N. T. Wright - Ephesians

T he most successful tourist attraction to appear in London in recent years is the London Eye. From a distance it looks like a giant Ferris wheel, but this is no fun-fair ride. For a start, its far, far bigger: it rises to 450 feet above the River Thames. Its thirty-two capsules can each hold twenty people, and it takes them half an hour to rotate the full circle. Plenty of time to have a wonderful view of all central London, with its historic buildings and palaces, its cathedrals and abbeys, its parks and gardens, with Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament in the foreground. The London Eye is, in fact, not only a wonderful sight in itself, visible from many points in the capital. It is the place from which you can get the best possible view of London. To do any better, youd have to go up in an airplane, and indeed it is operated and run by one of the airline companies.

The letter to the Ephesians stands in relation to the rest of Pauls letters rather like the London Eye does to the rest of the capital. It isnt the longest or fullest of his writing, but it offers a breathtaking view of the entire landscape. From here, as the wheel turns, you get a birds-eye view of one theme after another within early Christian reflection: God, the world, Jesus, the church, the means of salvation, Christian behavior, marriage and the family, and spiritual warfare. Like someone used to strolling around London and now suddenly able to see familiar places from unfamiliar anglesand to see more easily how they relate to each other within the city as a wholethe reader who comes to Ephesians after reading the rest of Paul will get a new angle on the way in which his thinking holds together.

This letter was originally intended as a circular to various churches in the Ephesus area. It was written around A.D. 60-62 while Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, was in a Roman prison. (For an account of how Saul of Tarsus became Paul, a believer in Jesus the Messiah, read Acts 9:1-31.) A copy of this letter might well have remained in the possession of the church in Ephesus, and someone later on might have assumed that it was written to Ephesus rather than from there.

Since in Colossianswhich is very similar to Ephesians in many waysPaul says that hes sending a letter to Laodicea which will be passed on to them, its clear he did indeed sometimes write circular letters. The present letter might even be that letter to Laodicea, though we cant now be sure of that. And at the start of ). If we suppose that he intended the letter to go to several young churches within a hundred miles or so of Ephesus, we shant go far wrong. (For more on this letter, also see my Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, on which this guide is based, published by SPCK and Westminster John Knox.)

As we study Ephesians in this guide, prepared with the help of Lin Johnson for which I am grateful, we look to be strengthened and encouraged as Christians for the new tasks that lie ahead. We should also remember that all genuine Christian life and action flows out of worship. True worship of the true God cannot help telling and retelling, with joy and amazement, the story of what this God has done in Jesus the Messiah. Enjoy the view. You wont get a better one.