Dear Ephesians

this letter was written by Paul the apostle when he was imprisoned in Rome during the two-year imprisonment described at the end of the book of Acts — that is, roughly in A.D. 62. He sent the letter from Rome to Ephesus in the hands of Tychicus, as you can read at the end of it. Ephesus was a seaport city in what is today Turkey but was then the Roman province of Proconsular Asia. It was one of the largest cities in the Empire after Rome and Alexandria, with a population of over 300,000 — roughly the same size as modern Wichita, Kansas. People have tied themselves in knots to discover why Paul wrote the letter, but the most we can say is that he wanted the saints in Ephesus to know something of their riches in Christ and their responsibilities in Christ. And if they needed to know it, so do we. We need to know our riches in Christ, and we need to know our responsibilities in Christ. (Let me just say here that I have taken the following outline from Warren Wiersbe, and that I think very highly of it as a summary of Ephesians — one which I couldn’t improve). Indeed, this letter teaches us that our riches in Christ are so magnificent and enormous that we must praise God for them and walk in a way that befits those who have been granted such riches.