Title: Introduction to The Prison Epistles and The Book of Ephesians Text: Ephesians Scripture Intro: [Slide 1] Turn in your bible to the book of Ephesians. In a few moments I will ask 6 readers to come to the front to read a chapter of this amazing book. At any time during this intro, if you would like to volunteer to read, you may come up to the front and have a seat. You don’t have to wait until the end to do so. Today we begin a lengthy series covering the Prison Epistles. Let me get the preliminary questions out of the way before we dive in. What are the Prison Epistles? Hey, that’s a great question! The Prison Epistles are a group of letters written by Paul so named because they all are written while Paul is in prison. In fact, based on who Paul sends with the letters, we assume they were all written during the same imprisonment. Which one? We’ll save that for our introduction to the book of Ephesians. But for now, that is why these books are called the Prison Epistles. What books are included in the Prison Epistles? Another amazing question! The prison epistles include four letters. Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Hey wait, didn’t you already preach through Philemon? Wow! You remember that long ago? Yes! I did. While I was candidating to be the pastor here, I preached a two-part series on the book of Philemon. Since it was not recorded and since I wasn’t officially the pastor yet, I thought it might be cool to preach through the book again 10 years later. 😊 So, 4 books, how long is this gonna take? Again, you have some great questions! I’m not a prophet, but after preaching through 15 New Testament books in my 10 years here, you can gather the data points to get an idea of about how long I usually take to preach thought by thought through a book. I am estimating that this entire series will take anywhere from 50-75 sermons to complete. Which puts us at probably a year and a half to complete it, give or take a month. So, why the prison epistles? You all are on fire with the questions today! I actually really wanted to study the prison epistles right after we finished the book of Acts but because the prison epistles contain many of the same themes and because it would be another lengthy study, I felt the Lord lead me to something else which is why we studied 1 and 2 Thessalonians. But my initial desire to study the Prison Epistles after Acts stemmed from the date discussion we will have in just a moment concerning the book of Ephesians, so I’ll save those details until then. I think that is most of the initial questions before we actually dive into the series and the book intro. But before we do – let’s take a moment to ask the Lord to be with us this morning. [Slide 2] Series or Four Independent books? This morning I have been, perhaps, a little unclear on what exactly we are doing. I am talking about a series and also about a book study. So, the question arises, are these four letters independent of one another or are they a series? Well because they are written to four distinct audiences, I have to say that this is really more of four independent books than a true series. However, the themes of Ephesians and Colossians are so similar it is hard to imagine that there is no connection between the books. Philemon and Philippians are outliers though. Philippians is very different from Ephesians and Colossians thematically and Philemon isn’t written to a church at all but to one person… a man named Philemon. Nevertheless, because Paul probably wrote these in such a short time, I can’t help but see them together, even if they are probably more of 4 independent studies. So, we will loosely introduce this as a series and preach through them accordingly. I plan to cover them in canonical order. There is some debate over which letter is sent first. But thematically, if we go through Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and then Philemon – the topics we address will never get stale. I say that because Ephesians and Colossians are remarkably similar. Although Colossians is a good deal shorter and much more argumentative than Ephesians, it is estimated that a little over half of what is said in Ephesians is also found in identical expressions in Colossians. Separating our study of Ephesians and Colossians with Philippians will be a good break between them. But this point about Ephesians and Colossians being so similar is what brings us to the debate over authorship. [Slide 3] Authorship: Really until the Enlightenment and the modern era, no one in the history of the church questioned whether or not Paul wrote the book of Ephesians. It has been only recently that many have supposed that a person posing as Paul took up the style and content of Paul’s letter to the Colossians and endeavored to write a letter that seemed like it was Paul’s but it actually wasn’t. There are, of course, MANY difficulties with assuming that this is the case with the book of Ephesians. First, Paul is named directly. He identifies himself as the author. Although this doesn’t dismiss the possibility of someone pretending to be Paul, it does change the argument from one of authorship to one of canonicity. If someone claims to be someone they aren’t… what do we call that? Yes. A lie. And if this letter is supposed to be inspired of God, can God lie? No. So if Paul is not the author of this book, this book doesn’t belong in the bible. Plain and simple. Second, if Paul wrote Colossians and Ephesians at the same time, we might expect him to have similar themes and expressions distributed in these letters. In fact, Tychicus is identified as the messenger delivering Ephesians and Colossians, almost assuring us that they were sent together. Colosse is actually fairly close to Ephesus, so the issues that Paul is addressing in Colosse could be just as pertinent to the Ephesians too. So why not write the same things to two different churches? But one of the biggest challenges to Pauline authorship is identifying who exactly the audience is for this book we call, Ephesians. [Slide 4] Original Audience: Astute readers will see the name of the book and read verse 1 of the first chapter and wonder why this is uncertain. It says Ephesians and Paul addresses this to the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus. Case closed! Well, not exactly. There are three big challenges to this letter being written to the church in Ephesus. First, the words “at Ephesus” do not appear in the earliest manuscripts we have of this letter. It says, “To the saints who are and faithful in Christ Jesus”. Second, Marcion, a second century gnostic heretic, who made waves trying to control what books were included in the canon and what books weren’t, wrote about this letter that Paul wrote, only he said that Paul wrote it to the Laodiceans. Finally, as we scour the book of Ephesians, it is quite interesting to discover that Paul never once names anyone, nor does he call out any particular problem or issue that he is addressing that is unique to Ephesus. In fact, Ephesians is the only book in the entire Pauline corpus that we can look at and say – there is no reason that Paul HAD to write this. There is no issue he is addressing or heresy he is correcting. Because of this, some modern scholars doubt the Pauline authorship of Ephesians and attribute it to a cunning imposter who doesn’t say anything specific so he won’t get caught. But one main problem with this line of argumentation is that the early church did not look highly upon works pretending to be written by apostles or other famous people in the church. From the earliest records we have, no one, not even Marcion the heretic, doubted that Paul wrote this book. This is because, typically, Paul sent his letters WITH people who vouched for the letter as having been written by the person who signed it. Although that might put to bed the uncertainty about the authorship, it still doesn’t answer our questions about who is the original audience of this book? Well, let’s go back to the manuscripts that omit the phrase “at Ephesus”. See the problem with that is that syntactically, that Greek sentence, although technically correct, is quite awkward. [Slide 5] I have put the two possible ways to translate it on the screen here. Keep in mind that the Greek word “and” can also be translated “also” “To the saints who are and faithful in Christ Jesus” is really awkward both in English and in Greek. Paul is talking about their existence and their faithfulness… If he just mentions their faithfulness, he need not mention their existence. “To the saints who are also faithful in Christ Jesus” is also really awkward in Greek and also Theologically. This isn’t normally how we’d see the word “also” used in Greek and for Paul to express that they are saints and that somehow in addition to that, they are also faithful in Christ Jesus, is problematic to say the least. How can you be a saint and NOT be faithful in Jesus Christ? What does this mean? It could mean that “at Ephesus” was omitted on accident, or, that those words were NOT present in the original letter that Paul sent, but a blank space was. Most scholars conclude that Ephesians was a circular letter. Ephesus, like many modern cities, had many villages and suburbs surrounding the city where the gospel had no doubt spread in the five years that Paul had been absent from them. Ephesus is also very close to several other city churches mentioned in the New Testament. Cities like Smyrna, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, and Miletus among others a little further away. The thought is that since the book of Ephesians is not addressing a particular problem or issue in a church, that it wa
