Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus

What sort of mail do you get?

I ask this to remind you that how you respond to something in your mailbox often depends on who you think sent it. Bills usually provoke a sigh. Personal letters and cards are often a delight. Direct mail ads—whether selling cars, credit cards, or political candidates—probably go into the wastepaper basket without being opened. Of course, direct-mail marketers know this is a common habit and attempt to get around it. I have received letters that look like big checks just waiting to be deposited in my account as free money. Other times, I have gotten letters that are designed to make me think that the president of the United States sat down and jotted me a personal note.

Of course, a letter in an envelope that seems to be from the White House almost never sees the light of day. I just throw it in the trash with the rest of the junk mail, unopened. After all, I know that the President and I are not close personal friends. I have no reason to expect a letter from him.

But what it, one day, as I sat here typing this manuscript, there was a knock at the door. I looked out the window and saw two men dressed in black with ties and dark sunglasses. When I opened the door they say in officious tones that the President has a message for me, and hand me a sealed envelope made of quality paper. In those sorts of circumstance I would perhaps start to believe I had received a letter from the leader of the free world.

Why should anyone care what Paul thinks? Why should anyone read his letter?

That must be a good question because Paul answers it before he writes anything else. Paul is an ambassador, a delagate, an agent, an appointed representative. The title apostle means all those things and more in this case. But Paul writes as the apostle of Christ Jesus which means that we must think of him as a royal ambassador for another kingdom.

Why “royal”? Because that is exactly what it means to be appointed by Christ Jesus.

The term “Christ” is the Greek word for anointed. In Israel a priest or king was installed into office by being anointed with oil. The ritual represented the action of God’s Spirit in appointing someone to and equipping and empowering him for office. When God rescued Israel from Egypt and had them build a tent for him to dwell in their midst, Aaron, the first Priest to serve God there, was anointed with oil (Leviticus 8.12). Samuel the prophet anointed David with oil to declare him king of Israel (First Samuel 16.13). David was the beginning of a royal dynasty in Israel that remained in power (more or less) until Israel was invaded by the Babylonian Empire and deported. Since that time, as Israel hoped for a return for the glory that they had when they were indendent, they came to expect God to restore a new descendant of David to the throne. In the Hebrew language, the expected King was called “the Messiah.” In Greek, he was called “the Christ.” Both mean, “the anointed one,” referring to God’s promise to appoint someone as a new king for a renewed kingdom.

This has a great deal of import as to how we are to read Paul’s letter. In the late popular television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ancient texts were constantly studied in order to find obscure prophecies about the future or else give clues as to how to deal with supernatural forces. Some people assume the Bible is meant to be regarded in this manner and either revere it in this fashion or dismiss because they know there are no such forces.

A popular genre today are self-help books, which are produced in both secular and spiritual styles. Many see this as the role for Biblical literature. Paul is writing practical advice for us to be better people, or to give us inspiration for living.

But Paul’s own interpretation of himself says that he is writing as the representative of the heir and ruler of the world. Even though Paul (as we will see) regarded himself as commissioned to represent Jesus to the nations outside Israel, and even when he was reviled and persecuted by fellow Israelites for doing so, Paul never for a moment from proclaiming a specifically Jewish message. “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal,” he wrote years later to his understudy, Timothy (Second Timothy 2.8-9a). For Paul, the royal identity of Jesus as the promised descendant of David was always essential.

In other words, when originally written, and even now, Paul was writing political material. He was writing to establish and strengthen communities in loyalty to a new king who was the lord and deliverer of not just Israelites who sided with him, but of everyone who entrusted themselves to him.

In the eyes of the authorities in Paul’s own day, this would have been regarded as subversive, if not outright treason. Today we miss this. In today’s society, Ephesians is a book that corresponds to private life, personal preference, interior “spirituality.” But in Paul’s mind, this is a letter to the nations from their emperor. From the standpoint of the Roman Emperor it is a letter from a pretender to a disloyal cell within the body politic.