St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians: A Practical Exposition

If we are to understand at all adequately the world in which St. Paul wrote, the thought of the Roman Empire and of the unity which it was giving the world must be clearly before our minds: and it will not be a digression if we pause to dwell upon it at this point when we are considering the significance of St. Paul's situation as at once a prisoner and an evangelist in the great capital.

The Roman Empire brought the world, that is the whole of the known world which was thought worth considering, into a great unity of government. What had once been independent kingdoms had now become provinces of the empire, and the whole of the Roman policy was directed towards drawing closer the unity, and educating the provinces in Roman ideas[15].

If we seek to define Roman unity a little more closely the following elements will be found perhaps the most important for our purpose. (1) It was a unity of government strongly centralized at Rome in the person of the emperor. The letters of a provincial governor like Pliny to his master Trajan at Rome reveal to us how even trivial matters, such as the formation of a guild of firemen in Pliny's province of Bithynia, were referred up to the emperor. Roman government was in fact personal and centralized in a very complete sense, and had the uniformity which accompanies such a condition. (2) This centralized personal government is, of course, only possible where there is a well-organized system of inter-communication between the widely-separated parts of a great empire. And there was this to an amazing extent in the Roman empire. We find evidence of it in the great roads representing a highly developed system of travelling. 'It is not too much to say that travelling was more highly developed and the dividing power of distance was weaker under the Empire than at any time before or since until we come down to the present century.' This is what gives such a modern and cosmopolitan flavour to the lives of men of the Empire as unlike one another in other respects as Strabo and Jerome. We find the evidence of such a system of inter-communication also, and not less impressively, in the multiplied proofs afforded to us that every movement of thought in the Empire must needs pass to Rome and establish itself there. The rapid arrival of all oriental tendencies or beliefs at Rome was, of course, what from the point of view of conservative Romans meant the destruction of all that they valued in character and ideals. 'The Orontes had poured itself into the Tiber.' But it was none the less a fact of the utmost significance for the world's progress. (3) The unity of the Empire depended largely on the use which was made of Greek civilization and Greek language. The Empire may be rightly described, if we are considering its eastern half, as Greek no less than Roman from the first. Everywhere it was the Greek language which was the instrument of Roman government, and Greek civilization, tempered by somewhat barbarous Roman 'games,' which was put into competition with local customs whether social or religious[16]. (4) Lastly, to a very real extent the Empire was aiming at the establishment of a universal religion. Independent local gods and local cults suited well enough a number of independent little tribes and kingdoms, but it was felt instinctively that the one empire involved also one religion, and with more or less of deliberate intention the one religion was provided in the worship of the emperor, or, perhaps we should say, of the Empire.

This worship of the emperor has been among us a very byword for what is monstrous and unintelligible. It bewilders us when we hear of something like it in our own Indian empire. And yet a little imagination ought to show us that where a pure monotheism has not taught men the moral purity and personal character of God – where religion is either pantheism, the deification of the one life, or idolatry, the deification of separate forms of life – the worship of the imperial authority is intelligible enough. Here was a vast power, universal in its range, mostly beneficent, and yet awful in its limitless and arbitrary power of chastisement; what should it be but divine, like nature, and an object to be appealed to, propitiated, worshipped? At any rate the cultus of the emperor spread in the Roman world, and particularly in the Asiatic provinces. It could ally itself with the current pantheistic philosophy and also with popular local cults: for it was tolerant of all and could embrace them all, or in some cases it could identify itself with them – the emperor being regarded as a special manifestation of the local god. And it made itself popular through games – wild beast shows and gladiatorial contests – which it was the business of its high priests or presidents to provide or to organize. Thus it was that the Roman world came to be organized by provinces for the purposes of the imperial religion, and the provincial presidents, whom we hear of in the Acts as 'Asiarchs' or 'chiefs of Asia,' and from other sources as existing in the other provinces – Galatarchs, Bithyniarchs, Syriarchs, and so on – were also the high priests of the worship of the Caesars, by which it was sought to make religion, like everything else, contribute to cement imperial unity[17].

Now there can be no doubt at all, if we look back from the fourth or fifth centuries of our era, to how vast an extent this Roman unity had been made an engine for the propagation of the Church. And the Christians – the Spanish poet Prudentius, for instance, or Pope Leo the Great[18] – betray a strong consciousness of the place held by the empire in the divine preparation for Christ. For long periods the Roman authority was tolerant of Christianity and suffered its propagation to go on in peace; and at the times when it became alarmed at its subversive tendencies, and turned to become its persecutor, still the Church could not be prevented from using the imperial organization, its roads and its means of communication. Again, every step in the progress of the Greek language facilitated the spread of the new religion, the propagation of which was through Greek; and conversely Christianity became an instrument for spreading the use of this language which previously was making but a poor struggle against the languages of Asia Minor; for it is apparently a simple mistake to suppose that even the apostles were miraculously dispensed from the difficulties of acquiring new languages, and were enabled to speak all languages as it were by instinct. Even the imperial religion provided a framework to facilitate the organization of that still more imperial religion which it found indeed absolutely incompatible with its prerogatives, but in which it might have found an efficient substitute to accomplish its own best ends. Thus the early Christian apologist Tatian pleads that Christianity alone could supply what was manifestly needed for a united world, a universal moral law and a universal gratuitous education or philosophy, open to rich and poor, men and women, alike[19]. So strong in fact was in many respects the affinity of the Empire and the Church that the apologists are not infrequently able to claim, and that plausibly, that if the Roman authorities were ready to recognize it, they would find in the Church their most efficient ally.

And there is no doubt that all this tendency to use the empire as the ally and instrument of the Church began with St. Paul. The closer St. Paul's evangelistic travels are examined the more apparent does it become that he, the apostle who was also the Roman citizen, was by the very force of circumstances, but also probably deliberately, working the Church on the lines of the empire. 'The classification adopted in Paul's own letters of the churches which he founded, is according to provinces – Achaia, Macedonia, Asia, and Galatia; the same fact is clearly visible in the narrative of Acts. It guides and inspires the expressions from the time when the apostle landed at Perga. At every step any one who knows the country recognizes that the Roman division is implied[20].' Nor can we fail to be struck with the regularity with which St. Paul, wherever he mentions the Empire, takes it on its best side and represents it as a divine institution whose officers are God's ministers for justice and order and peace[21]. It is from this point of view alone that he will have Christians think of it and pray for it[22]. There is the confidence of the true son of the empire in his 'I appeal unto Caesar[23].'

Further than this, when St. Paul is addressing himself to Gentiles who had received no leavening of Jewish monotheism, it is most striking how he throws himself back on those common philosophical and religious ideas which were permeating the thought of the Empire. 'The popular philosophy inclined towards pantheism, the popular religion was polytheistic, but Paul starts from the simplest platform common to both. There exists something in the way of a divine nature which the religious try to please and the philosophers try to understand[24].' Close parallels to St. Paul's language in his two recorded speeches at Lystra and at Athens, can be found in the writings of the contemporary Stoic philosopher Seneca[25], and in the so-called 'Letters of Heracleitus' written by some philosophic student nearly contemporary with St. Paul at Ephesus[26]. In exposing the folly of idolaters he was only doing what a contemporary philosopher was doing also, and repeating ideas which he might have learnt almost as readily in the schools of his native city Tarsus – which Strabo speaks of as the most philosophical place in the world, and the place where philosophy was most of all an indigenous plant[27] – as at the feet of Gamaliel in Jerusalem. Certainly Paul the apostle to the Gentiles was also Saul of Tarsus and the citizen of the Roman Empire in whose mind the idea and sentiment of the empire lay already side by side with the idea of the catholic church.

Such a statement as has just been given of the relation of the Roman organization to the Church is undoubtedly true. And it is also indisputable that St. Paul was in fact the pioneer in using the empire for the purposes of the Church. But it is more questionable to what extent the idea of the empire as the handmaid of the Church was consciously and deliberately, or only unconsciously or instinctively, present to his mind; and in particular it is questionable how far the peculiar exaltation of the epistles of the first captivity is due to St. Paul's realization that in getting to Rome, the capital and centre of the Empire, he had reached a goal which was also a fresh and unique starting-point for the evangelization of the world.

To some extent this must certainly have been the case[28]. While he is at Ephesus[29] preaching, he already has Rome in view, and a sense of unaccomplished purpose till he has visited it, 'I must also see Rome.' When a little later he writes to the Romans, the name of Rome is a name both of attraction and of awe. He is eager to go to Rome, but he seems to fear it at the same time. So much as in him lies, he is ready to preach the gospel to them also that are at Rome. Even in face of all that that imperial name means, he is not ashamed of the Gospel[30].

Later the divine vision at Jerusalem assures him that, as he has borne witness concerning Christ at Jerusalem, so he must bear witness also at Rome[31]. The confidence of this divine purpose mingles with and reinforces the confidence of the Roman citizen in his appeal to Caesar. The sense of the divine hand upon him to take him to Rome is strengthened by another vision amid the terrors of the sea voyage[32]. At his first contact with the Roman brethren 'he thanked God and took courage[33].' This sense of thankfulness and encouragement pervades the whole of the first captivity so far as it is represented in his letters. He had reached the goal of his labours and a fresh starting-point for a wide-spreading activity.

Certainly no one can mistake the glow of enthusiasm which pervades the epistles of the first captivity generally, but especially the Epistle to the Ephesians. It is conspicuously, and beyond all the other epistles, rapturous and uplifted. And this is not due – as is the cheerful thankfulness of the Epistle to the Philippians, at least in part – to the specially intimate relations of St. Paul to the congregations he was addressing, or to the specially satisfactory character of their Christian life. On the contrary, St. Paul perceived that the Asiatic churches, and especially Ephesus, were threatened by very ominous perils. 'Very grievous wolves were entering in, not sparing the flock; and among themselves men were arising, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them[34].' St. Paul's rapturous tone must be accounted for by causes independent of the Ephesian or Asiatic Christians in particular. Among these causes, as we have just seen, must be reckoned the fact, the significance of which we have been dwelling upon, that St. Paul had now reached Rome, the centre of the Gentile world. But it must also be remembered that St. Paul had seen a great conflict fought out and won for the catholicity of Christianity, and that now for the first time there was a pause and freedom to take advantage of it.

A great conflict had been fought and won. The backbone of the earlier Jewish opposition to the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles on equal terms had been broken. They had in fact swept into the Church in increasing numbers. Their rights were recognized and their position uncontested. There is now, in the comparative quiet of the 'hired house' where St. Paul was confined, a period of pause in which he can fitly sum up the results which have been won, and let the full meaning of the catholic brotherhood be freely unfolded. It is time to pass from the rudiments of the Christian gospel, the vindication of its most elementary principles and liberties, the 'milk for babes,' to expound the spiritual wisdom of the full-grown Christian manhood, the 'solid meat for them of riper years.'

It is this sense of pause in conflict and free expansion in view of a vast opportunity, which in great part at least interprets the glow and glory of St. Paul's epistle.

iv

The Epistle to the Ephesians might, so far as its contents are concerned, have been addressed to any of the predominantly Gentile churches; but to none more fitly than to Ephesus and to the churches of Asia, where the progress of Gentile Christianity had been so rapid, and where St. Paul's ministry had been so unusually prolonged. Let us attempt to answer the questions – what was Ephesus? what was the history, and what were the circumstances of the Ephesian church?

Ephesus had a double importance as a Greek and as an Asiatic city. A colony of Ionians from Athens had early settled on some hills which rose out of a fertile plain near the mouth of the Cayster. This was the origin of the Greek city of Ephesus. Its position gave it admirable commercial advantages. It became the greatest mart of exchange[35] between East and West in Asia Minor, and though its commerce was threatened by the filling up of its harbour, it had not decayed in St. Paul's time.

Among Greek cities it also occupied a not inconspicuous place in the history of art, and at an earlier period of philosophy also. Here was one of the chief homes of the Homeric tradition; hence in the person of Callinus the Greek elegy is reputed to have had its origin, and in the person of Hipponax the satire. It was the home of Heracleitus, one of the greatest of the early philosophers, and of Apelles and Parrhasius, the masters of painting[36].

And the greatest artists in sculpture – Phidias and Polycletus, Scopas and Praxiteles – had adorned with their works the temple of Artemis, which, in itself one of the wonders of the world, the masterpiece of Ionic architecture, became also, like some great Christian cathedral, a very museum of sculpture and painting.

If Greek artists built and decorated the temple of Artemis, they attempted no doubt to represent the goddess under the form which her Greek name suggested, the beautiful huntress-goddess; but the Greeks never in fact succeeded in affecting the thoroughly Asiatic and oriental character of a worship which had nothing Greek about it except the name. The interest of Ephesus as an Asiatic city centred about that ancient worship which had its home in the plain below the Greek settlement. It was there before the Greeks came, it held its own throughout and in spite of all Greek and Roman influences; all through the history of Ephesus it gave its main character to the city – the noted home of superstition and sorcery.

The Artemis of Ephesus was, as Jerome remarks[37], not the huntress-goddess with her bow, but the many-breasted symbol of the productive and nutritive powers of nature, the mother of all life, free and untamed like the wild beasts who accompanied her. The grotesque and archaic idol believed to have fallen down from heaven was a stiff, erect mummy covered with many breasts and symbols of wild beasts. Her worship was organized by a hierarchy of eunuch priests – called by a Persian name Megabyzi – and 'consecrated' virgins. It was associated, like other worships of the same divinity called indifferently Artemis or Cybele or Ma, with ideals of life which from the point of view of any fixed moral order, Roman or Greek no less than Jewish or Christian, was lawless and immoral.

It is very well known how the Asiatic nature-worships flooded the Roman empire, and even at Rome itself became by far more popular than the traditional state religion. And among these Asiatic worships none was more popular than the worship of Artemis of Ephesus, whose temple was the wonder of the world, and who not only was worshipped publicly at Ephesus, but was the object of a cult both public and private in widely-separated parts of the empire. Such a temple and such a worship would naturally collect a base and corrupt population; but what would in any case have been bad was rendered worse by the fact that the area round the temple was an asylum of refuge from the law, and that, as the area of 'sanctuary' was extended at different times, the collection of criminals became greater and greater. It had reached a point where it threatened the safety of the city, and not long before St. Paul's time the Emperor Augustus had found it necessary to curtail the area. The history of our own Westminster is enough to assure us that a religious asylum brings social degradation in its train.

Such was the commercial and religious importance of the beautiful, wealthy, effeminate, superstitious, and most immoral city which became for three years the centre of St. Paul's ministry. On his second missionary journey St. Paul was making his way to Asia, and no doubt to Ephesus, when he with his companions were hindered by the Holy Ghost and turned across the Hellespont to Macedonia[38]. On his return to Syria, he could not be satisfied without at least setting foot in Ephesus and making a beginning of preaching there in the synagogue[39]; but he was hastening back to Jerusalem, and, with a promise of return, left his work there to Priscilla and Aquila. On his third missionary journey Ephesus was the centre of his prolonged work. It was accordingly the only city of the first rank which, so far as any trustworthy evidence goes, had as the founder of its Church in the strictest sense – that is, as the first gatherer of converts as well as organizer of institutions – either St. Paul or any other apostle[40].

St. Paul's first activity on arriving at Ephesus illustrates the stress he laid on the gift of the Holy Ghost as the central characteristic of Christianity. He was brought in contact with the twelve imperfect disciples who had been baptized only with John the Baptist's baptism, and had not so much as heard whether the Holy Ghost was given. St. Paul baptized them anew with Christian baptism, and bestowed upon them the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of his hands[41]. Then it is recorded how he began his preaching as usual with the Jews in the synagogue. The Jews of Asia Minor were regarded by the Jews of Jerusalem as corrupted and Hellenized[42]. But at any rate they exhibited the same antagonism to the preaching of Christianity as their stricter brethren. Thus St. Paul, when he had given them their chance, abandoned their synagogue and established himself in the lecture-room of Tyrannus, where he taught for two years and more[43]. And this became the centre of an evangelization which, even if St. Paul himself did not visit other Asiatic towns, yet spread by the agency of his companions over the whole of the Roman province of Asia – to the churches of the Lycus, Colossae, Laodicea, Hierapolis, and probably to the rest of the 'seven churches' to which St. John wrote in his Apocalypse.

Ephesus was full of superstitions of all sorts as would be expected, and St. Paul's miracles were such as would not unnaturally have led the magicians to regard him as a greater master in their own craft. So among others the Jewish chief priest Sceva's seven sons began to use the central name of Paul's preaching as a new and most efficient formula for exorcism. 'We adjure thee by Jesus whom Paul preaches.' But it is frequently noticeable that St. Paul refused to allow himself to use superstition as a handmaid of religion. The providential disaster which befell these exorcists gave St. Paul an opportunity of striking an effective blow where it was most needed against exorcism and magic. The Christian converts came and confessed their participation in the black arts, and burnt their books of incantations, in spite of their value. The whole transaction must have impressed vividly in the minds of the Ephesians the contrast between Christianity and superstition.

St. Paul had already encountered opposition as well as success at Ephesus, for when, writing from Ephesus, he speaks to the Corinthians[44] of having 'fought with beasts' there, the reference is probably to what had befallen him in the earlier part of his residence through the plots of the Jews; that long Epistle to the Corinthians can hardly have been written after the famous tumult recorded in the Acts. But that tumult, raised by the manufacturers of the silver shrines of Artemis, was of course the most important persecution which befell St. Paul at Ephesus. The narrative of it[45] is exceedingly instructive. We notice the friendliness of the Asiarchs, i.e. the presidents of the provincial 'union' and priests of the imperial worship, and the opinion of the town clerk, that St. Paul must be acquitted of any insults to the religious beliefs of the Ephesians[46]. Christianity had not, it appears, yet excited the antipathy of the religious or civil authorities of the Empire, but it had begun to threaten the pockets of those who were concerned in supplying the needs of the worshippers who thronged to the great temple at Ephesus. We need not inquire exactly how the little silver shrines of Artemis were used; but they were much sought after, and their production gave occupation to an important trade. The trade was threatened by the spread of Christianity. The philosophers despised indeed the idolatrous rites, but they despised also the people who practised them, and had no hope or idea of converting them[47]. St. Paul was the first teacher at Ephesus who touched the fears of the idol makers by bringing a pure religion to the hearts of the ordinary people. Hence the tumult against the teachers of the new religion, raised not by the civil or religious authorities of Ephesus, but simply by the trade interest.

As soon as it was over St. Paul left Ephesus not to return there again. But on his way back to Jerusalem he came not to Ephesus but to Miletus, and sending for the Ephesian presbyters thither, he made them a farewell speech[48], which is in conspicuous harmony with the features of his later Epistle to the Ephesians. Already the doctrines of a divine purpose or counsel now revealed, of the Church in general as the object of the divine self-sacrifice and love, and of the Holy Ghost as accomplishing her sanctification and developing her structure, appear to be prominent in his mind, and to have become familiar topics with the Ephesian Christians. 'I shrank not from declaring unto you the whole counsel of God. Take heed unto yourselves and to all the flock, in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood… And now I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all them that are sanctified.' These words from St. Paul's speech to the Ephesian presbyters are in remarkable affinity with the teaching of our epistle.