and when they realize he's a Jew, they all shout in unison: "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" Acts says it "continued for about two hours."

Two hours of the same five words.

Ephesus was the capital of the Roman province of Asia, a major port on the west coast of what is now Turkey, with roads running inland. By some estimates 200,000 to 250,000 people lived in and around it.²

And Artemis was everywhere. Worshipers carried her statues through the streets in procession. People called her "Queen of Heaven," "Lord" and "Savior."³ The emperor was honored there too, and plenty of other gods.⁴ But everyone knew this was Artemis's city (Acts 19:35).

So carry one question into this letter. In a city that could shout for two hours for its goddess, how does a small group of believers meeting in homes come to believe that Jesus is Lord?

02 · A man with two names

It's easy to assume that God changed Saul's name to Paul, the way he changed Abram to Abraham and Jacob to Israel. He didn't. Acts calls him "Saul, also known as Paul" (13:9). Saul is his Jewish name. Paul is his Roman name. He lived in both worlds.

He could say, "With respect to observing the Law, I'm a Pharisee" (Philippians 3:5). He trained under Gamaliel, a teacher of the Law "well-respected by all the people" (Acts 22:3; 5:34). He was also a Roman citizen: "I'm a citizen by birth" (Acts 22:28).

I think that's part of why God called him. Ephesians is about Jews and Gentiles becoming one family, "parts of the same body" (3:6). Who better to write that than a man who carried both worlds in his own name?

Paul knew Ephesus well. He spent three months in the synagogue, then two years teaching every day in the lecture hall of a man named Tyrannus (Acts 19:8–10). Later he reminded the church's leaders, "for three years I constantly and tearfully warned each one of you" (Acts 20:31). He had cried over these people. But when he writes this letter, he can't come back. He's a prisoner, most likely in Rome.⁶ He calls himself "an ambassador in chains" (6:20).

03 · Mail for many tables

Paul spent about three years with these people, yet this letter has almost no greetings. Compare Romans. Paul had never been to Rome (Romans 1:13), and he ends that letter with a long list of names (Romans 16). Part of that is how well he knew them. But there's another reason.

Look at the first verse. Some of the oldest copies of Ephesians leave out the words "in Ephesus." Many scholars think that's because the letter was meant for more than one church. Ephesus was the hub, with roads running out to smaller towns where churches had likely begun.⁸ Paul did send letters around on purpose. He tells the Colossians to trade letters with the church in Laodicea (Colossians 4:16). The man he sends with this letter, Tychicus, "my loved brother and faithful servant of the Lord" (6:21), is the same man he sends to Colossae (Colossians 4:7–8). Apart from Paul himself and Jesus, Tychicus is the only person named in the letter. Either way, it was written to be read out loud to a room full of people.⁹

And almost every "you" in Ephesians is plural.¹⁰ English hides that. "Y'all" would actually help. For a long time I read the "you"s in the armor-of-God passage in chapter 6 as if every one of them was about me. They're about us.

That's where our question starts to turn. Paul's answer to a city shouting for Artemis isn't a bigger temple or a louder crowd. It's a prayer. He prays that these small house churches will see "the overwhelming greatness of God's power that is working among us believers." That's the power that raised Jesus and put him "far above every ruler and authority and power and angelic power (dominion)" (1:19–21). Artemis's temple stood outside the city walls.¹¹ God's power is at work among the people in the room.

The roads out of Ephesus

Tychicus's route (likely)

Ephesus was the hub. A letter read here could travel the roads to churches across the province.

Schematic; roads simplified and spacing expanded for readability. Town positions checked against Cities of Asia (New Testament), BcResources, 2014, pp. 1–2. The dashed journey is an illustration of the likely route, not a documented itinerary.

Try this week

Before Friday, when you sit down with a cup of coffee, read all of Ephesians in one sitting. It takes less than half an hour. Whenever you see the word "you," say "you all" and picture a room full of people.

Don't stop to figure it all out. Read it the way those first churches heard it, listening for the big picture.

Think it over

For you, or for your table

On your own, with your family, or with a friend over coffee.

Read Acts 19:25–28 again. What was Demetrius really worried about? What does that tell you about the city these believers lived in?
Ephesus had Artemis. What does our town treat as the power that decides how life goes, even if nobody calls it a god?
Who could you read Ephesians with over the next few weeks?

The city shouted for two hours.

Later, a prisoner sent a letter to the small churches of that same city, to be read out loud in their homes. Nearly two thousand years later, we are still reading it.

So come and sit with them. Let's read it together.

A prayer

God of every city, you were at work in Ephesus while the crowds were shouting for someone else. Open our ears to hear this letter the way they heard it: together, out loud, as your people. Show us your power at work among us. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Notes

Darrell L. Bock, Ephesians, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 10 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019), introduction; Clinton E. Arnold, Ephesians, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), introduction ("The Religious Environment of Ephesus").↩
Bock, Ephesians, introduction; Arnold, Ephesians, introduction ("Ephesus: The Metropolis of Asia"). Arnold doubts that this many people lived inside the city walls, so the figure includes the area around the city.↩
Arnold, Ephesians, introduction ("The Religious Environment of Ephesus").↩
Bock, Ephesians, introduction.↩
Arnold, Ephesians, introduction ("The Religious Environment of Ephesus"); Bock, Ephesians, introduction.↩
Arnold, Ephesians, introduction ("The Situation of the Author and the Date of the Letter"). Some scholars suggest Caesarea or Ephesus instead.↩
Arnold, Ephesians, introduction ("Magic and Folk Belief").↩
Bock, Ephesians, introduction; Arnold, Ephesians, introduction ("Destination"), who notes that most scholars now regard Ephesians as a circular letter. Arnold himself thinks "in Ephesus" was original and that the letter went round the many house churches in and around the city.↩
George Lyons, "Ephesians," in Ephesians/Colossians/Philemon, New Beacon Bible Commentary (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 2019), introduction.↩
Lyons, "Ephesians," on 1:2, where the "you" means the readers as a group. The Greek shows two singular exceptions: a line probably from an early Christian hymn (5:14; see Lyons on 5:19) and a quoted commandment (6:2–3).↩
Arnold, Ephesians, introduction ("The Religious Environment of Ephesus").↩
The NASB note on Ephesians 1:1; Arnold, Ephesians, introduction ("Destination").↩

Go deeper

Where this came from

Sources behind this study

Clinton E. Arnold, Ephesians, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010)
Darrell L. Bock, Ephesians, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 10 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019)
George Lyons, "Ephesians," in Ephesians/Colossians/Philemon, New Beacon Bible Commentary (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 2019)

Who wrote Ephesians?

The letter names Paul, and the church has received it as his since the second century. Most modern scholars think a later follower of Paul wrote it in his name, though a growing number defend Paul's authorship. George Lyons's New Beacon commentary lays out both sides fairly.