Ephesians 1: Every Blessing In Him · Return to the Bible

Ephesians does not warm up. After the briefest of openings (verses 1 to 2), Paul lifts off into the longest sentence in the New Testament, a single Greek berakah (verses 3 to 14) that does not stop for breath, refuses to be reduced to bullet points, and locates every blessing the gospel announces in him. The repetition is not a stylistic tic; it is the chapter’s theology in miniature. There is no detachable benefit of salvation. The Christian is not a person who has received forgiveness, adoption, redemption, sealing, and inheritance as a stack of separate gifts; the Christian is a person who has been incorporated into Christ, in whom all of those gifts are simultaneously, inseparably true. To be saved, in Ephesians, is to be located.

The chapter has three movements. The first (verses 1 to 2) is the greeting, with a textual quiet thunder hidden in verse 1: the words “in Ephesus” are missing from the earliest copies, and the letter circulates. The second (verses 3 to 14) is the berakah, a single sentence in Greek covering chosen, adopted, graced, redeemed, sealed, with the mystery of God’s plan named at its center: to sum up all things in Christ. The third (verses 15 to 23) is Paul’s first prayer, climbing toward one of the New Testament’s most concentrated statements of cosmic Christology: Christ enthroned at God’s right hand, far above every cosmic power, head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Underneath all three movements is the chapter’s structural verb: in him, en Christo. The Greek phrase and its variants appear eleven times in twenty-three verses, and the chapter cannot be read without it. Paul is not adding ornament to the gospel; he is locating it. Salvation has an address.

A · Ephesians 1:1-2 · To the saints: the circular letter

¹ Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus: ² Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 1:1-2, World English Bible)

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God (verse 1a). The greeting is conventional by Paul’s standards, with none of the white-hot self-defense that opens Galatians 1. There is no embattled apostle here; there is simply an apostle writing to a region. The phrase through the will of God (dia thelematos theou) names Paul’s commission as something received, not constructed, the same instinct he opens 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and Colossians with. The chapter to come will be a meditation on a will, God’s, that has been at work before the foundation of the world (verse 4); it is appropriate that Paul names himself by reference to that same will from the opening word.
to the saints who are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus (verse 1b). The verse contains one of the most-discussed textual variants in the New Testament: the words “in Ephesus” (en Epheso) are missing from the earliest and most important manuscripts. The omission is original to P46 (c. AD 200), the original hand of Codex Sinaiticus, and Codex Vaticanus. The early second-century church knew of a copy circulating “to the Laodiceans” (Tertullian’s report about Marcion’s canon). Origen explicitly notes the absence of “in Ephesus” in his copy. The simplest explanation, accepted across most modern commentaries (Cohick, Lincoln, Markus Barth, Wright), is that Ephesians was a circular letter, almost certainly carried by Tychicus (6:21) around the network of house churches in Roman Asia, with the destination city filled in locally as the letter arrived in each town. Ephesus was the regional hub and the natural first stop, which is why the Ephesus version of the addressee survived; Laodicea was probably a later stop on the same route. The practical consequence: this letter is catholic, universal, addressing no specific congregational crisis. It is Paul’s vision of the gospel sent to a region, not his troubleshooting of a particular church. That texture shapes everything that follows.

Translation note: how the versions handle “in Ephesus” (1:1)

Most modern English translations keep “in Ephesus” in the main text and footnote the variant. The NRSVue’s footnote is unusually candid: “Other ancient authorities lack ‘in Ephesus.’” The NET Bible footnote is even more direct: “The earliest and best manuscripts of Ephesians do not contain the words ‘in Ephesus’ here.” Older critical editions (e.g., Westcott-Hort, 1881) bracketed the words. The site’s reading lane accepts “in Ephesus” as the title-card the historical letter eventually wore once Tychicus arrived at the regional hub, while keeping the original circular character visible. We are reading a letter that was always for the church before it was for any one church.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (verse 2). The standard Pauline greeting that nevertheless does theological work. Charis (grace) and eirene (peace) come paired from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, the same Father and the same Lord, named together, named as the single divine source from which both grace and peace flow. The chapter to come will spend twenty-one verses unpacking what is given in this one greeting.

B · Ephesians 1:3-14 · Every spiritual blessing in him: the great berakah

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, ⁴ even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and without defect before him in love, ⁵ having predestined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his desire, ⁶ to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he freely gave us favor in the Beloved. ⁷ In him we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace ⁸ which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, ⁹ making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him ¹⁰ to an administration of the fullness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in him. ¹¹ We were also assigned an inheritance in him, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who does all things after the counsel of his will, ¹² to the end that we should be to the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ. ¹³ In him you also, having heard the word of the truth, the Good News of your salvation, in whom, having also believed, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, ¹⁴ who is a pledge of our inheritance, to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:3-14, World English Bible)

A sky breaking into dawn over a wide horizon, a single shaft of golden light spilling down across the whole landscape, evoking every spiritual blessing in him being made known — Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (verse 3a). The opening word, eulogetos (blessed), launches what the Greek text presents as a single sentence running from verse 3 all the way to verse 14, the longest sentence in the New Testament. English translations break it up into shorter sentences for readability; the original is one continuous, breathless declaration of praise, a berakah. The form is Jewish. Every Jewish prayer of blessing begins Baruch atah Adonai, “Blessed are you, O Lord,” and Paul’s eulogetos ho theos is the direct Greek calque of exactly that opening. He is praying a synagogue-shaped prayer with a Christological climax. From the first word, Ephesians is the Hebrew Bible’s blessing-language refigured around the risen Christ.
who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (verse 3b). The structural verb of the entire chapter arrives in three Greek phrases stacked together: en pasē eulogia pneumatikē (with every spiritual blessing), en tois epouraniois (in the heavenly places), en Christo (in Christ). Each en is doing real work. In every spiritual blessing names the gift; in the heavenly places names the spatial frame (the unseen realm Christ now reigns over); in Christ names the location of both. The verse is the chapter’s thesis in a single line. To be blessed is to be located.

Word study: en Christo and its variants (ἐν Χριστῷ), “in Christ”

The phrase that will not stop appearing. Across Ephesians as a whole, en Christo and its variants (en autō “in him,” en hō “in whom,” en tō Christo “in the Christ,” en tō Ēgapēmenō “in the Beloved”) occur about thirty-six times, the densest concentration in the New Testament. In the twelve verses of 1:3-14 alone the phrase appears at least eleven times, anchoring every theological claim: blessed in Christ (verse 3), chose in him (verse 4), adopted through Jesus Christ (verse 5), graced in the Beloved (verse 6), redeemed in him (verse 7), mystery in him (verse 9), summed up in Christ / in him (verse 10), assigned an inheritance in him (verse 11), hoped in Christ (verse 12), sealed in him (verse 13). What the repetition does is name a participatory salvation: the believer’s standing is not a list of separable benefits granted to a person who remains spiritually external to Christ, but a single belonging in him from which everything else flows. Constantine Campbell’s Paul and Union with Christ (2012) names the four interlocking realities the phrase carries: union (the new status), participation (sharing in his narrative), identification (with his pivotal events), and incorporation (into his body, the church). All four are present in this passage. See in Christ: participation and union.

Influence callout: Lynn Cohick (NICNT Ephesians) on the world’s longest sentence

Cohick’s NICNT commentary opens its treatment of 1:3-14 with the observation that what English readers experience as a paragraph is in Greek a single continuous sentence, the longest in the New Testament, “a single, complex, virtuoso act of praise” that piles dependent clauses one on top of another until the reader has lost count of how many things God has done. The form, Cohick argues, is doing theological work the content alone cannot do. The reader is meant to feel overwhelmed, to feel the giftedness of the gospel as something larger than the categories the modern reader will try to break it into. Cohick also documents the structural feature that gives the sentence its shape: every theological assertion in it is qualified by en Christo or one of its variants. Take “in him” out of Ephesians 1, Cohick suggests, and the passage collapses. The doctrine is the location. We owe Cohick’s careful, sustained reading of this passage much of the lane’s exegetical baseline for the whole letter.

even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and without defect before him in love (verse 4). The chapter’s first theological declaration. Exelexato hēmas en autō (“he chose us in him”) is the language of election, and Paul places it before the foundation of the world. The purpose-clause matters: the choosing is for a particular outcome, that we would be holy and without defect before him in love. The word amomous (“without defect”) is sacrificial vocabulary, used in the Septuagint for the unblemished animal acceptable for offering (Lev 1:3, 10; etc.). Election here is not the cold mathematical sorting that later debates would make of it; it is the call to be a sanctified people, a sacrifice acceptable before God, in love. The phrase in love sits at the end of verse 4 in Greek and could grammatically modify either what precedes (we are blameless in love) or what follows (verse 5: in love having predestined us); the WEB’s choice to place it at the end of verse 4 captures the dominant reading. Either way, love is the medium of election, not its competitor.
having predestined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ to himself (verse 5). The Greek noun huiothesia (adoption) is one of Paul’s signature theological terms (Rom 8:15, 23; 9:4; Gal 4:5; here). In the Roman-legal world Paul lived in, huiothesia was a public, irrevocable act in which a paterfamilias took a person of any age, often an adult, even sometimes a former slave, and made them his legal son with full standing, full inheritance, and a new name. The chosen people of God are adopted into the family of the One who chose them; the relationship is not transactional but filial, and it is through Jesus Christ that the adoption is made. The doctrine the chapter is laying down is not “God has elected to save certain individuals from condemnation”; it is “God has decided to adopt the gentiles as his own family in his Son” (a theme 2:11-22 will make explicit). See adoption and sonship.
to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he freely gave us favor in the Beloved (verse 6). The first of three almost-identical doxological refrains that punctuate the berakah (also verses 12, 14): to the praise of his glory. The Greek echaritōsen (he graced) is built on the noun charis (grace); Paul is essentially saying he graced us with grace, and the verb only appears in one other place in the New Testament, the angel’s greeting to Mary in Luke 1:28 (kecharitōmenē, “favored one”). To be in Christ is to be a Mary-like recipient of unearned divine welcome.
In him we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace (verse 7). Two of the chapter’s most theologically loaded Greek words appear here: apolytrōsis (redemption, the language of buying a slave out of bondage) and aphesis (forgiveness, the language of release and cancellation). Both are in him. The cross is not, in this verse, a transaction across distance; it is the place where being in him is purchased. The “blood” language here will deepen in 2:13 (brought near in the blood of Christ) and 5:25-27 (the cleansing of the church by the washing of water with the word).

Influence callout: Mike Erre (Voxology / Journey Church) on Ephesians 1:9-10 as the box top

Erre’s Offspring series opens by reading the whole letter through verses 9 and 10. The “mystery of his will” Paul names is “to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.” Erre’s image is the box top of a puzzle: if you do not have the box top, you cannot tell what the individual pieces are supposed to become. The thesis of Ephesians, on his reading, is the summing up (anakephalaiōsasthai, verse 10) of all reality under one rightful head, and every chapter in the letter is then a piece of that puzzle, each one fitting only when held against the box-top picture. The pastoral payoff Erre keeps returning to: the gospel cannot be reduced to me and God. The gospel is the bringing back together of a fractured cosmos, and the church is the place where that bringing-back is already being staged. The reading lines up with Irenaeus’s classical doctrine of recapitulation (Christ as the new head in whom all things are gathered) and with the lane’s framework of cosmic Christology. It also lines up with what the chapter is going to say about the church (the body of him who fills all things, verses 22-23): if the box top is unity, the church is where the puzzle is being put together one piece at a time.

making known to us the mystery of his will… to sum up all things in Christ (verses 9-10). The Greek word mystērion (mystery) is one of Ephesians’ most concentrated themes (1:9; 3:3, 4, 9; 5:32; 6:19). In Paul’s usage, mystery is not esoteric knowledge for spiritual insiders; it is the cosmic plan of God that was hidden and is now revealed. Verse 10’s startling verb anakephalaiōsasthai (“to sum up under one head”) is built on kephalē (head); the related noun runs through the rest of the letter (1:22, head over all things; 4:15, head; 5:23, head of the wife and head of the church). Irenaeus would later make this verse the foundation of his recapitulation doctrine: all things in heaven and on earth are gathered up and re-headed in the Messiah. The “mystery” is not a puzzle; it is the box top.
In him you also, having heard the word of the truth, the Good News of your salvation, in whom, having also believed, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is a pledge of our inheritance (verses 13-14). The berakah’s climactic moment for the gentile reader. Paul shifts from “we” to “you” (and in verse 14 back to “our”), addressing the gentile believers in the Asian churches directly: you also are inside this. The verbs hearing, believing, and being sealed compress the gospel’s reception into three quick movements. The “sealing” (esphragisthēte) imagery is from a signet ring pressed into wax: a mark of ownership and protection, claiming the document or property as the owner’s. The Spirit is the arrabōn, the Greek commercial term for a down-payment that guarantees the full purchase. The Spirit is not the future inheritance held back from us until the eschaton; the Spirit is the present share of it, the eschaton already at work in us. To be in him is to already have the down-payment of the age to come.

Where this lands: every blessing has an address

The shape of Ephesians 1 is the shape of a Christianity that knows where it lives. Modern American Christianity has often unconsciously taught its members to read their blessings as if they were objects: I have forgiveness, I have the Spirit, I have an inheritance, with the gifts conceptually detached from the Giver. The Greek text of this chapter quietly refuses that picture. Every gift in the berakah is in him, located in the risen Christ who is now the address of the believer’s whole life. The pastoral consequence is not abstract. When you cannot feel forgiven, the place to look is not your interior mood; it is in him. When you cannot sense the Spirit, the place to look is not the worship set; it is in him. When you fear you have lost the inheritance, the place to look is in him. To be a Christian is not to carry a stack of acquired benefits; it is to belong to a person and to live at his address. The eleven repetitions of “in him” in this passage are not stylistic. They are the chapter’s whole pastoral counsel.

C · Ephesians 1:15-23 · The first prayer: Christ enthroned far above

¹⁵ For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you and the love which you have toward all the saints, ¹⁶ don’t cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, ¹⁷ that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, ¹⁸ having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, ¹⁹ and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might ²⁰ which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹ far above all rule, authority, power, dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come. ²² He put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things for the assembly, ²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:15-23, World English Bible)

For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you and the love which you have toward all the saints, don’t cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers (verses 15-16). After the berakah, Paul turns to prayer. He has heard of the Asian churches’ faith and love (note the heard: a circular letter, written to congregations Paul does not personally know in every case). The prayer he is about to pray is for understanding: not that the believers might receive more, but that they might see what they have already been given.
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened (verses 17-18a). The petition is one of the most beautiful in the Pauline corpus. Paul does not pray for new circumstances or new feelings; he prays for eyes. The phrase pephotismenous tous ophthalmous tēs kardias (having the eyes of your hearts enlightened) is striking even in Greek; the heart, in Hebrew anthropology, is the center of understanding and will, and Paul is asking for it to see. The implication is that the truth of the gospel is already there to be perceived; what the church needs is the perceptive faculty to see it. This is one of the chapter’s most pastorally radical claims. We do not need more in order to live the Christian life; we need eyes for what is.
that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe (verses 18b-19a). Three objects of the prayed-for sight: the hope of God’s calling (the eschatological direction), the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints (the wealth of belonging to the redeemed community), the exceeding greatness of his power (the divine capacity already at work in the believer). The prayer is for the church to see what God has set before her, what she belongs to, and what is operative in her. Western Christianity often inverts this prayer, asking for more power as if the believer did not yet have it; Paul prays the opposite, that the church might see the power it already has been given access to.

Influence callout: Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the God of Israel) on the divine-identity climax (1:20-23)

Bauckham’s divine identity Christology is the conceptual backbone for reading verses 20 to 23 honestly. In Second-Temple Jewish monotheism, the One God was identified by who he uniquely was: the sole creator, the sole sovereign over all things, the sole recipient of worship, the One enthroned above the bene Elohim and the unseen powers. Paul, here, takes every one of those identifying marks and applies them to the risen Jesus. God raised him; God seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places; God placed him far above all rule, authority, power, dominion, and every name that is named; God put all things in subjection under his feet; God gave him to be head over all things. The categories that distinguished the One God from creatures are now applied to the risen Jesus. This is not a “high Christology” that the early church developed gradually over decades; it is already the shape of Paul’s confession in the first generation. Bauckham’s argument refuses the older scholarship that distinguished a “functional” early Christology from a “ontological” later one. The early church’s confession of Jesus inside the divine identity of Israel’s God is original to the gospel, not a later imposition. See cosmic Christology.

far above all rule, authority, power, dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come (verse 21). The four nouns archē, exousia, dynamis, kyriotēs (rule, authority, power, dominion) are the standard Second-Temple Jewish and Greco-Roman vocabulary for unseen cosmic agencies, the powers the New Testament keeps naming. The Greek hyperanō (hyper + anō, “above-above”) is double emphasis; every name that is named answers the magical-religious culture of Roman Asia, where the naming of powers was the mechanism of magical control (the Ephesia Grammata, the magical papyri, the cult of Artemis). Paul’s claim is direct: the cosmos those texts try to map and bind is under one Lord, and his Name is above every name. The phrase not only in this age, but also in that which is to come names the temporal dimension of the same claim: Christ’s lordship is not bounded by either world (see apocalyptic Paul and powers and principalities).
He put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things for the assembly, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all (verses 22-23). The chapter’s stunning final move. Put all things in subjection under his feet quotes Psalm 8:6 (where the subject is humanity, the new Adam given dominion), while made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places quotes Psalm 110:1 (where the subject is the messianic Lord). Paul fuses the two. The risen Christ is both the human in whom dominion is at last realized and the divine Lord enthroned over the cosmos. The fusion answers two questions in a single composite citation: who is he? (the new human; the divine Lord) and what is his rule? (over all things; at God’s right hand). And then the final clause: the church, which is his body, the fullness (plērōma) of him who fills all in all. The cosmic Lord is given for the church; the church is located inside the cosmic Christology, the place where his plērōma (fullness) is concentrated. This is temple language. In the Hebrew Bible, God’s glory fills the tabernacle and the temple (Exod 40:34; 1 Kings 8:10-11); here, the risen Christ fills all things, and the church is where that fullness is housed (cf. 2:21-22, the holy temple in the Lord). The cosmic Christology of verses 20 to 22 ends, in verse 23, on the church. The bigness of Christ does not crowd the church out; it makes her what she is.

Where this lands: praying for eyes

If verses 3 to 14 ask the modern reader to feel the givenness of the gospel, verses 15 to 23 ask her to see it. The Christianity Ephesians 1 is forming is not a Christianity of striving for more; it is a Christianity of asking for eyes. The prayer Paul prays is for enlightened eyes of the heart, not enlarged inventories of blessing. The pastoral implication is daily. When the Christian life feels small, the most-Pauline first prayer is not Lord, give me more; it is Lord, let me see what you have already given. The church that prays Paul’s prayer is the church that walks worthy of the calling it has been called to (4:1), not because it has produced anything new, but because it has at last seen something that was always there.

Reflection prompts

The phrase en Christo appears about eleven times in 1:3-14, anchoring every blessing in him rather than treating any blessing as a separable object you can carry around independently of him. Where in your spiritual life have you been holding gifts (forgiveness, peace, the Spirit, hope) as if they could exist apart from him? What changes if you have to go to him to find them?
The mystery of God’s will (1:9-10) is the bringing together of all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. If that is the box top of the gospel, where in your life right now are you living as if the gospel were only about you and God with nothing else gathered into it? What “all things” might God be summing up that you have not yet noticed?
Paul’s prayer (1:17-19) is for eyes, not for more. Is there a place in your life where you have been asking God to give you something you have already been given, and what would it look like to start asking instead for the sight to see it?

Frameworks at play in this chapter: in Christ: participation and union, cosmic Christology, adoption and sonship, apocalyptic Paul, counter-imperial reading, powers and principalities, tabernacle as cosmic temple.