The Missions and Missional Purpose of Ephesians: Participation in the Mission of God

By Timothy A. van Aarde and John D. Woods

The purpose of the letter to the Ephesians is unknown. The book suggests that the purpose of Ephesians is about missions and being missional. The author of Ephesians committed the task of missions to the church. The author located the mission of the church in the redemptive plan of God. The redemptive "plan" (oikonomia) of God consists of historical epochs of missions: the mission of Israel, the mission of Christ, the mission of the disciples, the mission of the apostles, and the mission of the church. The term "missional" has been used ambiguously. The existence of a distinction between the mission of the church and missional church is demonstrated, and both expressions of mission are grounded in the biblical text of Ephesians. The mission of the church is grounded in an exposition of Eph 1-3, and the missional church is grounded in an exposition of Eph 4-6. The author of the letter intended for the mission to the nations to be continued by the church (this is the mission of the church). He intended for the members of the church to continue to reach out to their local community (this is expressed by the missional church). The mission of the church has been grounded in the Great Commission. The missional church is grounded in the values, morals, and lifestyle principles set out in Eph 4-6.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jan 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666714470

Timothy A. van Aarde

Timothy A. Van Aarde served as a missionary with Burundi Mission, a nonprofit organization, formed to address the need for theological training in the church in Burundi after the civil war ended (2005) from 2008 until 2014. Van Aarde served as researcher for North West University, South Africa (2014–2017), is currently a research associate of the Department of New Testament and Related Literature, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Pretoria, and part of the MA development team for Veritas College International, Australia (2018). Van Aarde has served as a voluntary hospital chaplain (2018–2021) and church planter (2020–2021). He is an ordained and accredited pastor with the BCWA (Baptist Church of Western Australia).

Book preview

Section I

The Purpose, Background, Framework, Structure, and Integrated Framework for Missions

Chapter 1

The Purpose of Ephesians

The wedding of the missio Dei to last century’s ecumenical movement caused that the concept went off the rails. This book endeavors to biblically ground the missio Dei in Scripture, specifically the letter to the Ephesians (Chapters 6 to 11). Missions is used purposefully instead of mission because the evangelical edge and biblical basis of mission led to an understanding of the church’s mission in light of what God’s mission is while abandoning the older ways of thinking about missions. The result was that the ecumenical movement lost their evangelistic edge and watered-down mission to Christians make the world a better place."¹ There has been a resurgence of a church-centered view of mission, one that believes it is wrong to see the church as an instrument for God’s greater purpose.² The book endeavors to address this concern by grounding the missional movement, specifically the missional church, in the letter to the Ephesians (Chapters 12 to 14). But before a careful exegesis of the letter of Ephesians can be made it is necessary to review the literature about the purpose of the letter (Chapter 1). The book brings together two-disciplines, New Testament and missiology and this requires that an integrated framework is needed (Chapters 2 to 5).

The key to the letter to the Ephesians is the reason that it was written. The purpose of a letter can be established by determining the historical-cultural context, discovering the literary context and then bringing these into discussions with the explanation or interpretation. The value of the purpose as a key becomes apparent in that it can be used as a filter much like a pair of glasses to read the letter and verify an interpretation. The general view of Ephesians is that it has been written with no specific purpose or specific setting in mind. Best writes that it is difficult to detect anything in the letter specifically directed at a purpose.³ If, however, the letter had no purpose, there would not have been any indication of a relationship between the author and the recipients as expressed by the personal pronouns we and us. It has been suggested that Ephesians is rhetorical literature in which case it would not have a purpose, but even so the letter would still have a purpose or goal because the author had a reason for writing the letter.

The purpose shapes the style, structure, and content and a letter by its very nature presumes the author had an intention and purpose. It would be uncharacteristic of Paul to have communicated to the church he spent the most time with, nurtured and cared for deeply for over two and half years (Acts 19:8, 19:10) and have had no purpose in mind with writing to them. It becomes harder to make sense of who the recipients were, their problems and the date of writing the letter if a letter has no purpose. There are two schools of thought about the date of the letter, it was written by Paul during one of his imprisonments before his death in 64 AD or it was written by someone who desired to give the letter the appearance of having been written by Paul after 70 AD, probably around 90 AD.

The purpose of a letter is inseparably connected to the author. There are two possibilities as to the reason that Ephesians was written as a letter to exhort the readers to mission. The letter may have been written by Paul as a general letter to each of the Seven Churches of Asia in Revelation 1 to 3 with a purpose of equipping these churches for mission. Alternatively, it could have been written by someone who sought to connect and relate Paul’s nine letters together through identifying a common theme in all of Paul’s letters, his mission, and then relating them all together by selecting material from these letters that had a missions focus. Goodspeed argues that Ephesians is a preface to Paul’s collected letters and that it is the reason that it is so general and reflects no particular church situation and addressed to Christians in general.⁴ Goodspeed makes a very pertinent observation that Paul is the hero in the second part of Acts and makes a distinction between Paul the tireless, indomitable Christian missionary and Paul the writer of corrective letters to faraway churches.⁵ The letter is approached by Goodspeed as a general preface to all of the Pauline letters. However, the letter to the Ephesians served more than a general preface to all of the Pauline letters. It served as a specific preface that connected all of the Pauline letters together in terms of providing a missions theology and practice for the early missionary movement to the Gentiles.

The author of Ephesians was a missionary at heart and the letter brings together the life work of Paul through a common theme of missions written by a disciple of Paul who sought to honor his mentor’s life work or by Paul himself. It is written from the perspective of a reflection on the missionary thought of Paul or it was written by the author himself to set out his missions theology and practice. The familiarity in Ephesians with Paul’s nine letters, as Goodspeed has demonstrated, overlooks that if there was such a disciple, he would have used a common theme to shift through the letters of Paul and chose material that would be able to be related together. This is a far more monumental task then for the author to have been familiar with his own theology of mission and practice to have written a letter that connects all the dots with his other nine letters. Goodspeed’s solution is a solution to the problem of the general content of the material of the letter and assumes that the purpose of such a disciple was to identify the leading characteristics and most powerful elements from his letters and that Ephesians was an editorial work rather than an original work by the author.

It is undeniable that the missions mind and heart of the author would have influenced all that he did, and even if the letter was a final letter penned by the author as a summa of all his life’s work, it would most certainly be an expression of his missions theology and missional framework and practice. The missions and missional framework and practice has its origins in Paul who was a missionary. It is with this perspective and fresh pair of glasses that Ephesians is approached as a reflection upon the life work of the author from the perspective of his missions theology and practice.

Consideration of Purposes that have been Proposed

Consideration of a Purpose of the Resolution of the Conflict Between Jew and Gentile

The dating of the letter before AD 70 excludes several possible reasons for the letter having been written. Schmithals regards the occasion of the letter as that of the expulsion of Jewish Christians from the synagogue and its chief purpose was to secure the acceptance by Gentile Christians from the Pauline communities of their Christian brothers who came from the synagogue.⁶ He acquaints the latter with the Pauline tradition. It has been suggested that Ephesians might have multiple purposes. In accordance with a date after AD 70, MacDonald identified the purpose of the communication as strongly urging the recipients to act to bring stability to the Christian community.⁷ MacDonald endeavors to identify a possible crisis in the community and suggests that the crisis was the result of persecution. In the light of this crisis, the intention of Ephesians, writes Fischer was to reconcile the different positions in the church whereby the ethical material (Eph 4 to 6) was the basis for living together beyond all theological differences within the Christian community.⁸ It presupposes a conflict between the Gentile and Jewish communities or between the Pauline and Johannine communities and schools.

A conflict within the community is an assumption that is deduced from the conflict between Gentile and Jewish communities elsewhere. It has been suggested that the origins of the conflict between Jew and Gentile Christians was a reaction to the loss of identity from the disappearance of national Israel and the temple cult following the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. There is, however, no indication that the author had in mind a specific historical conflict when he wrote. It raises the question of whether there may have been a more general reason for writing the letter, such as equipping the believers for missions and a missional lifestyle.

Consideration of the Purpose of the Address as a General Situation

It has been suggested by Schnackenburg and Lincoln that the occasion was that the readers of the letter were in a state of spiritual crises, which the letter was written to meet.⁹ Best however, found no internal evidence in the letter for such a crisis.¹⁰ If the letter was addressing a spiritual crisis and at the same time was a circular letter, the same major crisis would hardly be affecting several congregations simultaneously.¹¹ For it to have been a circular letter, the content would have to be of a general nature. The content of the letter seems to be of a specific nature, but it has the appearance of being general in content because it does not address a problem. I would like to suggest that the content reflects the kind of theology and practice that would be found in the missions context of the early churches.

It has often been assumed that the purpose of the letter must be related to a specific problem in the community. The proposals that have been made about a purpose of the letter have all assumed that such a problem can be inferred from the addressees and their situation. The purpose of the letter, however, is not necessarily dependent upon the identification of a specific problem within the community. Speculation about a specific problem when no such problem is specifically stated or implied leads to a purpose being deduced. One such example of a purpose that is deduced is the identifying of a false teaching that supposedly existed in the Ephesian church at the time.

Consideration of a Purpose of Refutation of Gnostic or Other False Teaching

The false teaching that has been identified has been characterized by Käsemann as refuting a Gnostic influence within the church (Eph 2:14–16) and emphasizing the prominent place of the church as a new creation and historical entity.¹² Martin follows Käsemann’s argument when he sees in Ephesians an attack on Gnostic teachings.¹³ Petrenko convincingly concludes after examining the evidence that the suggestion of a Gnostic background and hostility against Jewish Christians is found unconvincing.¹⁴

The letter has been regarded by Dahl as an instruction to new gentile Christians on the meaning of baptism. He understands Ephesians to be addressing a problem of disunity in the church (Eph 2:11–22) and the threat of false teaching coming from the gentile converts.¹⁵ There is, however, no indication that disunity existed in the community or that it had its origins in resistance of a false Gnostic teaching introduced by the gentiles.

The teachings in the letter have been used to extrapolate problems in the community. These include such ideas as a mystery cult inferred from the extrapolation of teachings and practices such as the revealed knowledge of divine mysteries (Eph 3:17–19), celebrant practices such as the rejection of marriage (Eph 5:21–33) and avoidance practices and the exhortation to have no association with morally lax pagans (Eph 5:3–14). A purpose cannot be inferred from the extrapolation of teachings. The idea that it is possible to infer a problem based upon identification of false teachings in the letter assumes that the author made a coherent and unified argument against the false teachers that is uncharacteristic of the letter.

The major works of Hanson, Caragounis and Lincoln follow this course of argument and assert that the letter centers around a central concept and idea, to bring together everything in Christ (see Eph 1:10).¹⁶ It assumes that at the heart of the teaching of the author is a response to false teaching. It has been suggested from the meaning of this verb (Eph 1:10) that central to the false teaching is the idea of cosmic reconciliation and the return to cosmic harmony. This teaching is read into all the cosmic references in the letter. O’Brien has suggested that the main idea of the letter is found in the meaning of this key verb anakephalaiōsasthai, the summing up of all things, (Eph 1:10),¹⁷ to bring all things to unity¹⁸ in an attempt to identify the central message of Ephesians. The theme of the cosmic reconciliation and unity in Christ emerges specifically in Ephesians 1:9–10, but to identify it as the central teaching of the letter has the effect of reading the whole letter through a thematic idea, such has been done with Pentecost and a baptismal liturgy.

Kirby assumes a possible reference to the ordinance of baptism in the necessity that all believers become members of the church and have a sense of belonging to the community (Eph 4:4–6) by means of the rite of baptism.¹⁹ The idea of baptism as it is used throughout the Pauline corpus is intended as a mark of unity of the new converts with Christ that transcends all other affiliations and loyalties. It is in fact not the rite of baptism that the author has in view in Ephesians 2:1–10 but the idea of regeneration that is expressed by baptism worked out in terms of a confessional unity in the chiastically related passage of Ephesians 4:1–6 and specified in the formula of Ephesians 4:3. Regeneration or born again (John 3:3, 7; 1 Pet 1:23) is expressed through various concepts, as the believer is created in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:10), new creation (Eph 4:24, 2 Cor 5:17, Gal 6:15), born of God (1 John 2:29, 3:9, 4:7, 5:1), united with Christ (Rom 6:1–14), and baptism or baptized into Christ (Rom 6:3; Gal 3:27; 1 Cor 12:13; Acts 2:38). In view is an allusion to regeneration that through an illusion to a baptismal liturgy has been deduced from the image of the unity of the body in Ephesians 4. Kirby identifies baptism as the central concept that unifies the letter and he sees ecclesiology, specifically the phrase eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph 4:3) as central to the unity of the letter.²⁰ He makes a valuable observation that Ephesians contains comparatively more references to the Spirit than any other Pauline letter apart from Romans, but in Romans the references tend to be grouped together whereas in Ephesians they are spread out. This view is supported by Best.²¹ The occurrences of such a larger number of references to the Holy Spirit raises the question of the role of the Spirit in the identification of the purpose of the letter.

Consideration of a Soteriological, Pneumatological, and Ecclesiological Purpose

The search for the purpose of the letter to the Ephesians has almost exclusively been focused on the division of the Ephesians into two parts: Ephesians 1 to 3 and 4 to 6. Petrenko questions this division and identifies soteriology and pneumatology as central to the letter that leads to the identification of the purpose and central thought of the letter.²² The occurrences of the Spirit are found in relation to the theme of salvation (Eph 1:13), the promise of future inheritance (Eph 1:14), role of the Trinity in unity (Eph 2:22, 4:4), the believer being strengthened with power and equipped for the task (Eph 3:16) by the indwelling of Christ through the Spirit (Eph 3:17), and an exhortation not to grieve the Spirit in relation to redemption (Eph 4:30), and finally to being filled by the Spirit (Eph 5:18–19). These references to the Holy Spirit serve the missions and missional purpose of the letter. Ninan argues that the letter offers a Messianic and spiritual redefinition of the people of God from the vantage point of the new covenant.²³

Absence of Consensus on the Purpose of the Letter

There is no agreement about the purpose of the letter as Hoehner asserts, even if there is considerable unanimity about the significant themes in it.²⁴ It is reasonable to conclude that part of the purpose of Ephesians is to promote a love for one another which has the love of God and Christ as its basis. O’Brien confers those proposals have been made about the reason the letter was written but there is no finality about the purpose for the letter. He supports and confirms it when he writes, there is no unanimity as to the purpose for which it was written.²⁵

Major Themes and Subsidiary Purpose

In order to establish the purpose of the letter, the significant themes have to be identified and the themes need to be related together to derive the purpose of the letter. A subsidiary purpose serves to help to supplement the main purpose but it is not of primary importance. It is possible that the author might have had in mind to adjust the attitudes and responses of the Christian Jews toward the gentiles, to make them responsive and open to welcome the gentiles as equal recipients of the grace they had received. This, however, would not be sufficient to be considered to be the purpose of the letter.

Major Theme of Ecclesiology

A major theme of the letter has to do with the nature of the church and the kind of behavior expected from believers.²⁶ Robinson has identified ecclesiology as a central theme of the letter, which led him to postulate, by relating it to other central ideas, such as unity, that the purpose of the letter is God’s ultimate purpose for the human race and assert that this purpose is realized in Christ.²⁷ Robinson demonstrates through his approach that the central purpose of the letter is found by identifying the central ideas and relating them together to arrive at the purpose of the letter.

The Church itself as organism or institution, however, is not the purpose of the letter as the central idea is not about the ecclesiology. The Church has a central role in God’s plan of redemption, but the church as instrument is itself a subsidiary purpose to God’s plan (Eph 1:22–23, 2:21–22, 3:10–11, 3:20–21, 4:16, 5:25–27, 5:29–30, 5:32, 6:12). A distinction can be made between the function and structure of the church. In order to avoid separating the function and role of the church from its structure and self-identity, it has been suggested that we need to speak about a missionary ecclesiology²⁸ rather than simply speaking about an ecclesiology of the letter.

Ecclesiology is an important idea of the letter but not the final purpose for writing the letter. The end goal of redemption is not the formation of the church but the glorification of God. Normally in writing a letter, there is a primary reason or purpose though there may also be subsidiary purposes.²⁹ Subsidiary purposes correlate with the main purpose of the letter. The relationship between a subsidiary purpose and the main purpose is that the subsidiary purposes together make up the central idea in the letter that makes up the purpose. The function of the purpose of a letter is to unify all the subsidiary purposes into a primary purpose. To establish the purpose of the letter it must be looked at as a whole and minor interest and sections must not be elevated to a primary position.³⁰

Major Purpose of Unity

Unity has been a popular suggestion for the purpose of the letter, as most commentators agree.³¹ Chadwick has suggested the epistle stresses unity of the church and thus demonstrates to the non-Pauline churches their need for unity with the Pauline churches and the Jewish Christians.³² The assumption he makes is that there was a Johannine community in Ephesus with whom there was conflict and that the letter was written late. Unity, however, is a subsidiary purpose of the letter. The relationship of the gentiles to Israel is a theme (Eph 2:11–13) but it is unable to account for every passage in the book. Paul’s missionary work was to affirm unity rather than create unity (Eph 3:1–9), a unity between Jew and gentile. Unity serves the purpose of mission and is not the end goal itself. Best writes that the relation to Israel and the reference to Paul then report subsidiary purposes.³³ Unity is a subsidiary purpose that serves the primary purpose of the letter. Barth claims that the Book of Ephesians shows that gentiles who had been alienated came into the household of God and had to learn to know and obey God in Christ by observing what God had done for Israel (Eph 2:11–22, 3:1–9, 5:1–6:9).³⁴ Max Turner saw the missional flavor of the letter in its appeal for unity along with ethical instructions. The comprehensive or full significance of the missions purpose of Ephesians, however, was eclipsed by him.³⁵

The Missions and Missional Purpose of Ephesians

I would like to suggest the author of Ephesians seeks to establish a missional significance in terms of unity, to equip, strengthen, and empower the believers, that is, he has a vision for the whole church and this can best be expressed as the missions or missional purpose of the letter. Ecclesiology serves the mission of the church rather than the mission of the church serving ecclesiology.

The Missions Stance of the Author and the Agency of the Holy Spirit

Marshall briefly argued for the intention of Ephesians as advancing missions beyond the voice of Ephesians 6:15. It was Paul’s mission strategy to establish a base in each provincial region that would support his missions efforts beyond their region; for example, the church of Philippi served as a support for his mission to Thessalonica.³⁶ Support for this can be found in Philippians 4:16, where he writes: for even in Thessalonica indeed several times you sent to me for my need.³⁷ The church of Ephesus was a base for Paul and it is Luke who in Acts traces the historical development of the mission of Paul. Instead of his churches supporting Paul’s own mission work, a shift takes place during his mission in Ephesus from support for himself to raising support and encouraging the church to support disciples trained by Paul in the Hall of Tyranus who are sent out as missionaries by the churches.

The letter to the Ephesians develops a missions theology for the churches Paul planted, the disciples he trained and for the church at large, the universal church. The missions theology and practice in Ephesians has been written to equip the church to be able to develop a robust theology and practice of missions and for the church to be able to engage its local context with the gospel. Ninan argues that the letter to the Ephesians narrates the Triune God’s saving story, the missio Dei, and invites the church to participate in God’s mission by becoming what they are called to be.³⁸ Nisan sees in Ephesians a missional significance that is a refashioning of ecclesiology and ethics on the template of redemptive history that points to an inbuilt missional stance. He sees in Ephesians a Jewish mission in the sense that it is framed in terms of a Messianic and spiritual redefinition of the people of God as the Messiah-Spirit people. The letter is read by him in terms of key themes.

Ninan reads the letter in terms of the themes of a soteriology framed by the eschatology of the new covenant people of God, the Messiah-Spirit people and the eschatological people of God that culminates in the identity of the people of God.³⁹ He advocates for a missional stance of the author of the letter and draws out missional implications, but he does not go so far to argue for the purpose of the letter as missions or that it is the nature of the letter. The purpose of the letter for him is about the agency of the Holy Spirit. Ninan identifies the role of the Holy Spirit in actualizing the eschatological people of God to be the people of God and that the construction of identity and moral formation precisely constitutes the missional significance of Ephesians.⁴⁰ The term missional is used ambiguously by Ninan, as he uses it for both the mission of the church and aspects of the missional church. In this book a distinction is made between the use of the term missional for missions and the missional church. Missional will be used to refer to missions, but where it is used in the sense of the missional church it will be qualified as the missional church.

The Purpose of Ephesians and the Motif of Power

Well-known author Clinton Arnold sees the reason behind the composition of Ephesians being the good news of the appointment of Christ above all other powers and authorities (Eph 1:20–21).⁴¹ Arnold goes on to suggest that the church is filled by Christ and that in it he suggests the fullness of Christ refers to Christ’s position over the powers and authorities as the head of the Spirit-filled church. Christ in this sense engages in mission to fill all things, things on earth and things in heaven. The good news of the appointment of Christ above the powers and spiritual authorities (Eph 1:20–23) is to be proclaimed to all the nations, tribes, and ethnic groups. This is the mission of the church. The church participates in the missio Dei through the proclamation of the gospel and in doing so the church is an instrument of transformation through filling all in all, (Eph 1:23) so that there is an increase in the knowledge of Christ.

The Central Idea of the Letter

The central idea of the letter is about the heart and nature of God as a missionary God who has a plan for the world, creation, and humankind. The plan of God is a general concept that can be related to terms developed, concepts, and ideas that have been expressed in the history of missions in the nineteenth century as the mission of the church, in the 1960s as the missio Dei, and in the 1990s in the theological grounding for the recent popular usage of the word missional. The purpose of the letter is to give God’s plan and it creates scope for the development of the missions concepts and ideas of church being the church in mission, missio Dei, and missional church.

It will be shown in this book that the purpose of the letter to the Ephesians is about the outworking of the plan of God in Paul’s thought and language and that it is about the mission of God. The mission of God will be explored through engaging with the mission of the church, the missio Dei, and more recently the concept of the missional church. In the book of Acts, the mission of God consists of a Jewish and gentile mission as it is unpacked by the author of the book in Lucan thought and language. The purpose of the letter of Ephesians is about the mission of God that has not been demonstrated before, although it has been shown by Ninan that the letter expresses the missional stance of the community.

Ninan writes about this in an article about the Holy Spirit and missions in Ephesians, but his aim is to demonstrate the missional stance of the community and advocates for the re-visioning of God’s eschatological community in terms of mission.⁴² He concludes with the statement that the letter to the Ephesians may have a missional purpose that could be based on the missional stance of the community. The missional stance of the community he writes is: the community’s firm stance in the truth of the gospel engages all forms of evil, corporate and behavioral, in prayerful resistance along with authentic witness to the plan and purpose of God.⁴³ This should be the stance of every person in the community and he argues that: mission is not the onus of specialist officers of the church, as it is the mandate of the whole Royal priesthood.⁴⁴ Ninan approaches the letter thematically and makes historical reconstructions in support of the missional stance of the people of God, but the statement that the purpose of Ephesians is missions and missional is not something that Ninan sets out to demonstrate. He interprets the letter through a redemptive historical missional perspective.

The most recent publication on the purpose of the letter is by Sung-Oh David Jung, who suggests that Ephesians 4:7–16 is the paragraph that plays the most decisive role in identifying the primary purpose of Ephesians.⁴⁵

The evangelical scholar Grant Osborne has contended that there are four purposes at the core of the letter and identified these purposes as four broad subjects: soteriology, Christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology.⁴⁶ Soteriology speaks of the salvation aspect, Christology speaks about the Christ aspect, ecclesiology speaks about the place of the church in God’s plan, and eschatology about the second coming of Christ in the formation of the believer’s identity. Osborne, however, does not give the one overarching purpose of the letter. It is the contention of this book that these four broad subjects are not in fact four separate purposes or themes but form part of one single purpose, the missions and missional purpose of the letter.

There is one overarching purpose that is able to unify these four broad subjects or purposes. This book develops the purpose of the letter in terms of the plan and mission of God and argues that it is worked out in the mission of the Church and more recently in being missional church. The thematic approach of Ninan, in which he draws the lines of thought between the Old Testament and the New Testament, is extremely helpful in understanding the context of the mission of the early church.

The Missions Theology of Ephesians and Missional Living

A theology of missions is shaped and influenced by biblical theology, for example the relationship of the Abrahamic plan of salvation in relation to the new covenant plan of salvation, the relationship of Israel as God’s special people in relation to the new covenant people of God, and other Old Testament themes. Ninan argues that the Messiah-people are incorporated into God’s redemptive story as it climaxes in the gospel, meaning that Israel as the people of God are more than merely incorporated into the Church.⁴⁷ There is one missional people of God, and it is always made up of Jews and gentiles, but they have their own respective missions that take into consideration the discontinuity and continuity in the mission of God.

A distinction exists between the mission of Israel and the mission of the church. The mission of Israel does not merely become the mission of the church. The mission of God in the old covenant period was to be carried out by the nation of Israel and in the new covenant period the mission of God is to be carried out by the church. A distinction has to be maintained between these distinct epochs in the single story of God’s mission in order that the plan of redemption is worked out both in terms of a continuity and discontinuity in mission between the New and Old Testaments and covenants. The new covenant status of the people of God is patterned after God’s relation to Israel, but it is based on fuller and more complete or better promises (Jer 31:31; Ezek 36:24–28; Heb 8:6–8, 12:24) made to the church by Jesus Christ (Heb 9:15, 10:4, 10:10). The fullness of the revelation is found in Christ himself being supremely powerful (Eph 1:20–23).

Windsor argues for a continuity in mission between Israel and the church and writes: most interpreters understand the letter as in some way seeking to establish and reinforce Christ believing identity, particularly in relation to Israel, among a group of predominately gentile believers.⁴⁸ He argues that "the dynamics of the Pauline mission, through Israel to the nations, are integral to this identity. He explores how the letter seeks to catch its readers up in the ongoing apostolic dynamic—a dynamic in which Israel plays a key role. Windsor is correct that the connection between Jewish and gentile Christ-believers is best understood in terms of the early mission through Israel to the nations in which the Jewish apostolic community, especially Paul, played a key role.⁴⁹ However, I differ with Windsor in regards to the grounding of that mission as I see it grounded in the apostolic mission, a mission in which the notion of peace between the gentiles and Israel (Eph 2:14–18) is not limited to peace within congregations or between local Christ-believing congregations and local synagogues. It is a worldwide peace" between Israel and the nations, and grounded in Christ’s sacrifice. The apostolic mission is a mission that was established through the preaching of the gospel among the nations.

It is through the gospel preaching of both the Jewish apostolic community (Eph 2:17) and the Jewish and gentile Christians that the mission of God and the plan of redemption is worked out. It is through the interweaving of ecclesiology and Christology in a missions and missional dynamic that the mission of the church can depicted as a snapshot or photograph of the apostolic mission at the point in time of the fulfilment of the messianic promises. It is at this point of time that the mission movement has outgrown the early apostolic mission and the church has come of age and is poised to embrace the mission to the nations. The church coming of age begun with Christ’s ascension that was the beginning of the mission to embrace both its calling to the nations and its missional task to its neighbors.

Conclusion

Every text has a question behind it; an issue that called the text into being. It can be affirmed that the purpose for writing Ephesians was not to address a specific problem in the community. O’Brien concurs that Ephesians was not sent to deal with some particular false teaching in a specific congregation.⁵⁰ If the purpose, then, was not to address a specific problem, the intention of the author would also not have been to safeguard the community against possible future problems, another suggested reason and argument for it. Concerted effort should therefore be taken not to read a problem into the letter. The insufficiency of existing arguments requires that a search be made for a more holistic purpose, a purpose that can unite all the themes together in the letter. It will be argued and demonstrated that the purpose the letter is that it sets out the plan of God in relation to all creation. In order for God’s plan to be taken as the central purpose of the letter, it will be demonstrated that God’s plan is to bring all things together and give full expression to the ideas of the church in mission. God’s mission has a church in the world, the missio Dei and the theological Trinitarian framing of the letter supports that it is both about missions and the missional church.

The themes of the letter are the believer’s identity in Christ (Eph 2:1–10), corporate unity and functioning together (Eph 2:11–22), the effective functioning of the body (Eph 4:1–16), soteriology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, unity, growth, maturity, and love as these ideas are scattered throughout the letter and relate to the plan of God. It will be shown that the role of each of these themes in the broader purpose of the plan of God demonstrates the centrality of the idea of mission and how these themes relate together shows how best they are to be interpreted to express the purpose of the letter. The purpose of the letter will be identified by examining the literary structure of the letter and an examination the relationship of the structure of the letter to the thought structure of the letter in order to determine the way in which these concepts and ideas are developed in the letter.

1

. Wax, Church Became Missional.

2

. Wax, Church Became Missional.

3

. Best, Ephesians,

69

.

4

. Goodspeed, Key to Ephesians,

5

–

16

.

5

. Goodspeed, Key to Ephesians,

12

.

6

. Schmithals, New Testament and Gnosis,

122

.

7

. MacDonald, Pauline Churches,

89

.

8

. Fischer, Epheserbriefes,

202

.

9

. Schnakenburg, Ephesians,

34

; Lincoln, Truth on Trial,

440

.

10

. Best, Ephesians,

72

–

73

.

11

. Best, Ephesians,

73

.

12

. Käsemann, Leib Christi,

517

–

18

.

13

. Martin, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon,

298

,

299

–

300

.

14

. Petrenko, Created in Christ Jesus For Good Works,

11

.

15

. Dahl, Adresse und Proömium,

241

–

64

.

16

. Louw and Wolvaardt, ScritureDirect. Hanson, Unity, passim,

1946

, Caragounis, Mysterion,

144

–

46

, Lincoln, Paradise,

143

–

44; idem, Ephesians,

32

–

5

; Lincoln, Theology,

96

–

97

.

17

. O’Brien, New Testament,

206

–

19

.

18

. O’Brien, FaithlifeSermons.

19

. Kirby, Ephesians, Baptism and Pentecost,

1

–

207

.

20

. Kirby, Ephesians, Baptism and Pentecost,

125

–

38

.

21

. Best, Ephesians,

70

.

22

. Petrenko, Created in Christ Jesus For Good Works,

10

,

15

,

19

–

21

.

23

. Ninan, Ephesians,

36

.

24

. O’Brien, Ephesians,

56

.

25

. O’Brien, Ephesians,

51

.

26

. Best, Ephesians,

73

.

27

. Robinson, St. Paul’s Epistle,

11

–

13

,

292

–

95

.

28

. Van Engen, Mission on the Way,

105

.

29

. Hoehner, Ephesians,

98

.

30

. Best, Ephesians,

74

.

31

. Hoehner, Ephesians,

102

.

32

. Chadwick, Epheserbriefes,

145

–

53

.

33

. Best, Ephesians,

75

.

34

. Barth in Hoehner, Ephesians,

99

.

35

. Turner, Mission and Meaning, 138

–

66

.

36

. Marshall, New Testament Interpretation,

251

–

63

.

37

. Louw and Wolvaardt, ScriptureDirect.

38

. Ninan, Spirit and Mission,

36

.

39

. Ninan, Spirit and Mission,

37

–

38

.

40

. Ninan, Spirit and Mission,

7

,

36

.

41

. Arnold, Ephesians, 119

.

42

. Ninan, Spirit and Mission,

59

.

43

. Ninan, Spirit and Mission,

59

.

44

. Ninan, Spirit and Mission,

58

.

45

. Sung-Oh, Identifying the Primary Purpose,

1

–

327

.

46

. Osborne, Ephesians,

5

.

47

. Ninan, Spirit and Mission,

40

.

48

. Windsor, Reading Colossians and Ephesians, 70

.

49

. Windsor, Reading Colossians and Ephesians,

70

.

50

. O’Brien, Ephesians,

56

.

Chapter 2

The Mission and Missional Background of Ephesians

In this chapter, the historical setting of the letter to the church in Ephesus is described. The historical setting gives clarity and support of the purpose of the letter. The missions strategy of Paul can be inferred from the situation of the original author in Ephesians (Eph 3:1–2) and is shaped by the demographics of the church. One of the reasons, I suggest, is that the situation of the readers and background of the audience is not specifically mentioned but alluded to in the letter so (so that)that it is a general letter sent to several churches in Asia Minor. The situation and background has to be inferred from the text of the letter and faithfully reconstructed. It includes the socio-historical context, but also other historical aspects, such as the date, authorship, and occasion. Special attention is given to the letter recipients and their social environment, allowing for the exploration of the argument that the purpose of the letter was to enable the people of God to find their place in the mission of God. The missio Dei is about missions and being the missional people of God and it is represented by the historical movements of the mission of the church and missional church. This chapter explores not only the Christian community but also the Jewish and gentile communities in Ephesus and Asia Minor as possible mission objects in and around Ephesus. The argument for the missions and missional nature of the letter is explained and supported in Paul’s mission strategy for the church in Ephesus. A holistic foundation is laid for the purpose of the letter to the Ephesians as being about missions and it being about themissional nature of the church.

Basic to any mission strategy is to identify the human objects of the mission. This is also true of Paul’s mission in Ephesus. In addition to the composition of the Ephesians’ church, it has to be established who were the ethnic groups in Ephesus and its surroundings at the time of Paul’s third missionary journey. The ethnic composition and the relation between the different ethnic groups in Asia Minor have to be established. Barth has given no real attention to the ethnic factors that led to gentiles being excluded from the Israel of God.⁵¹ Yee argues that no real attention has been given to the ethnic factor. Of even greater importance than identifying the inhabitants of these areas is to understand how their minds worked.⁵² A socio-historical study is also made in this chapter to derive a description of the worldview of these population groups and their cultural and religious outlook, which also has to be described, bearing in mind that these views were not cast in stone, but changed over time. Once this information has been collected, a comparison can be made with the mission strategy set out in the rest of the letter after it has been identified. This will also enable the purpose of the letter to be formulated more concisely.

In order to make a legitimate study of the socio-historical setting in Ephesus as portrayed in the letter, some formal matters have to be addressed first, such as the date and authorship of the letter, and its audience and occasion.

Authorship and the Date of the Letter

The Author of Ephesians

The authorship of the letter and mission are closely linked. If the author was Paul, then the letter was written in the heart of his missionary efforts, as he wrestled with the theological basis for the inclusion of the gentiles by affirming the need for Jew and gentile to accept one another in Christ and in the church. Ephesians and Colossians, in other words, locate themselves and their readers within the ongoing dynamic of Paul’s appointed apostolic mission to preach Christ to ‘the gentiles.’⁵³ It may appear through a general reading that the initial ferment and conflict associated with Paul’s mission, with its explosive expansion from a Jewish sect to a worldwide movement, has cooled off as Windsor argues is a mistaken interpretation. Windsor demonstrates what some of the arguments are. One of these is that the basis for the mission of Paul is "portrayed as fait compli to be theologized about, rather than a task to be striven for.⁵⁴ It is one of the arguments he disagrees with. The argument overlooks that the task was committed to Paul and that he would have committed it to the church and Timothy as a faithful servant and missionary who commit these (things) to faithful men who are able to teach others (2 Tim 2:1–7). The explanation for this appearance" is that the apostolic mission is in a time of transition as the church has come of age and is poised to fully embrace its responsibility and need to continue the apostolic mission as the mission of the church. The explicit context in which the letters’ Christology, soteriology, and ethics are expressed is the continuation of Paul’s mission by his disciples and the church in the foreseeable imminent departure of its founder, Paul.

In the letter opening itself (Eph 1:1), the author identifies himself as Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ. The integrity of the letter and its Pauline authorship has been disputed by New Testament scholars.⁵⁵ The fact that the author of Ephesians has an intimate acquaintance with Paul’s mission means that the author was either one of Paul’s travelling companions or the apostle Paul. On the one hand many of those who reject the historical Pauline authorship of Ephesians do so in part because they regard the viewpoint of its author as somewhat detached from the realities of this mission.⁵⁶ It is accepted in this study that the Ephesian letter was written by Paul, the apostle, who arrived at Ephesus during his second missionary journey (Acts 19:1) and stayed there for two years, adopting Ephesus as the evangelization center for the surrounding areas of Asia Minor (Acts 19:10). The city became the base for operations by which the gospel spread through disciples trained in the Hall of Tyrannus to all of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Greece. Ephesus was on a major trade route and seaport that made it possible for the dissemination of the gospel.

The letter has a general character and does not address any particular situation in any church. It is uncharacteristic of the apostle Paul to write such a general letter to a church in which he identifies his situation as one of imprisonment (Eph 3:1, 4:1, 6:20) and imminent departure, indicated by the emphasis upon the calling of his readers, the calling with which you have been called (Eph 4:1). Paul believed that his imprisonment had enabled the Philippians to become confident in the Lord and dare the more to proclaim the gospel without fear (Phil 1:14). It would have had the same impact on the Ephesians. In Ephesians, Paul describes himself as suffering for the sake of his mission to the gentiles (Eph 3:1, 6, 8). Paul, in both Ephesians and Colossians, describes himself as suffering servant (diaconos Eph 3:1, 3:13; Col 1:24, 1:29, 2:1–5) for the sake of his mission to the gentiles (Eph 3:1, 3:6, 3:8; Col 1:27). It is when we examine Ephesians 3:1–3, it would suggest that the occasion of the letter is that it may have arisen from a concern that the gentile believers might have been troubled by the prolonged imprisonment of Paul, the apostle to the gentiles. The gentiles may need to have been educated and assured that the apostle’s afflictions were part of God’s greater act of salvation and missions involving Israel, the nations, and the church. This, in turn, would have enabled the gentile believers to understand their own location in relation to these purposes by finding their place in God’s plan of salvation. The opening words in Ephesus from 62 AD on were missing, and so it is probable that the letter was also intended to be a circular letter to other churches.⁵⁷ It is when a letter is intended to be read widely and not only by a specific church, but by all churches, as has been suggested, that the uniqueness of the nature of the letter is recognized.⁵⁸ The intention of the letter is both to equip the church for its mission and for the local church to be a missional expression in its local context. This makes sense of the universal (Eph 1:20–23) and local aspects (prominence of personal pronoun, you) of the letter.

The Paul of Acts and the Paul of Ephesians

It has to be kept in mind, however, that in Acts Paul is depicted differently from the Paul we meet in the letters. The scholars of the so-called New Perspective⁵⁹ have pointed out convincingly that there is a difference between the Paul speaking in Acts and the Paul speaking in the epistles. This difference is most obvious when the apostle’s ideas and the language in his letters are compared to his speeches in Acts. Based on such a comparison, Johnson came to the conclusion that the Paul of Acts, like the Peter and Stephen of Acts, does not speak in his own voice. He gives expression in his speeches to the religious perceptions–the theology–of Luke.⁶⁰ Therefore, it would be incorrect to ascribe the words and ideas spoken by Luke directly or literally to Paul in Acts, unlike the letters. It does not mean, however, that Paul is any more reliable as a historical source than Luke, as Strelan argues: to those who want to play off Luke against Paul, it must be said that the issue is fundamentally not who is historically accurate, but who is theologically accurate.⁶¹ Therefore, the book of Acts will be used in a balanced manner as opposed to a direct mirror and window into the history of Paul’s mission and life. It will be taken as a portrayal of his mission from Luke’s perspective. Wherever it is called for, the Lucian insight into Paul’s mission strategy will be compared to Paul’s own strategy discernible in Ephesians. These differences between the Lucan Paul and the Paul of the epistles will be taken into account. Luke’s prologues tell us that he is writing an orderly account (Luke 1:1). It is an orderly account of the life, ministry and mission of Jesus Christ. Acts gives us a history of the church and the unfolding of the early mission of the church whereas Ephesians gives us God’s plan. God’s plan has soteriological, Christological, eschatological, apocalyptic, ethical, and missiological dimensions. God’s plan is dynamic and it is not to be taken as having a static sense in that each and every detail has been decided before the foundation of the world in the sense of a closed system and orchestrated plan that is worked out to the minuscule detail.

The Place and Date of Composition

One matter that has been disputed is the date of the letter, which is significant because the date will determine the historical reconstruction of Paul’s missionary work at Ephesus. Furthermore, it is significant for considerations about the relation between Judaism and Christianity at Ephesus in the time of Paul. The letter is situated within Paul’s historical mission. Yet modern readers of Ephesians often approach the letter as documented outside, not within, Paul’s historical mission. Ephesians, it is argued, seems to be written latter, at a time when the ‘apostles’ were no longer figures in the early Christ-believing community, but rather were revered heroes of a former generation (Eph 2:20, 3:5, 4:11).⁶² The initial ferment and conflict associated with Paul’s mission, as Windsor says, has not come to an end, so that it is still part of the explosive expansion from a Jewish sect to a worldwide movement.⁶³ There are new cultural and social aspects that have to be negotiated, and a missions and missional task that has to be striven for.

The problem regarding the date of Ephesians, unlike in some other letters of Paul, is that in this letter there are almost no references to specific times, places, or persons from which calculated deductions can be made about the time it was written.⁶⁴ Regarding the date of the letter Macdonald writes: From a historical perspective, Ephesians is certainly one of the most elusive documents in the New Testament.⁶⁵

An Early Date for the Letter: Before the Destruction of the Temple

The view among evangelical scholars is that the Apostle Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians around 60 to 62 AD.⁶⁶ The date corresponds to the place of authorship, Rome, during Paul’s imprisonment. Mention of the whole palace guard (Phil 1:13) and those of Caesar’s household (Phil 4:22) would naturally, if not necessarily, suggest captivity in Rome (Acts 24:26–27, 28:30). "Only a Roman imprisonment fits the most natural understanding of the praetorium (Phil 1:13) and members of the imperial service (Phil 4:22) mentioned in the letter, as well as the impending and final nature of the upcoming decision in Paul’s case (Phil 1:19–26, 2:23). There is no evidence that a proconsular headquarters of a senatorial province such as Asia was ever termed a praetorium (see Bruce 1983:23).⁶⁷ Paul could receive visitors freely, a situation which corresponds with the apostle’s situation during his imprisonment in Rome (Acts 28:30–31).

The other plausible place of the origin of the letter is Caesarea, with the letter dated 58 to 59 AD. Arguments in favor of this view are that according to Acts 24:27, Paul was imprisoned in Caesarea for a period of two years, calculated to be 58 to 59 AD. At that time Caesarea was a boiling pot of political struggle between the Jews and the Romans, and there were riots in the year 66 in Caesarea that ignited the Jewish War.⁶⁸ This situation may also correspond to language in the Ephesian letter, such as (a) the ethnic dividing wall (Eph 2:14), which has been removed in Christ, and the new temple (Eph 2:20); (b) the animosity between Jews and gentiles (Eph 2:14, 2:16; Col 1:21), which has been changed into peace in Christ (Eph 2:15, 2:17); (c) the divine citizenship (Eph 2:19), which in Christ belongs also to the gentiles. Such politically orientated terms in Ephesians fit the situation of Paul in Caesarea so exactly that this city alone is suitable as a background.⁶⁹ Caesarea, therefore, cannot be absolutely excluded as the place from which the letter could have been written.

It is equally true, however, that the evidence used in favor of Caesarea could equally point toward the situation in Rome. It can, however, be asserted that whether Rome or Caesarea is accepted as the place of origin of the letter, the letter was penned before 70 AD. It is a matter of preference between Rome and Caesarea for the place of origin of