The Pulpit Commentaries Ephesians (Joseph S. Exell)

《The Pulpit Commentaries–Ephesians》(Joseph S. Exell)

Contents and the Editors

One of the largest and best-selling homiletical commentary sets of its kind. Directed by editors Joseph Exell and Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones, The Pulpit Commentary drew from over 100 authors over a 30 year span to assemble this conservative and trustworthy homiletical commentary set. A favorite of pastors for nearly 100 years, The Pulpit Commentary offers you ideas and insight on "How to Preach It" throughout the entire Bible.

This in-depth commentary brings together three key elements for better preaching:

Exposition-with thorough verse-by-verse commentary of every verse in the Bible.
Homiletics-with the "framework" or the "big picture" of the text.
Homilies-with four to six sermons sample sermons from various authors.

In addition, this set also adds detailed information on biblical customs as well as historical and geographical information, and translations of key Hebrew and Greek words to help you add spice to your sermon.

All in all, The Pulpit Commentary has over 22,000 pages and 95,000 entries from a total of 23 volumes. The go-to commentary for any preacher or teacher of God's Word.
About the Editors

Rev. Joseph S. Exell, M.A., served as the Editor of Clerical World, The Homiletical Quarterly and the Monthly Interpreter. Exell was also the editor for several large commentary sets like The Men of the Bible, The Pulpit Commentary, Preacher's Homiletic Library and The Biblical Illustrator.

Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones was born in London on January 14, 1836. He was educated at Corpus Christi, Cambridge where he received his B.A. in 1864. He was ordered deacon in 1865 and ordained as a priest is the following year. He was professor of English literature and lecturer in Hebrew at St. David's College, Lampeter, Wales from 1865-1870. He was rector of St. Mary-de-Crypt with All Saints and St. Owen, Gloucester from 1870-1877 and principal of Gloucester Theological College 1875-1877. He became vicar and rural dean of St. Pancras, London 1877-1886, and honorary canon since 1875. He was select preacher at Cambridge in 1883,1887,1901, and 1905, and at Oxford in 1892 and 1903. In 1906 he was elected professor of ancient history in the Royal Academy. In theology he is a moderate evangelical. He also edited The Pulpit Commentary (48 vols., London, 1880-97) in collaboration with Rev. J. S. Exell, to which he himself contributed the section on Luke, 2 vols., 1889, and edited and translated the Didache 1885. He passed away in 1917 after authoring numerous individual titles.

00 Introduction

INTRODUCTION.

1. BY WHOM WRITTEN

TILL the days of De Wette, who was followed by Baur and Schwegler, Dr. Samuel Davidson, and some others, it was never doubted that the Epistle to the Ephesians was written by St. Paul. This had been all along the uniform tradition of the Church. The external evidence in his favor is about as strong as the ease admits of. The list of early writers who are believed to attest this includes Ignatius, Polycarp, Marcion, Valentinus, Irenaeus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, and the author of the Muratorian Canon, and thereafter the Epistle is constantly included among the Pauline writings. It is not alleged that there is the faintest external evidence in favor of any other writer.

It is solely on internal grounds that the anti-Paulinists base their opinion.

1. Generally, it is alleged that the Epistle is a somewhat wordy repetition of that to the Colossians, and that so fresh and vigorous a mind as that of the apostle would not have been likely to repeat itself in such a way.

2. There are expressions that seem to show that the writer had never been at Ephesus; e.g. Ephesians 1:15, he has heard of the faith, etc., of the Ephesians; Ephesians 3:2, 3, the Ephesians may have heard of the commission given him; Ephesians 4:21, "If so be ye have heard him." Such expressions seem to show uncertainty as to their position and knowledge.

3. There are no salutations to the members of the Church at Ephesus, as we should certainly have looked for, considering how long St. Paul was there (Acts 20:31).

4. The Church at Ephesus consisted of both Jews and Gentiles (Acts 19:8-10, 17); but the Epistle is addressed wholly to Gentiles, and rests mainly on the fact that privileges of equal value had been brought to them by the instrumentality of the apostle.

5. Many things in style, sentiment, and aim are not Pauline.

The hypothesis as to the authorship which those who hold these views have adopted is that some worthy man, residing at Rome, wishing to do good to the Ephesians, or perhaps to a cluster of Churches of which that at Ephesus was one, wrote this Epistle, and, in order to obtain acceptance for it, issued it in the name of Paul; nor was this an absolute fabrication, for, as it consists to a large extent of the views of Paul as expressed in the Epistle to the Colossians, it really is in substance Pauline. People were not very critical in those days; they received it as genuine, and ever after it passed as such. The date at which it is supposed to have been written is various; De Wette assigns it to the apostolic age; Schwegler and Baur give it the same date as that of the fourth Gospel — the middle of the second century; but Davidson is compelled to place it between A.D. 70 and 80.

In this hypothesis, the error is committed, so common with critics of the new light, of removing one set of difficulties by creating much greater. The difficulties of the new view are both moral and intellectual. Morally, there is the very serious difficulty of giving, as author of the Epistle, the name of one who was not its author. The guilt of this is aggravated by the way in which the writer's claim to be listened to is set forth, "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God," and by the fact that all writings that were really apostolic carried to the Church supernatural authority. The real writer assumes Paul's name; he not only trifles with the apostle, but with the Divine authority which all true apostles enjoyed. Intellectually, the hypothesis has this difficulty — it maintains that Paul could not have been the author, yet that, from the very beginning, the Church accepted him as the author. The writer makes it plain that he was never at Ephesus, but the blind Ephesians received the letter as from Paul, who had been three years there. The style, the sentiment, the aim, are not Pauline, yet they were accepted as such. The writer was so careless that he did not take the trouble to avoid expressions that could not have been written by Paul; and the recipients were so stupid that, in spite of these things, they accepted it as his. An hypothesis so clumsy and hanging so ill together refutes itself.

The objections referred to, though attended with considerable difficulty, are not at all conclusive. The very principle of the DeWette hypothesis, that the Epistle was passed off and accepted as Pauline, may show that it cannot contain anything obviously un-Pauline, it is true that many topics are the same as those handled in Colossians; bat the matters peculiar to Ephesians are very remarkable (e.g. the statement of salvation by grace, Ephesians 2.; the prayer for the Ephesians, Ephesians 3.; the Christian panoply, Ephesians 6.). Every devout reader feels that the parts peculiar to the Ephesians contain some of the finest of the wheat; and though repetitions are not usual with the apostle, there is no reason why he, like any other letter-writer, should not have repeated to the Ephesians what he had written to another Church, if their circumstances required a similar communication.

The objections which we have marked 2, 3, 4, do certainly cause a feeling of surprise. We should certainly have expected the apostle to refer to his personal intercourse with the Ephesians, and to send salutations to some of them, especially the eiders he had met at Miletus; and we should not have expected the Epistle to be written so preponderatingly to Gentiles. But, in point of fact, in many of his Epistles the apostle sends no personal greetings; to do so was by no means his universal habit. Besides, as the Epistle was sent by Tychicus, a personal friend in whom he had great confidence, the greetings might be conveyed orally by him. We find, too, that in his Epistle to Philemon, who was one of his own converts, he uses that very expression, "hearing of thy faith and love," which in Ephesians is said to prove that the writer had never been at Ephesus. And as for the composition of the Ephesian Church, there are several incidents which show that, from the Jews, there came for the most part only bitter opposition (Acts 19:9, 13, 14; 20:19); so that the great majority of the Church, which was a very numerous one, must have been Gentries. In fact, the shrine-makers for Diana would have had no cause for fear if it had not been for the multitude of pagans whom Paul was persuading to abandon the old religion. Moreover, in our everyday life, we are ever finding things that are mysterious to us when our information is imperfect, but that become plain and simple when some missing link of explanation is supplied. It is certain that the early Church did not see in the features of the Epistle now adverted to any reason for doubting that Paul was the author. As to the allegation that the style, tone, and sentiment are in many respects not Pauline, no weight is to be attached to it. To trace salvation to grace as its fountain; to magnify the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ; to proclaim the freedom of the new dispensation; to interlace doctrine and duty in the web of exhortation; to sound the military trumpet, as it were and stimulate his readers to intrepid action in the service of Christ; — what were more eminently Pauline objects than these? and where are they more characteristically promoted than in this very writing?

A conjecture has been adopted by some writers that this Epistle was not addressed to Ephesus only, but was a kind of circular letter, sent first to Ephesus, but afterwards to various neighboring Churches. On this hypothesis it has been held that an explanation may be given of those things which create a feeling of surprise. To this hypothesis we shall have to advert further on.

The Epistle bears throughout to have been written by Paul, and, as he speaks in several places in the character of "a prisoner of the Lord," it appears that he was a captive at the time. There were two places where he suffered captivity — Caesarea and Rome. The reference to Tychicus, the bearer of the letter for the Colossians as well as of this one for the Ephesians, and other allusions, make it probable that he was at Rome when he wrote this letter. It is usually thought that the Epistle to the Ephesians was written shortly after that to the Colossians, while both were dispatched together, and that their date is A.D. 62. No one could have inferred from the tone of the letters that at the time the writer was confined in bonds. Anything more bright, cheerful, and even exulting than the tone of the letter to the Ephesians can hardly be conceived. No doubt some critics would say that this showed that the letter could not have been written in such circumstances. But negative critics are never more at sea than in estimating spiritual forces. The triumphant tone of the letter is no proof that the writer was not in prison, but it is a signal proof that his Master had kept his word to him, "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world."

2. TO WHOM WRITTEN.

The words of the first verse (as it is in our text), ἐν εφεìσῳ, sufficiently show the destination of the Epistle; but the authenticity of these words has been disputed. Basil the Great received the Epistle as addressed to the Ephesians, but quoted and commented on ver. 1 so as to show that ἐν εφεìσῳ was not in the manuscripts he used, at least not in those of early date. In the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus the words are written by a later hand. Marcion appears to have called it Paul's Epistle to the Laodiceans, and quoted Ephesians 4:5, 6 as from that Epistle. But the liberties taken by Marcion with the canon and canonical books show that but little weight is to be attached to him. Undoubtedly a difference was introduced in the manuscripts at an early date. It is not easy to decide whether the words were omitted in some manuscripts from the original text, or whether they were inserted in other manuscripts where the text had them not.

By some it has been thought that the Epistle was originally addressed to the Laodiceans, and that it is therefore the writing referred to in Colossians 4:16. Bleek favors this view, while he holds that the letter may have been an open one, intended for Laodicea in the first instance, but for other places near Laodicea that were even less known to the apostle personally. In opposition to this view, it is to be remarked that in no manuscript are the words ἐν λαοκιδειìᾳ to be found in place of ἐν εφεìσῳ and, moreover, the letter referred to in Colossians is not a letter to the Laodiceans, but an Epistle from Laodicea. What that Epistle was is unknown, and can be only matter of conjecture.

Another supposition, as we have already said, is, that while this letter was addressed to the Ephesians in the first instance, it was not meant for them alone. It is supposed that there were other Churches in much the same condition as that of Ephesus, and that the Epistle was intended as an encyclical letter, to go the round of them all. This might in some degree account for the absence of familiar salutations, and for other features that might have reasonably been looked for in a letter to the Ephesians. On the other hand, and in opposition to this hypothesis, there is nothing to indicate that the letter was meant for a variety of Churches. There is throughout an assumption of the unity of the Church, the letter is addressed apparently to one set of people, whose spiritual history had been marked by the same features.

To get over the difficulty arising from the absence of all personal references, and other difficulties, some have thought that Ephesus was not included among the places to which the letter was addressed; but fresh difficulties arise with this supposition: it makes it impossible to account for the words ἐν εφεìσῳ occurring so generally, and for the universal tradition that the letter was addressed to that Church. Nor is it easy to conceive that Paul should write to a circle of Churches adjacent to the city where he spent three years, and say nothing to the Christians in that city.

On the whole, taking both external and internal evidence into account, there seems to be no reason for giving up the traditional view that the Epistle was addressed to the Ephesians. It is not a question that admits of demonstration, but the difficulties attending this view are less than those attending any other. Even if it were a perfectly open question, if Ephesus were not now in possession, we should say that it had the best claim; certainly nothing has been advanced to show that that claim ought to be surrendered in favor of any other.

3. EPHESUS AND ITS CHURCH

Ephesus was an important city, situated at the mouth of the river Cayster, near the middle of the western coast of the peninsula of Asia Minor. The term "Asia," however, was in those times confined to the Roman province in the west of the peninsula, of which Ephesus had become the capital nearly two hundred years before it was visited by Paul. Its inhabitants were half Greek, half Asiatic, and their religion and superstitions were a compound of the East and the West. Diana, or Artemis, a goddess of the West, was the chief object of worship; but the style of her worship had in it much of Oriental mystery and munificence. The temple of Diana was renowned as one of the seven wonders of the world. It had been two hundred and twenty years building; its roof was supported by one hundred and twenty-six columns, each sixty feet high, the gifts of as many kings. The imago of Diana, said to have fallen from heaven, was of wood, forming a striking contrast to the magnificence around. Ephesus was notorious for its luxury and licentiousness. Sorcery or magic, an importation from the West, was exceedingly common. The εφεìσια γραìμματα were a celebrated charon, which continued to be used more or less till the sixth century, A.D. Ephesus was a great and busy center of commerce; "it was the highway into Asia from Rome; its ships traded with the ports of Greece, Egypt, and the Levant; and the Ionian cities poured their inquisitive population into it at its great annual festival in honor of Diana." It is known from Josephus that Jews were established there in considerable numbers; it is the only place where we read of disciples of John the Baptist being found, and retaining that designation; while the case of Apollos coming to it from Alexandria, and that of Aquila and Priscilla from Rome and Corinth, show that it held ready intercourse with the rest of the world.