When the late Pastor J. C. O’Hair was teaching the Epistle to the Romans in North Shore Church many years ago, he urged his students to read the epistle at least 100 times. They were told that after they had read it a hundred times, they were ready to begin to study it. Since the epistle to the Ephesians is less than half the length of the Roman letter, it would seem a more likely assignment to read this rich epistle as many times as possible.
Any believer who is familiar with the grace of God and who knows the joys of rightly dividing the Word of truth realizes the riches of this inspired epistle. Ruth Paxson wrote a book on it entitled, The Wealth, Walk, and Warfare of the Christian. The “wealth” refers to the doctrinal portion, chapters 1-3; the “walk” to the first part of the practical portion, 4:1-6:9; and the “warfare” to the latter section, 6:10-18. Miss Paxson called Ephesians the “Grand Canyon” of Scripture.
Dr. Leon Tucker, discovering the same divisions in the epistle that Miss Paxson did, designates the parts of the letter as follows: (1) The Calling of the Church, chapters 1-3; (2) The Conduct of the Church, 4:1-6:9; and (3) The Conflict of the Church, 6:10-18. Other writers divide the letter into two parts—the doctrinal, 1-3, and the practical, 4-6; our wealth, 1-3, and our walk, 4-6; the believer’s blessings, 1-3, and the believer’s behavior, 4-6; the believer’s doctrine, 1-3, and the believer’s duty, 4-6.
Pastor Charles Welch, of England, used two charts to draw attention to the two fold division of the epistle. One chart showed a pair of balances, pivoted on the word “worthy,” 4:1, with each side balancing seven major points—doctrinal, 1-3, on one side, and practical, 4-6, on the other. He showed that each of the seven pairs was related, the doctrinal to the practical. His other chart was in the form of a fruit tree, with seven branches on each side, illustrating the same truth. This tree was growing out of soil labeled “rooted and grounded in love.”
Dr. A. T. Pierson called Ephesians “Paul’s Third Heaven Epistle”; Dr. J. Vernon McGee has dubbed it “The Mount Whitney of the High Sierras of all Scripture—the church epistle.”
As we open our Bibles to the text of this rich letter, we are indeed on holy ground. Nowhere in all of the world’s literature can we find such profound truth stated so simply, yet so majestically. Before us lies truth that can liberate the believer and lift him from shackles of this world to the sphere of “all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus!”
The introduction is the usual Pauline greeting of “grace and peace.” Paul identifies himself, designates himself “an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God,” and addresses himself to “the saints” and “the faithful in Christ Jesus.” A similar dual designation is given to the Colossian believers, 1:2. Following the Apostolic greeting, Paul moves rapidly into the strong meat he had to offer.
