I just finished studying the book of Ephesians using the book, The Vision of Ephesians: The Task Of The Church And The Glory Of God, by N. T. Wright. I have studied the book of Ephesians several times in my life, both in Greek and in English translation. N. T. Wright reveals things that I missed about Ephesians and substantiates a better emphasis than the one I learned.
Here are samples of quotes from the book:
Ephesians offers a breathtaking vision of the creator’s purposes for the cosmos, of how those purposes were and are fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah and the holy spirit, and – not least – of the vital role within these purposes that the church is now called to play.
Paul’s view of salvation is not about being rescued from the world, but about the coming together of heaven and earth. . .
But the Reformation was from the first a fissiparous movement. Once you have split once, it’s dangerously easy to do it again. Quite soon, the churches of the Reformation subdivided into national and ethnic groupings, with distinctive theologies and polities
So what has happened to Ephesians, I think, is that we have highlighted the passages which apparently speak of salvation in the terms to which our traditions have accustomed us, and we have downplayed or ignored the emphasis on cross-cultural unity. Once we have done that, we leave Ephesians as, indeed, a book of dogma and ethics. And, of course, dogma and ethics really are there. But they are there within that vision of the church as the small working model of new creation, with the coming together of heaven and earth symbolised by the coming together of Judaean and Gentile. And that emphasis has been horribly lacking, with terrible effects, in the Western churches of the last 500 years.
Holiness, after all, isn’t just a matter of complying with various rules. The rules are simply guard rails on either side of the rich, straight path of God’s new creation.
N. T. Wright claims that the main emphasis of the book of Ephesians is about the task of the church and the glory of God and the church’s vision is to be the small working model of new creation bringing together heaven and earth.
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