Another Bible Commentary: Ephesians

Ephesus was a coastal city that the Romans considered the most important in Asia Minor. See the Acts 18 and Acts 19 notes. It was known for a temple to Artemis of the Ephesians, one of the so-called ancient wonders. See also Paul’s farewell address to them in Acts 20:17-38. This letter was written during Paul’s imprisonment in Rome. The content of this letter may be similar to what the Laodiceans got in Colossians 4:16.

The first three chapters tell us who we are in Christ, and the last three chapters tell us how to walk based on that spiritual wealth. The legalism I spent a good portion of my life under tended to skip right to the behavior stuff, churning out four part series about how to be more fill-in-the-blank. Take a few laps through the first three chapters until you really believe it, then that knowledge will animate the back half.

1:1 Romans was penned with Tertius as a scribe (Romans 16:22). Paul wrote 1 Corinthians with Sosthenes and 2 Corinthians with Timothy. Paul and various Christians wrote to the Galatians together (Galatians 1:1-2). The letter to the Ephesians is just from Paul and the Holy Spirit, so we can gain particular insight into Paul’s thought here. Then again, see 2 Peter 3:16.

1:2 Grace and shalom are already ours on the front end. We are already adopted by our Father and not on probation.

1:3 “has blessed…every spiritual blessing” See 1 Corinthians 1:7. If you have Him, you already have everything. There is no “second blessing” from getting touched by the right apostle or smacked in the forehead by the right televangelist. You are not gaining levels in Christianity. You are complete. But the “us” here means something else for the moment…

1:4 We are holy. We are blameless. Our holiness and blamelessness result from His love, and we don’t jump through hoops to get His love. But the “us” here means something else for the moment…

1:5 I won’t keep you in suspense any longer; the “us” here is Jewish Christians (verse 12). The “you” that arrives in verse 13 is the Gentile Christians (and again in Ephesians 2:11-13), so all the stuff we’ve been talking about in Ephesians 1 is ours as well. This is not about individual predestination to Heaven or to Hell. The Chosen People were chosen to witness Him, and then in the surprise ending to the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Gentiles were welcomed aboard too. Everyone is predestined to be able to be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

1:6-7 See Matthew 3:17, Matthew 17:5, John 17:20-23, and Hebrews 10:14. We’re in the Beloved One, and grace has already been freely given to us. This grace is superabundant, too (Romans 5:20). He gives according to His riches, not our needs. Your next sin is forgiven, too. Nothing surprises God. He promised to forget your sins (Hebrews 8:12), the ledger to record them is gone (Colossians 2:13-14), and admitting your need for Him gets all unrighteousness removed (1 John 1:9).

1:8-10 The Messiah has come, and all time since His appearance has been the “last days” or “end times”.

1:11-12 “we” refers to Jewish Christians, as seen in the early chapters of Acts. Paul already detailed (in Romans 9 through Romans 11) how their partial hardening to the Gospel opened the way for the Gentiles (as God intended all along). See Exodus 19:5-6, Isaiah 26:9, Isaiah 26:18, and Isaiah 49:6.

1:13 “you” refers to Gentile Christians. “When you believed” is a vital bit; see Galatians 3:2,5. We are sealed with the Holy Spirit. See Joel 2:28-29, John 14:16-18, John 16:13, and 2 Corinthians 1:21-22.

1:14 The Holy Spirit guarantees our redemption and our inheritance, which is in Heaven where we can’t mess it up (1 Peter 1:4). Are you starting to feel safe yet?

1:15 “faith…love” Here’s yet another endorsement of Believe and Love. See 1 John 5:1.

1:17 “give you” They already have that in Him (Ephesians 1:3), but they apparently don’t know they already have that.

1:18 “riches” See Romans 8:32; “inheritance” See Galatians 4:7.

1:19-20 The power that raised Christ from the dead lives in us (Galatians 2:20, Colossians 3:4). For “seated Him at His right hand”, see Psalm 110:1.

1:21 His Name is greater than all names. If something has a name, He outranks it. Disease, etc., is all going away eventually.

1:22-23 We are one with Him (John 17:20-23). We are the new Temple (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). The “fills everything” part would have been familiar to fans of Greek philosophy as the Logos or the Word, the Wisdom/Reason through Whom all things were made and sustained as discussed in John 1.

2:2 “air” See Ephesians 6:12, John 12:31, and 2 Corinthians 4:4. Also, the divide/air wasn’t called “good” in Genesis 1:6.

2:3 He loves you, and He’s not stingy with mercy. See Romans 5:17

2:5 We’re waiting for new bodies, but we have new life already. He already fixed us. It is by grace we have been (past tense, already happened) saved. If we aren’t secure, then God wouldn’t lie and say that we are saved.

2:6 If I put candy in a jar and then put the jar on top of the refrigerator, then the candy is on top of the refrigerator. We are in Christ, and He sits at the Father’s right hand (Psalm 110:1). Do you feel safe yet? In an eternal sense, we’re already in Heaven. Have fun speculating about whether a given episode of deja vu confirms that you’re just remembering this life from outside of it. We will fully realize what Paul hinted at in 1 Corinthians 4:8 later.

2:7 We saw “This will be for the LORD’s renown, for an everlasting sign, that will endure forever” in Isaiah 55:12-13. We are that for the grace of God. Forever, He can point to us as examples of how kind He is. We can already celebrate like the Hebrews who drank four cups of wine at Passover to commemorate Exodus 6:6-8 because we are already redeemed, adopted, transported, and enriched.

2:8 Grace is free or it is not grace.

2:9 The only things we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary and faith. The “best” human you know and the “worst” human you know are in the same boat; they’re only able to be saved thanks to Jesus.

2:10 “good works” Christians are God’s masterpiece. Jesus came to give us abundant life (John 10:10). We were remade so that He could express the fruit of the Spirit through us (Galatians 5:22-23). This isn’t a call to panic about our productivity for Him; this is the Edenic life of trusting Him, the way things were before the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

2:11 See Deuteronomy 10:16 and Acts 7:51.

2:12 Gentiles had nothing of eternal value until the New Covenant. The poor and the foreigners were frequently mentioned together in Deuteronomy. The Law of Moses (that only Jesus successfully followed) would have Him give us the salvation we ask Him for.

2:13-16 See Hebrews 8:13. Replacement theology is widely derided lately, and yet, Paul said this about Christian unity, a new humanity emerging where once there were two strains, and the end of the Old Covenant.

2:17-18 See Isaiah 57:19 and 1 Kings 8:41-43.

2:19-22 like 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 and 1 Peter 2:4-10.

3:3-6 I’ve tried to point out some hints of this in the text (Deuteronomy 32:21, Ezekiel 47:22, etc.,) as we’ve made our way through.

3:8 “less than the least” Paul used to kill Christians for being Christian. Our God is bigger than our sins.

3:10-11 See Ephesians 6:12 and Acts 17:26-28 God gave us this reality (Genesis 1:26, Psalm 8:6), and we gave it to Satan (2 Corinthians 4:4). Because of the Tower of Babel debacle, God divided humanity into 70 “nations” or people-groups with ancestors listed in Genesis 10 under the watchful gaze of angels (Deuteronomy 32:8), elsewhere called Watchers. (The non-canonical Book of Jubilees proposes that they are the ten percent of fallen angels left under Satan’s command after the rest were imprisoned in response to a prayer by Noah.) You can see evidence of the ensuing jurisdictional squabbling in Daniel 10:13. The demons are the focus of Ephesians 3:10-11 and Ephesians 6:12; Christ is above all of that (Colossians 1:16-17, Matthew 28:18), and we have been moved out of the kingdom of darkness and into Him.

3:12 You don’t have to be scared of Father.

3:13 The root cause of Paul being imprisoned was his ministry to the Gentiles.

3:14-19 In addition to asking on the basis of Jesus’ merit (analogous to Genesis 24:12), Paul’s prayers are in line with Jesus’ mission, like His ambassador; Paul therefore prays these things in Jesus’ name (John 14:13-14, 1 John 5:14) and provides a good model of how to pray for other people. Wanting Christ to “dwell” in them means Paul wants people to let Christ in and be saved and to reach Christian maturity (Ephesians 4:13-14) so they’re not swayed by others. Paul prayed for them to understand more of what cannot be understood: God’s infinite cross-shaped love. Notice that being “filled” with “all the fullness of God” is being inspired by the love of God.

3:20 In other words, He can give you what you hope for, even more than you would dare ask for, and infinitely more than even that by the power of the Holy Spirit.

3:21 This is like a benediction for the first three chapters about who we are now in Christ.

4:1 You have the calling, so Paul encourages you to live like the saint that you are. The behavior flows from your new identity. Behind all apostolic behavior instructions is A) Believe, B) Love, and C) see Acts 15:20; don’t act like a Canaanite (Leviticus 20:23, Deuteronomy 18:9). Child sacrifice, mediums, psychics, witchcraft, putting curses on parents, sexual immorality, etc., are all understood to be off limits.

4:2-3 See 1 Corinthians 13 and Galatians 5:22-23.

4:4-6 Here are the same church unity concerns (Jew/Gentile, etc.) we’ve seen in the letters to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians so far.

4:7-8 See Psalm 68:18. In the English translations of the Masoretic text, the victor gets spoils from the people. The Septuagint’s translation of what Paul quotes here (the Psalms are numbered differently in different translations) is “received gifts in/among men”. Here, Christ conquered former enemies like Paul and myself, He ascended, received gifts, and gave them to be in/among us (like in Acts 2).

4:9-10 There were hints about Christ’s mission all along.

4:11-12 The works of service are for building up other believers as in Romans 12:6-8.

4:13-15 Believing in Christ is the one thing to do (John 6:28-29), so it’s not like you have to earn some lofty position past that. Christian maturity, or being perfected like in Colossians 1:28, is just being unshakeable in that faith. If you know the real thing, counterfeits are easy to spot.

4:16 You have something unique to offer the rest of your siblings in Christ, but not every tool in the toolbox is used for every job or even every day. Your thing will probably seem easy and natural for you (Philippians 2:13).

4:17 “in the futility of their thinking” See Romans 12:2. While knowing He turns no one who comes to Him away (John 6:37), remaining conscious of His love (Jude 21), and knowing that He is producing what He is looking for (John 10:10, John 15:5, Romans 14:4, Ephesians 2:10, Philippians 1:6, Philippians 2:13, Hebrews 13:20-21, Jude 24), listen to and act in accordance with the good stuff your new heart is telling you. That “you must” is a promise of becoming more Christlike (Romans 8:28-29), not a threat.

4:18-19 See Romans 1:18-32. Verse 19 has aselgeia (being utterly amoral, feeling no shame while sinning, participating in pagan orgies, disregarding the boundaries established in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20, etc.; some see aselgeia as a specific reference to buggery), akatharsia (dirty, demonic, depraved, foul like a festering wound, etc. It’s in the Mark 7 list, too. It describes adulterers in 1 Thessalonians 4), and pleonexia (coveting more and more without regard to the rights of others) again. This is sometimes translated oddly; notably, the “greed” here is greed for more and more impurity.

4:20-24 I hope you’re enjoying Ephesians, because Colossians is a lot like it. The things expressed here with possibly ambiguous infinitive forms (“you were taught…to put off) are presented as having already been accomplished in Colossians 3:9-10 (“you have taken off”). They say the same things; the Ephesians were taught about Christ and therefore their old selves had died. See Zechariah 3:4 for Paul’s reference.

4:25 You really are righteous and holy now thanks to what Jesus did (2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 6:11, Hebrews 10:10,14).

4:26-27 Paul quoted Psalm 4:4 as the Septuagint phrases it. This is even more proof that the “without cause” clause belongs in Matthew 5:22. Righteous indignation exists (1 Samuel 11:6), and getting frustrated is natural. Man’s wrath doesn’t produce righteousness (James 1:20) because revenge belongs to God (Leviticus 19:17-18, Deuteronomy 32:35).

4:28 Notice what Paul said to do about sinning. Stop. He didn’t say to confess to get more forgiven or go through some type of penance or emotional reconciliation with God. The Cross worked (Hebrews 10:14). You’re as forgiven as you ever will be. If you realize something is out of character for your new self, just adjust accordingly. As to the presence of thieves/robbers in the congregation, remember that Galilean zealots thought nothing of beating/killing/stealing from Romans and Roman collaborators; now, imagine former pagans who never had the Law of Moses who had been told that they were completely under grace…

4:29 The word for “unwholesome” used here means rotten, putrid, diseased, etc. Since we’re supposed to be saying what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, unwholesome talk is using words to tear others down and harm them like putting actual curses on them. It’s not about a list of forbidden words and topics: Paul basically used what some English speakers refer to as “the s-word” in Philippians 3:8. Be your authentic self, but don’t use words that people don’t like to hear around them; do the loving thing. See Colossians 4:6.

Be careful in criticizing others that you not only intend to build them up but that you have grounds to judge their performance and to request their improvement. You hear what you say, so you can end up conditioning and reinforcing the urge to criticize and to focus on others’ flaws. Plus, if you teach someone a lesson in “How to Be Bitter”, don’t be surprised if they learn it.

4:30 The concept of grieving the Holy Spirit can be found back in Isaiah 63:10. You are sealed with the Holy Spirit; He’s not going anywhere (John 14:16). This means that when you sin, you’re bringing the Holy Spirit with you on that ride. The opposite of grieving the Spirit is expressing the Spirit as seen in the surrounding verses: encouraging people, building them up, forgiving them, being kind to them, loving them, etc. See 1 Corinthians 13 and Galatians 5:22-23.

4:31 Remember, this is from “God’s gonna get him!” Paul (2 Timothy 4:14) and “I hope they cut their own genitals off!” Paul (Galatians 5:12) who was still an acceptable model for being Christlike (1 Corinthians 11:1), so calibrate your expected niceness level accordingly. Paul didn’t say to leave room for the Holy Spirit at school dances, but he did say to leave room for God’s vengeance (Romans 12:19). That being said, staying bitter, tearing people down, keeping score, fighting, slandering, and hating people is not living your best life. You’re eternal, and very little of what goes on in this world actually matters. People that are hurting end up hurting other people, so whomever you have an issue with is pitiable in some way.

4:32 The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant was about Leviticus 19:17; Christians are not under the Law of Moses. You are not forgiven based on how nice you’ve been, but because Christ died for you, rose again, and shared His everlasting life with you. This is about “one another…each other”, so it’s some 1 John 5:1 and John 13:34-35 love for fellow believers. You are the child of a Father that totally forgave you (Hebrews 10:14 – “perfect forever” does not allow it to be taken back), and you take after Him now.

5:1-2 Verse 1 reminds us who we are, and verse 2 says to act like it. This pattern fits the front and back half of this letter. Doing comes from being. Sin is an external mind parasite that tempts, controls, and accuses. To imitate Christ, depend on our Father. To imitate God as His children that take after Him because of the free gift of righteousness, feed the poor, heal the sick, comfort the bereaved, clothe the shivering, bury the dead, look out for widows and orphans, etc.

5:3-4 These verses describe life "among us" or how we treat each other rather than whether we are allowed to enjoy stand-up comedy. We’re different now (Ephesians 4:17, Ephesians 5:8). Remember the types of sexual and criminal activities Paul meant when he said aselgeia, akatharsia, and pleonexia to recent former pagans in Ephesus. Artemis of the Ephesians is the Greek Artemis (whom the Romans called Diana, and they combined her with Luna the moon and Hecate of the underworld) plus the Turkish Cybele. She was a perpetually virgin mother goddess with a dying/rising castrated grandson/consort named Attis. The priests in Cybele’s religion castrated themselves, and religious observances included getting the blood from that on one’s garments. Buggery with the castrated priests was also part of the religious services. People that were more into Mammon (Matthew 6:24) than God would have gladly engaged in fraud, extortion, sold widows for profit, etc. A big motivation for living rightly was to make the Gospel attractive (Titus 2:10).

The freakiness bar for verse 4 is pretty high given that these words share binding with the Song of Songs/Solomon, Ezekiel 16, Ezekiel 23, etc. Impure thoughts are of impure things. Regarding what the phrase “foolish talk or coarse joking” would have been in context, I’m guessing that you probably don’t deny God’s existence or use the nastiest double entendres about fellow Christians at church. The “obscene” stories Paul told the recently former pagans to not pass on to their children were things like how Castor, Pollux, and Helen of Troy were conceived by Leda and Zeus that time he turned into a swan and…I, like the sanitized versions of mythology texts we have now, will leave out exactly what that entailed. It violated Leviticus 18:23, and would have been described and re-enacted in detail in a different cultural/historical context. There are hundreds of these for story time at the pagan temples, like the one about King Minos’ wife, a bull, things I won’t describe, and a baby Minotaur. I’m not mentioning such things to titillate, but to point out how the Accuser has gotten us to move the goalposts and focus on our own not-recently-former-pagan-but-mostly-cleaned-up behavior to make us ineffective in caring for others and witnessing for Christ.

5:5-7 These verses describe the nature of unbelievers (Ephesians 4:17-24); 1 Corinthians 6:11 clarifies that those behaviors are not our identity anymore. We are not what we do; we are new creations in Christ. We all stumble in many ways (James 3:2), but we have a new trend toward godliness. We don't practice sin to get better and better at it, but we do practice righteousness now (Romans 6:18; 1 John 3:6, 9). We may not seem to be very good at it yet, but we have very long lives ahead of us in glory. Jesus is on our side (1 John 2:1, Hebrews 7:25), and Father’s not mad at us (Isaiah 54:8-10) nor keeping score (Hebrews 8:12, Colossians 2:13-14).

5:8-9 Again, “you are light in the Lord” already; aspire to “live as children of light” since doing follows being.

5:10 Only Jesus pleases God (Matthew 3:17, Matthew 17:5), and we are in Him now.

5:11-13 Let your lives shine by living rightly in contrast to the unbeliever.

5:14 This seems to be part of an old hymn. You know how contemporary Christian songs will say something that sounds like a Bible verse without directly quoting it? See Isaiah 26:19 and Isaiah 60:1-2.

5:15-16 “Be careful” not to disgrace Christianity (Titus 2:10), and be careful to help save as many people as possible. Believers are safe.

5:18 Biblical drunkenness is being filled and controlled by alcohol in a way analogous to being possessed by an evil spirit or filled and controlled by the Holy Spirit. Your local law enforcement probably says buzzed driving is drunk driving, and obeying them is a Romans 13 issue. On the other hand, the Torah commanded partying, Jesus partied, Jesus made a bunch of wine, etc. Don’t black out to let Dionysus/Bacchus the wine god use you as a meatsuit; don’t make a bunch of oaths in the Name you don’t remember or father your own grandchildren. Believers have the Spirit (Galatians 3:2,5), all of the Spirit (Ephesians 1:3), so in Greek this is more like “be being filled with the Holy Spirit”; your capacity to be inspired by the love of God (Ephesians 3:14-19) grows as your understanding of God’s love grows, like what Paul prayed for the Ephesians to have.

5:19-20 This is what life in the Spirit looks like. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 clarifies that we are to be thankful for everything God does for us in all circumstances; there might not be much about the circumstances to be thankful for but joy is on the way (Psalm 30:5). Even in a bad situation, it’s not like He wants you to be miserable but He does like seeing Christ in you. Jesus’ sacrifice on your behalf and your new identity in Christ are plenty to thank Him for, no matter where you find yourself.

5:21 This is “love your neighbor” practiced mutually. It is not one-sided. The following verses elaborate.

5:22-24 One of man’s deepest needs is respect. Male and female believers are both totally valued by God in Christ but were designed in different roles. Remember all of those “God as Husband” depictions like in Isaiah 54:5, Hosea, etc. This doesn’t mean that the man is always right, but wives should be as supportive of their husbands as they would be of a pilot flying the plane on which they’re both flying. God said that wives are to obey husbands, so obeying him (apart from sinning) is obeying Him. Moses talked God out of doing several things, and I’m sure you know what to do with that.

Obeying a husband is obeying God (Ephesians 5:22-24), rebellion is the same as witchcraft (1 Samuel 15:23), and witches were not to be allowed to live (Exodus 22:18). Don’t reach for the cinderblock yet; he who is without sin must cast the first stone (John 8:7). However, Christ became Sin so that we are the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21); don’t reach for the cinderblock yet now, either. Remember that Christ’s sacrifice covered any believer’s failure to bring their husband an ice cold beer immediately in addition to sins that might have attracted airborne rocks in Old Testament times (John 1:29). Let’s all play nice now.

5:25-32 Notice that there was a lot more explained for the husbands than for the wives. Christ saved and still provides for believers. Notice that the love required of the husband is provision of food, clothing, and lodging (verse 29, familiar from the Exodus 21:10 rules for freeing a slave that the religious leaders Jesus endorsed used for a lesser-to-greater argument regarding divorce for abandonment) by appealing to Genesis 2:24 and basic self-care. Paul describes a husband providing for a wife as laying down his life for her. You only have finite time and energy on this planet, and trading it for money to burn on food, some collectible plushies, etc., for her is Christlike. It’s the same sense in which widows, needy parents, and church elders are honored. Some translations of Colossians 3:19 admonish husbands against being embittered against their wives, which can be a natural fleshly reaction to these circumstances. (Proverbs 31 allows women to work outside the home, by the way, especially if her “wants” get out of whack with “needs”.)

5:33 The summary makes it clear again that this is mutual. You loving your spouse is God loving them through you.

It’s easy to reduce your spouse to a characterization based on the five or six things they do that you don’t like that fly in the face of these instructions. Believers, that’s not your believing spouse. The power of Sin is at work against your relationship, but you’re both united with Christ. so you’re on the same side. The best way to navigate a relationship is to choose to express Jesus living through you moment by moment and to see your spouse with God’s unconditional positive regard. I confess that I struggle with this, and ask you to pray for me. Christ paid for all believers’ sins at the Cross, including whatever you’re currently holding against your spouse.

That being said, domestic discipline is not prohibited nor always unloving. See Hebrews 12:6, David’s handling of Michal in 2 Samuel 6, David’s choice from 2 Sam 20:3, and Xerxes’ similar handling of Vashti in Esther 1. See Exodus 21 for what not to do, but see also Proverbs 10:13, Proverbs 13:24, Proverbs 19:18, Proverbs 20:30, Proverbs 22:15, Proverbs 23:13, Proverbs 26:3, Proverbs 29:15, Ezekiel 16:8,37-41 and Romans 13 because many governments discourage the full application of Iron Age philosophy.

6:1-3 Respect for authority is in the Noahide Laws. Before courts of justice existed, the authority was the paterfamilias. Jewish scholars also ruled that Noahides or righteous Gentiles were permitted to perform positive commands for the associated blessings (“thou shalts” as opposed to “thou shalt nots” for curses). Shem and Japheth were honored for covering Noah (Genesis 9:26-27).

6:4 Under the New Covenant, our Father does not exasperate us (Matthew 11:28-30). The whiff of Deuteronomy 21:18-21 you get in Jeremiah 6:2 (most translations feature God destroying “daughter” Zion) is all Old Covenant stuff.

6:5-9 This is one of those passages that the Accuser tries to use to get us paranoid about our own performance instead of trusting Jesus Christ. The half of Ephesians pertaining to behavior gets more attention than the first three chapters about our identity in Christ, but the behavior flows from the new birth. All of that stuff about us being co-heirs with Christ (and therefore owning everything in addition to us never being judged) because of Christ’s finished work did not go away just because we reached these verses. Peter said Paul can be hard to understand (2 Peter 3:16), so it helps to compare other letters of his about the same topics. See Colossians 3:22 through Colossians 4:1, in which Paul basically said Christian employees should work really hard (to make the Gospel look good because saving people is awesome – Titus 2:10), because the inheritance we definitely have coming is way better than we could earn with our works (which He is powering anyway – Philippians 2:13), and for Christian bosses to refrain from making the Gospel look bad by acting especially high-and-mighty, because we’re all people who need grace. You don’t earn an inheritance. You get an inheritance because Someone died, and the one we have coming will more than make up for any good deeds you’re thinking of itemizing or any loss suffered. The “no favoritism” bit is from Deuteronomy 10:17.

Regarding slavery, the Bible is consistent. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade was unbiblical in many ways and does not reflect the working relationship depicted in the Bible (Exodus 21:16, 20, 21, 26, and 27 for some examples). However, the inspired Iron Age text legitimizes forms of slavery, too, so we can’t derive universal emancipation from His actions in Exodus. The Israelites became God’s slaves (Galatians 4:24-25) after they stopped being the Egyptians’. Slavery could be a voluntary arrangement to repay a debt. National Israel under the Old Covenant could enslave war captives (Deuteronomy 20:1-18), and concubinage was a form of sex slavery (Deuteronomy 21:10-14), but slaves of neighboring nations could ask for sanctuary among the Israelites (Deuteronomy 23:15-16). The Israelites were commanded to remember their former servitude (Deuteronomy 5:15, Deuteronomy 24:18) and be kind because of it. Many early Christians were slaves, and their Roman masters expected many duties that would be considered sexual through both biblical and modern cultural lenses, but to lack the ability to consent is to lack agency and therefore lack blame as in Deuteronomy 22:25-27.

6:10-11 We’re like a bucket of water floating in an ocean. Christ is in us (Galatians 2:20), and we’re in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) because we’re one with Him (John 17:20-23). We’re already wearing Him (Galatians 3:27). Yet, we’re encouraged to put Him on (Romans 13:14) because He’s the only outfit that doesn’t clash with the new creation. You’re a saint, so act like a saint. Your eternal destiny isn’t at stake due to the devil’s schemes, but your contentment is (Galatians 5:17).

6:12 as in the Ephesians 3:10-11 note.

6:13 Notice that we’re holding ground, not taking ground.

6:14-15 The armor is just Jesus. He is our truth (John 14:6), righteousness (Isaiah 11:5, 2 Corinthians 5:21), peace (Isaiah 9:6), etc.

6:16 Sin is an external mind parasite that tempts, controls, and accuses. Any believer can be presented with any sinful notion at any time, but we can come to know which thoughts are not our own.

6:17 See Hosea 6:5 and John 1. He’s our weapon, too.

6:18 You don’t have to do anything special to pray in the Spirit; you’re there (Romans 8:14-17, 1 Corinthians 6:17), so pray from a position of knowing you’re there. Prayer is two-way communication, so praying without ceasing is leaving your radio on to listen for how God tells you to help other believers. It’s way better than listening to the Accuser’s guilt over the junk mail he sends your brain. As we’ll see in Philippians 2:13, God probably won’t answer you audibly but you can trust the new heart He gave you.

6:19-20 Again, here are more prayers from Paul very much in His will like Christ’s ambassador.

6:24 “Grace and immortality to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ” is in some translations. If yours says His grace is contingent upon your undying love for Him, remember that He put it in you when you were saved (Deuteronomy 30:6, Romans 5:5).

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