A Cosmic Church, Not Just a Local One

Ephesians opens with one of the longest single sentences in the New Testament in its original Greek, a soaring, liturgical blessing that runs from verse 3 to verse 14 without pause, praising God for a plan "set forth in Christ" to unite all things in heaven and on earth. Where Paul's undisputed letters usually address a local congregation's specific problems, Ephesians speaks about the church in almost cosmic terms, as a single body spanning Jew and Gentile, reconciled by Christ who has broken down "the dividing wall of hostility" between them, and as a mystery hidden for ages and now revealed. The second half turns practical, with instruction on household relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, and masters and enslaved people, framed throughout by the command to be "subject to one another," and closes with the famous image of the "armor of God," the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, standing firm against spiritual rather than earthly enemies. The letter is unusually impersonal for Paul: it lacks the specific greetings, local disputes, and personal news that fill even his shortest undisputed letters, addressing its readers instead as though they were any church rather than one Paul had spent three years building in person.