We are finished with the book of Hosea, and now let us turn to the book of Ephesians. The book of Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 1, verses 1 through 2. Ephesians 1, 1 through 2. Let us listen attentively to the word of God.
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray.
Father God above, as we are gathered here this evening to honor your Son and to lift your name on high, may we be edified and encouraged in the preaching here of just a simple opening and greeting, the typical greeting of Paul, but yet so supernatural and amazing because it’s a greeting based upon the divine, the divine grace, the divine goodness, the divine power from on high. It is a supernatural greeting, God, and it’s part of what we do for one another in our hearts, if not upon our lips, to greet one another in the name of Jesus and desire that we each, every one of us, near and far, would grow in grace and peace from our God and Father and Lord Jesus Christ. And this, we pray, would soften our hearts, strengthen our hearts, and guide us closer to you.
Amen. Now, I find the book of Ephesians, and so do some commentators, an interesting book, not only, of course, for the amazing doctrine that’s here as it is elsewhere in the Bible, although in some ways more striking here with these particular topics as we will see, but because there are no known matters, debates, or issues to be dealt with in the book of Ephesians. Maybe you never thought about that.
You sit down, you compare the book of Ephesians with something like, I don’t know, 1 Corinthians, the book of Galatians and otherwise, or even Philemon, where he’s dealing with a slave owner, a master. There’s nothing, no pressing matter. There’s not charges being brought before Christians like in 1 Corinthians 6, or debates about who’s a better pastor in 1 Corinthians 1, or serious matters of what is justification, what is sanctification, what are you guys teaching there in Galatia? Nothing like that.
Just plain doctrine, great truth, and practical application. So, there’s no tension between church officers and no debates. It suggests, therefore, that the book is a circular sent to various churches in the region of Ephesus, and as such, it touches on a number of matters that are of general concern, yet important Christian concerns, to be sure.
In Paul’s letter here, it’s primarily about sanctification in the second half of the book, and in the first half is God’s riches of grace for the body of Christ, as we will see. The date on occasion of the book of Ephesians is about 60 AD when he wrote it. He was imprisoned at this time.
He probably also wrote the book of Colossians, since it’s very similar. There’s a number of phrases and sentences that are almost verbatim in Colossians. It’s a shorter version of Ephesians, it seems, and covers very much the same, similar themes.
It has a basic outline, as virtually all of Paul’s letter has this basic outline, where the first part, not necessarily a half, but the first part is doctrine and teaching, and the latter half or the latter part of the book is more practical application, usually based upon what he taught earlier. And so, we have here in the book of Ephesians, chapter 1 to chapter 3, verse 21, and then beginning in chapter 4 to the end, we have practical application by Paul, very stereotypical of Paul. The detail outline, however, we have the salutations, which I just read earlier, more teaching, chapter 1 to chapter 3, verse 21, particularly here, as we’ll see, and you’ve heard this, now you get to hear me preach on it, verses 3 to 14, one long sentence in the Greek, the doxology, the theology of praise of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Then after that, we have a prayer of Paul’s, verses 15 to 23, a very, of course, theological prayer of Paul’s, and then he speaks of our position in Christ in chapter 2 to chapter 3, and he ends this opening or this first part of his letter to the churches of Ephesus with a prayerful doxology, verses 14 to 21 of chapter 3. With the opening greeting here, again, standard by Paul, we encounter a consistent fact in the life of the Christians. The divine goodness, grace, and blessings accompany us all our days, and it’s our desire that it will continue to accompany us and one another as well. And that divine influence is reflected in Paul’s placement as an apostle by Jesus Christ, that’s the first point, the saints’ purity arising from the work of the divine upon them, and lastly, Paul’s prayer of divine grace and peace.
Divine Placement
You saw I was able to pull off three Ps. The first part here, divine placement, or the appointment of the apostle Paul, or who is Paul more broadly? I looked through my notes, and I didn’t actually dig and go into a lot of details here in 1 Timothy, for example, on Paul’s life. So, I want to do that now, Paul’s life in conversion.
Pre-conversion, of course, that is his life. What was he before he became a Christian? He was a Jew of the Jews, the tribe of Benjamin, as you recall. We read in Acts 22.3, while he’s speaking to the Roman leaders, Paul was a Jew’s Jew.
We say a man’s man. He was a Jew of the Jews. He’ll say this later in Galatians.
And here, he was taught at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the great leaders at that day and age of the Jewish religion. He was an up-and-coming man. He was well-educated.
You could tell in how he wrote and what he wrote. He has words, you’ve heard some of them, you can’t find outside the Bible in any ancient Near East Greek literature. It’s like Paul came up with these new compound Greek words.
He was so smart. According to the strictness of our Father’s law, that is, of course, Jewish law, and not just the Jewish Mosaic law, but particularly, of course, I think he means the Pharisaical law, fathers. I think he’s emphasizing the fathers.
And was zealous towards God as you are today. He persecuted Christians, however. In Acts 7, we read of him.
That’s when we first run across him. I preached through Acts many years ago. Acts 7, verse 56.
And they said, look, I see the heavens open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. Then they cried out with a loud voice to stop their ears and ran at him with one accord. This is the death of Stephen.
And he sees God, Jesus Christ, before he dies. And instead of being an amazement, the Jews were even more angry with him. Because he gave a sermon, it’s a brief sermon, showing them their need to repent there in Acts 7. They didn’t want to hear, they stopped up their ears, they were stubborn and hardened hearts.
And they stoned him to death. And then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of the young man named Saul.
And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God, saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And now Saul was consenting to his death, chapter 8. And at that time, a great persecution arose against the church, which was at Jerusalem. So Saul was an accomplice to murder.
Think about that. The persecution of God’s people made it even worse. It’s a double sin.
Chapter 9, we read about him again, specifically his conversion. Then Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, such a graphic description. Can you imagine that? An angry young man, so zealous for the wrong kind of truth, a lie.
And they, excuse me, I got ahead of myself. He went to the high priest. And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus, got letters from the leadership of Jerusalem and left.
He was going to lead the charge. No matter how far the Christian church spread across the Mediterranean Sea, he was going to track them all down. So he goes up further north to Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven.
Then he fell to the Saul. Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, who are you, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads.
And so he, trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what do you want me to do? And the Lord said to him, arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do. And there he meets Ananias, who was told by God that Saul had been chosen to, quote, bear my name before the Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel, Acts 9.15. Jesus picked him directly and explicitly there on the road to Damascus. He saw him.
He was blinded by that sight. He was in awe of that sight. And although we don’t read of a typical conversion the way at least I grew up in evangelical circles and some kind of amazing story in terms of his heart and he gives a testimony, there’s nothing here about him giving a testimony other than he submits and says, what do you want me to do, God? It’s just like that.
That’s what we read. Verse 6, trembling and astonished, because his heart was surely pricked by his own sins. He was persecuting Jesus.
You persecute my people, they are, what, the apple of my eye. And so he was converted there on the road by the almighty power, a divine placement and appointment that made him an apostle, verse 15. And we know the story from there on out.
It shows that Jesus in this incident here in chapter 9 of Acts directly commissioned him and sent him off to do his duty. It’s a miraculous event to testify of this fact because otherwise you’d be like, wait a minute, you didn’t live with Jesus for three years like the apostles. Who do you think you are? And in fact, Ananias is like the guy that’s going to probably kill me.
What am I going to do? And the angel says, trust me. That’s why you’re given a special miracle and an angelic vision so that you can look beyond what you would normally and you should expectantly be wary of. And he settled into the church rather quickly by God’s direct intervention and establishing and placing his call upon him.
But the other apostles, of course, already lived and walked with Jesus, which was one of the normal requirements when sent out by him. So Paul got what we call a quick promotion, got to the head of the line real fast, as only God can do. But of course, providentially, he was already well-trained.
He knew the Bible inside and out. And as soon as he healed and recovered from being in the devil’s desert, he went into the cities and already debated them and went straight to those passages that he knew by heart and said, you misunderstand it. This points to Jesus.
So he didn’t have to have that three years of training. Think about it. It’s kind of interesting.
There he is. Boom. So what’s an apostle? Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.
An apostle is one who is sent. It’s as simple as that. One who is sent, but it has much weight behind it, of course.
By one who is sent, it means one who is sent with the authority of the sender. Like an ambassador today. We take ambassadors seriously.
In fact, you can start a war if the ambassador says the wrong thing. That’s the kind of authority apostles have. We miss that, perhaps, because we don’t have that today.
I don’t have that kind of authority. My authority, although even their authority, as we saw this morning, was just merely as a mouthpiece, right? They’re only telling you what the Word of God is, and that’s what I do as well. Jesus selects 12 disciples while on earth, chooses them by name and in person to be uniquely trained by him for future purpose of establishing the New Testament form of the people of God.
There were other followers, like 120 in the upper room. Well, minus 11, right? He didn’t choose any of them. He picked certain ones to be officers.
This particular type of officer, the apostle, the one sent by Jesus. They’re rarely named as such in the gospels. The title is mostly used outside the gospel accounts.
They’re just simply known as, you know, the disciples. But in Acts and elsewhere in the other letters, they’re called the apostles. The requirement is that they should have seen the Lord, been able to testify of him and of his resurrection from personal knowledge.
A number of verses that point to that fact. And of course, that makes sense, humanly speaking. Jesus is both God and man, but as a man, he does man things, which is he has to meet people, talk to them, and appoint them as a leader of the church.
And that’s what he does. And they must have been immediately called by him to office. And of course, Paul fulfills that on the road to Damascus by a miracle.
Responsibilities and functions of an apostle to represent Christ and his message. In a way, I cannot. I have not been with Jesus for three years.
I did not have a vision from heaven on the road to Denver, as opposed to Damascus. So we don’t have apostles today. They had a unique standing.
I call them super pastors. They were also prophets and did miracles and everything else. They’re there to lead the formation of the New Testament church.
We read of this, as you may recall, we’re going to run into it, in fact, in Ephesians 2, that they are the foundation of the church and Christ Jesus being the chief cornerstone. So you have this layering effect, logically speaking. Of course, chief cornerstone is what guides, and this is standard for the foundation of a building.
They function in many different ways. Their most well-known function, of course, is as a pastor or a teacher, preaching, exhorting, and warning the people of God and unbelievers as well. Miracles that they exercise were to attest and wake up the audience to listen to this message.
It’s a real thing to pay attention to. What you’ll notice at the end of Acts, by the end of Acts, there’s hardly any mention of miracles anymore. And same with the later letters and epistles, as I mentioned, of 1 and 2 Timothy, they still talk about him anymore.
The miracles eventually fade away. And they’re there for the needy. They give counsel like he does to 1 and 2 Timothy.
That is Timothy, young pastor Timothy, young pastor Titus as well. And they were concerned enough to be taking care of the widows, but they couldn’t maintain that job. They had to prioritize and divide, as you know, and that’s the formation of New Testament deacons who took care of the bodily concerns of the church.
His placement as an apostle, as we know from the story of Acts, was divine. It came from heaven above and not from himself. It was divine by grace, to be sure, as Paul was a persecutor of the church.
And Jesus Christ forgave him and changed his heart. And the power of divine might is emphasized in Paul’s conversion, to be sure, but it’s a placement from above and from on high.
Divine Purity
This leads us to the second point of the greeting we have here, divine purity, that is a purity that comes from Almighty God.
That’s the emphasis here. To the saints. Saints.
That’s where I get the idea of pure or purity. But before I get to that, let me talk about Ephesus. The saints who are at Ephesus.
The capital, here I’m reading from Easton’s Bible Dictionary. You can get that online for free. He was a Presbyterian from the late 1800s.
The capital of Proconsular Asia, which was the western part of Asia Minor. It was colonized principally from Athens. In the time of the Romans, it bore the title of the first and greatest metropolis of Asia.
That was a big to-do of a city. It was distinguished for the Temple of Diana. Well, that’s not good.
Who there had her chief shrine. And for its theater, which was the largest in the world, capable of containing 50,000 spectators. I mean, think again, they didn’t have the tech we have today, the technology and the machinery.
They made that, of course, on slave labor, but they made it. They had a number of Jews residing there. And on his return from the journey, Paul touched at Miletus, some 30 miles south of Ephesus, and sending for the presbyters of Ephesus, we have that famous passage there in Acts 20, where he delivers them a touching farewell and an admonition and encouragement to stand firm against the wolves that will surely come up in the church when the apostles fade from the scene.
In Acts 19.8, we read, and he went into the synagogue and spake boldly for the space of three months there at Ephesus, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God. He was not shy. He would debate these things.
I use the word debate in the best sense of the word, of course, not the way it’s been twisted today, where it’s always a bad thing. It wasn’t a bad thing. They were very zealous, both the Jews, and they were willing to give as much as they took.
And he established a church there at Ephesus. Acts 19.9, but when diverse were hardened, various numbers of them were hardened, and believe not, but spoke evil of the way before the multitude, he departed from them and separated the disciples, disputing daily in the school of one Tyrinius. And this continued by the space of two years at Ephesus.
Acts 19. And so that all that which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. He already had a history with the churches and the Christians there by his ministry, or by the mercy and grace of God.
As he stood firm and didn’t give up, what do we read there in four in my notes? He went to the synagogue and spoke boldly for the space of three months. They let him sit there long enough anyways. And eventually, of course, it got so bad that their hearts were hardened.
They spake evil before the multitude to start a riot usually. When you read going through Acts, you may recall one riot or discontentment after another, where every city, the Jews kept seeking to kick him out, even to kill him. So it’s kind of interesting.
They’ll let him debate and let him fight, but they got really angry behind the scenes and they were using their machinations and evil plottings to kill him. So Paul had many converts is what we’re reading. And many church leaders, by implication, suggesting a number of churches were established at Ephesus, not just one singular church.
And we have more evidence of this in Revelation chapter two, verses one to 17. That’s that collection of sayings to the various churches of Asia by the spirit of God through the prophet John, in which we read, for example, that he who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. And to the angel, the church of Ephesus writes and goes on to explain what they’re doing well, what they’re not doing so well, and other admonitions from the Lord.
So Ephesians 2.1 says to the angel of the church, singular at Ephesus. But at the end of that little admonition there by the Holy Spirit, verse 17, we read, he who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches, plural, suggesting that there are multiplicities in the singular place known as the church of Ephesus, which is but another way to talk about Presbytery. But be that as it may, Paul is writing to the saints, and that’s what I mean by purity.
Saints is one who is what? Holy or pure, morally pure. Not holier than thou, that’s not the idea here. Look how good I am compared to you.
Never the case in the Bible. But one who is holy, purified by the Spirit of God, both subjectively in the sense of sanctification and internal renovation and growth by the power of the Spirit within us, and, of course, objectively by baptism that we are separated and marked out from the world, both children and adults alike. We are called saints thereby.
So objectively by baptism, and so our children are set apart from the world, it’s an outward act telling others that we are gods. We are set aside. We are sanctified.
Holy, sanctified, purified, these are all synonyms overlapping in many ways, in different ways of describing the same moral idea and moral truth about what it means to be a believer, to set apart from the wickedness of the world, from the route that they are going, from the wrath that they are under for a holy purpose, not just negatively what we are not, but positively what we are in Christ Jesus and the direction that we are heading by His grace and power upon us. And, of course, I mentioned inwardly what I call the subjective work of the Holy Spirit in the sense that it changes. It’s what we are more aware of.
You’re not aware of it at all other than our outward actions. It’s sanctification the way we typically think of it, being morally purified by the Spirit, where our mind is awakened to the truth by reading the Bible, where our will has now changed and we desire new things, holy things, the glory of God, and our emotions are purified as well so that we eschew and hate the hatred, godly hate in that sense, and other lusts of the flesh. And we are renewed by faith and faith in Jesus Christ.
And so that’s what it means to be a saint, both objectively and internally subjectively for ourselves. Paul isn’t being very specific here. This is not uncommon in the biblical text.
We’ll run across that here in verses 3-14. When I go through those verses where he describes us being holy without blame, for example, in verse 4, does he mean sanctification? Does he mean justification? Or does this mean like kind of everything? This is what I think. Paul isn’t being very specific.
All the good stuff that we have, redemption, and the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, verse 3. Now one thing I want to point out about saints here, which of course is a long-standing point of the Protestants versus the Roman Catholics. You’re all saints. We don’t have a saint’s day as though we have this super holy group of people set off to the side and they get to go to heaven quicker than you.
I think the standard is what, three miracles or something, and you’re officially a saint of some sort. They have saint’s days and things like that. We’re all holy before God.
We are all united in Jesus Christ by one baptism, one Lord, and one faith, Ephesians 4. And so we who are baptized, children as well, are considered objectively and publicly saints. Not perfected, but being perfected by God. And so there are not other Christians who are intrinsically better than the rest of us with respect to God.
Now, God Almighty, the Holy Spirit in particular, may grant us different gifts. We read that in Corinthians, right? We have a list of gifts. And He tells you, you’re all part of the body of Christ, and stop complaining that you don’t have His gifts or Her gifts and they’re over there and you don’t feel like you have a great gift because you’re a foot and you’re under a shoe and you’re not an eyeball that everyone can see.
You should be happy with what you have, but the whole body is the saint. It’s still the saint of the foot, the saint of the eye. That is, we’re all purified and we’re all loved by our Lord.
So it’s okay to call one another saint, although it’s kind of sounds kind of weird today. And in some contexts, of course, if you have Roman Catholics, you might want to avoid it, or you might want to start a fight. I don’t know.
I wouldn’t recommend starting fights, but it’s kind of sad. Bishop, the word bishop is another one like that. We don’t usually use the word bishop.
It just means overseer, like a shepherd. So it’s okay, but you use it, people are kind of confused. I don’t want to confuse people, so I usually don’t use it.
It’s a good biblical word though. So being called a saint, however, isn’t just a compliment by Paul or an objective description as though that’s kind of interesting, you’re all saints, but it’s also a title, a title that’s a duty. It’s our calling to live up to in that sense.
And so being baptized means being a saint and therefore obliged to live holy and purely before God Almighty. And we can because the divine grace of the Lord God for us, because the basis of being a saint and being pure is a divine basis. That’s why I call it divine purity here in the second point.
We don’t make ourselves saints any more than Paul appointed himself as an apostle. Rather, it was Jesus Christ by the will of God. And so by the will of God as well, although we’re not apostles, you may not even be a church officer, but you are a saint and that is good enough.
And that’s a blessing. God does this for us by baptizing us in the spirit and baptizing us externally. This is the basis.
It is divine. And what’s interesting about being baptized is that as only in God’s infinite wisdom, of course, as he chose it because it was appropriate, you don’t baptize yourself. Someone else is baptized.
You’re passive in your baptism. And so it makes all the more sense. That’s why it represents being born again and being brought into the body of Christ because babies don’t birth themselves as such.
Like I just decide it’s my time. I make this will choice. No, it’s voiced upon him and the mother.
And the same with baptism. Now adults may think otherwise. Well, I choose Jesus.
No, the baptism reminds you to be humble. The pastor baptizes you in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. You don’t baptize yourself.
You’re passive. You’re receiving the grace of God symbolically, of course, in baptism by faith always in the soul. And these saints, of course, he describes here as those faithful in Christ Jesus.
And again, you may ask yourself, what does faithful mean? I don’t think I’m faithful enough, pastor. Well, certainly faithful, at least objectively, insofar as by Christ that we are considered faithful, that he is faithful for us and he represents us. We are justified and therefore declared righteous before God’s law court.
But I think actually here he means more personally and subjectively that as so far as we follow Jesus day by day and do our duty, no matter how marred or imperfect, it is still relatively speaking a real obedience and faithfulness. Compared to unbelievers, although at times they seem to be outwardly more diligent than we are sometimes when it comes to good works, but our heart motivation, of course, is a world difference. And that makes all the difference.
If you compare yourself to your prior life, there’s a big difference as well. So you could talk about faithfulness that way. And I bring this up to remind us that we can talk about being faithful to God in a relative sense, and that’s not necessarily wrong.
The Bible encourages this way of speaking at times. I’ve mentioned this in Hebrews 6.10, and we’re going to run across it in Ephesians as well, that we are predestined unto good works. That’s Ephesians 2.10. Not something you can’t call good works.
He calls them good works. They’re not good enough to get you to heaven. That’s true.
Any more than repentance gets you to heaven as such. I remind you, repentance doesn’t merit you before God. It’s not a good work, but it must be done nevertheless.
And same with good works. They don’t merit it, but they must be done and they will be done and you wanted to do them. And that’s all the difference in the world.
Divine Prayer
Praise God. And lastly, the third point, divine prayer, coming from the divine itself. That is, Paul’s prayer of grace and peace to you is a prayer of a Christian prayer, of a supernatural prayer, that divine grace and divine peace be brought to you.
His prayer is not a magical formula, although he mentions it almost in every letter. It’s a common prayer of his, almost word for word, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Philemon, Colossians, and Philippians. Verses like of Timothy and Titus, however, are slightly different.
He says, grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. So he mentions mercy in that case. Here it’s grace and peace, three things versus two.
It matters not a whit, to be sure. It’s the same idea, isn’t it? Even though it’s more words. He wants good things for God’s people, for you, brothers and sisters, as we ought to want for one another when we pray.
And the prayer here, although not explicitly to God, is to God and about you. To the saints who are at Ephesus, grace to you, not as though he can grant it like he’s Jesus Christ. It’s a shortened prayer.
He’s praying to God that you receive grace and mercy and compassion from the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Continued outflowings of mercy and goodness upon you. That’s the prayer.
In a shortened form, he’s not saying, I am praying. He just says it very briefly and to the point. We shouldn’t lose sight of that.
And the prayer, of course, is for all good things, not just simply grace and peace, and only Titus and Timothy get mercy, but all the good things in the heavenly places, as we’ll see in verse 3. And it shows Paul’s heart of caring consideration. This Christian greeting, this greeting from on high. He’s thinking of them.
He’s wishing well of them. He desires good things for them, a blessing of grace, which is unmerited favor and blessing from on high for sinners, and peace between God and the sinner, or perhaps between Christians, or perhaps within a Christian of his mind and situation, or maybe all of them. He doesn’t specify.
And again, I think it’s probably all of them. Paul wants all kinds of peace for you, specifically, I think, spiritual peace, although he wouldn’t be averse to you being materially blessed as well. The emphasis, of course, in the Christian message is the spiritual goodness of God Almighty.
And these blessings are a divine blessing. Again, that’s divine apostleship, divine saints, and a divine blessing. Grace to you and peace from whom? God, God above, God in heaven, our Father in particular, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Father is described as divine. He’s called God, God, our Father. And Jesus is put on the same footing.
In the same sentence, grace and peace be from God, you could say from the Father, and Jesus Christ. Why would you want grace and peace from a mere man? I think it’s good enough to get it from God, thank you very much. You see where I’m going with this? This is an argument for the deity of Jesus Christ, that blessings, divine blessings and peace come from Him as well.
And when you see this, that which has the attributes of God is God. You’ll find it everywhere in the New Testament that Jesus is God. You don’t have to have, although there are many of them, explicit texts that say Jesus is God.
And this is clearly a divine attribute, grace and peace. That’s what you want, the peace of the judge of the universe. And you get that from Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the second argument for the deity of Christ in verse 2 here is He’s called Lord. And we miss this sometimes. We’re used to thinking God is Father and Lord is just like a title like King for Jesus.
Well, but it’s capital L as it were, and it’s just like capital K. It’s King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Revelation. And often in fact, you won’t necessarily be aware of this, but in quoting the Old Testament when it talks about God, it sometimes uses the word kairos or Lord in the translation of the New Testament. So it’s calling Jesus God, just another synonym.
The synonym for God is Lord. That’s all. And that’s what it is here.
The prayer and desire of the apostle, and it should be your desire as well, when you pray for one another, is that they be granted divine grace and mercy, not merely human. That it comes from Him. Brothers and sisters, the divine basis of Christian greetings, that Paul’s greeting has a divine fingerprints all over it.
His appointment as an apostle was by divine power of Jesus Christ. And your appointment as a Christian is by the divine power of Jesus Christ as well. In particular, you’re called saints and saints from on high.
And we should pray for one another to have more of that divine grace and peace day by day. Amen. Let us pray.
Help us, God, to have such a heart as Paul has here, in which he desires the good of the saints of Ephesus. And surely by this time, he didn’t even know all the Christians, but he thought well of them. And we are in the same situation, God.
We would meet people we know of Christians across the world, and we know a little about them. But our desire, nevertheless, that they name Christ and they are baptized, that grace and peace would be upon them. May this prayer of ours be answered, as only you can answer it from a divine authority on high.
By the blood of Christ we pray, amen.