Ephesians 2.1–2
The first of a sermon series on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians from David Seccombe at St Margaret’s Nedlands 21 June 2026
Two important notices
For most of July and August I will be working through this letter at the 9am service each Sunday. All are welcome, and it is understood that some may wish not to remain for the Lord’s Supper, but to withdraw after the sermon and before the Creed.
David Mansfield is about to launch his latest book, The Secco Collection. He has done the rounds collecting stories of my life and will launch the book at the time of my 80th birthday. The launch in Perth will be at Trinity Theological College, Level 2/632-634 Newcastle St, Leederville on Wednesday 29th July at 4–7PM. Please RSVP Betty McSkimming 0412 844869. There will be a launch at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral on Sunday 9 August at 9.30am between the 8am and 10am services).
Over the coming weeks I want to explore the letter to the Ephesians. I wanted to do something basic, something that would set us on the right track for our life together as a church. We read these letters in the New Testament—or maybe we don’t, but if we do, they sound sort of religious, and may give us a good feeling, but we don’t realize how radical they are, how revolutionary—and they started a revolution! I think they could do so again, if they were properly understood.
But let’s jump in. Normally I would skip the Dear Episceans[1] stuff at the beginning and get straight into the business of the letter, but I hesitated, and looked again, and thought, hang on, Paul is telling us something important here; we shouldn’t overlook it.
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. (1.1–2)
We need to know what an apostle is, who are the saints, and the meaning of Paul’s greeting.
I’m sure you’ve heard about Paul, aka Saul, the Jewish scholar activist who decided this new Jesus sect was a threat to Judaism and set out to exterminate it; how he was complicit in the lynching of Stephen, and then set off to arrest members of the new movement in Damascus. (There was some sort of extradition arrangement between Jerusalem and the Jeweish authorities in Damascus.) On his journey, he was blinded by a light and fell from his horse, and heard Jesus say, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Jesus later commissioned him to carry the message of his kingdom to the non-Jewish people of the world, and he became the greatest Christian missionary in history. By the time he wrote Ephesians he had planted churches in Damascus, Nabataea, Syria, Cyprus, Galatia, Asia Minor, Greece, Crete, and Albania. Not bad for a person without an aeroplane! During all this activity he spent two years living and working in Ephesus, the capital of Asia Minor (in modern-day Turkiye). I think he wrote the letter from Rome, where he was a prisoner waiting for his case to be heard by the Emperor Nero.[2] The year was about AD 60.
He introduces himself as “an apostle of Christ Jesus,” and this would have made any reader sit up. “Christ Jesus”, is Jewish talk; it means King Jesus; talk of any king but Caesar was treasonable. The “apostle” of a king was an ambassador, someone who could speak in the king’s name. This is not religious talk; it sounds political; it is a striking claim to authority. If we accept it, it means we will read the letter as a message from Jesus, God’s promised king, which means it is a message from God himself.
We should remind ourselves here that if God has not spoken his mind—and this is what most of the West thinks—then the universe is silent; we are prisoners on Spaceship Earth, lost and going nowhere—but with lots of movies and video games to keep our minds off the awful truth!
Jesus announced the arrival of God’s kingdom. He demonstrated its presence, but it demanded repentance that was so radical that they branded him an imposter and executed him. When Paul met him on the road to Damascus, he realized he had spoken the truth; Jesus was alive, and the kingdom is real; God has appointed Jesus king, and the world is approaching a day of judgement. Paul is the spokesperson of this king of kings. This is heady stuff! Not religion, not faith, but real history: truth.
I repeat, if there is no God, all the moralizing that bombards us from every politician, party, and pressure group is just baseless jockeying for power. If there is no God, there is no right, there is no wrong. Nietzsche made that clear and he was right, and it destroyed him. But Paul discovered God was real—not only that, but that Jesus is his eternal Son and the world’s rightful king.
Secondly, Paul calls the people he writes to “saints,” holy ones. This word “saints” was originally applied to the Jews. They were called saints, because God had chosen them and separated them from the rest of the world. “Holy” means separate from the rest of the world to belong to God. But now Paul is applying it also to Gentile Christians. That is why he specifies “the saints who are faithful in Christ Jesus.” The church in Ephesus was made up of Jews and non-Jews; all are now saints because of their faith in Jesus. Which means we are all saints here today, as many of us as believe in the Lord Jesus. God has taken us out of the world and made us his own. How he has done this we will find out as we read on. But it is good to know at the outset who we are in Paul’s eyes, who we are in Jesus’ estimation, and how God sees us.
Calling particular individuals saints, like our St Margaret, was something which grew up over the centuries. Margaret was a queen of Scotland in the 11th-century, and appears to have been a remarkably godly woman. It is good to remember history’s exemplary characters, but prayers to the saints, the prayers of the saints, the treasury of merit said to have been accrued by the saints, and their role in lessening the pains of purgatory are all superstitions that developed over time without any support from the Word of God. And they can be damaging. When people address their prayers to Mary or one of the so-called saints, they insult the Lord Jesus who died for us to give us the right of immediate access to the Father. Why go to the shop assistant when you can speak to the manager? We don’t need any intermediary other than our Lord Jesus himself, and we should not doubt his love for us.[3] We must keep checking back to determine whether our practices are consistent with original Christianity.
But I want to pause here and think about antii-semitism reflect that he main reason anti-semitism, which is on our minds at the present time. Hatred of Jews has been such a persistent problem through much of the world’s history because no one likes people thinking they are special. It seems to imply they are better. I remember a trip home shortly after I began to believe in Jesus. Perhaps unwisely, I said at the dinner table that I was now a Christian. My aunt exploded. “We would all like to be Christian, but we do not think that we are!” She thought I was saying I was good, which is amusing, because for most of my teens I did think I was a good person, but had just discovered I was not. I had said yes to the gift of forgiveness which Jesus offers anyone who will trust him;this was what I meant.
Jews are not special because they are good. For much of their history they have resisted God, and most still do. But they have a holy calling—Christians believe this—and are marked out for a special destiny, and are therefore holy! For this reason they are hated. We should note that when people realize what Christians believe, they too can become objects of anger and even hatred. Happily(?), most people view us as harmless and misguided, so they leave us alone unless we interfere with their freedom or politics.
Enough of that; let us just register that this letter is addressed to saints, to you who are followers of Jesus Christ, however weak your faith may be. The letter will tell you many things about yourself, maybe things you do not know and need to know, and things you may think you know but are wrong.
Paul writes “to the saints who are in Ephesus,” though many manuscripts don’t mention Ephesus. This is because what we call Ephesians was a circular letter addressed to various congregations in Asia Minor. I explain this in more detail in today’s newsletter. Ephesians is a short explanation of what Christianity is all about, a kind of Christian manifesto, and therefore a good place to start if we want to understand the Christian faith.
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.
This greeting: is it a friendly wish? Is it what Paul wished for them and wishes for us, like when we say, “Good morning!” or “Have a great day!” It certainly is Paul’s wish, but then, is it also a prayer? The prayer of the Lord Jesus for his churches? I would say yes, again. It is the ambassador’s prayer, it is the request of the King-Messiah for us to his Father. So, what is Paul praying? For this is what the Lord Jesus intercedes for us.
“Grace and peace.”
Grace is a big word in this letter. It is like a musical theme, that surfaces again and again throughout this letter. Grace is kindness, grace is mercy, grace is generosity, grace brings us gifts. Grace is what the man or woman discovers who has turned their back on God, who spurns his law, who goes his own way, who does her own thing, who will not look at God, who rages against God, who spites him in every way—or perhaps just ignores him, which is worse. But eventually we comes to the end of the line, broken, shamed, and are forced to turn and look God in the face, and we discover it is the face of one who has been shadowing us quietly all our days, protecting, caring, loving. And although God should hate us for all we have done, we sees that his face is the face of the crucified one, who stood in for us, who forgives and befriends us, and showers us with gifts. This is the grace that Paul discovered and wishes for you from his prison. This is the grace that caused John Bunyan, also in prison, to call the story of his life, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. That is the grace that John Newton, the slave-trader who met God in the midst of a life-threatening storm, to cry “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.” This is the grace that Paul wishes for each one of us.
And grace leads to peace. God is the great peacemaker, who pursues us in order to give us that greatest of gifts, friendship with himself.
When Israel turned against their God, the God who rescued them from Egypt, who carried them on eagle’s wings and brought them to himself, who married them at Mt Sinai—when Israel rebelled, God became their enemy. He divorced them and abandoned them—but not for ever; he continued to shadow them and still does. Their prophets longed for the time he would return. Isaiah speaks of the day when God would make peace with his people:
How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who gospel good, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!”
The peace Paul wishes for us and prays for us is peace with God. Peace is salvation. Peace was Jesus’ mission. When Jesus healed people, he would say, “Go into peace.” This is the peace of reconciliation to God and acceptance into his kingdom.
But raises in my mind the possibility that these words, “Grace and peace,” are perhaps more than a friendly wish, more even than a prayer. Could they also be a blessing—a blessing with power?
When Jesus sent his 72 followers out on mission he gave them instructions. “When you enter a house, first say, “Peace to this house.” But what if the people there are unbelievers? This is what his disciples were thinking. How is it right to call blessing on God’s enemies? So Jesus adds, “If a son of peace is there, your peace will rest on him: if not, it will return to you.” Jesus regarded his blessing of peace as more than a good luck wish; it has a big payload for the person it rests on. When he blessed the little children, he welcomed them into his kingdom.
For Jesus or his apostle to speak blessing over a person is big. And Paul speaks it over all of us. “Grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” If this is a blessing, Paul is calling these things on us in the name of the triune God. Some of us may not be God’s friends, but he gives us the benefit of the doubt. This is grace; nothing is lost by being gracious. Paul addresses our whole church as saints and speaks to us all as true believers. If some are not, and will not become so, the blessing will rebound, but it is a case of opting out, not of being excluded.
So, peace is what the rebel finds when he or she encounters the grace of God and ceases warring against their Creator. We ceases to be his enemy. There is reconciliation, peace, and with it comes a thousand good things. We will explore some of these as we delve further into this letter. The next part of the letter is about—surprise surprise—blessing!
[1] If you enjoy a good laugh find Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s take on Paul’s “Letter to the Episceans” with your browser.
[2] This is disputed. Some think he wrote during a former imprisonment.
[3] 1 Timothy 2.1–6.