Notes for Circumstances & Concerns

1. John R. W. Stott, The Message of Ephesians: God's New Society (The Bible Speaks Today; Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1979), 44-45.

2. Op cit., 25-27.

3. Gordon D. Fee, God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, MS: Hendrickson, 1994), 661.

4. Francis Foulkes, Ephesians (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries; London: Tyndale Press, 1963), 39-40. A similar scenario is sketched by Gordon Fee; "I think one can make more sense of the document as a circular letter to the churches of Asia, in which the apostle, reflecting on the issues raised by Colossians, addresses yet again the great concern of his apostleship—Jew and Gentile as one people of God, on the basis of Christ and the Spirit—but in this instance he does so against the backdrop of the 'powers' before whom the Asian believers stood in fear, or at least in reverential awe." God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul, 660.

5. A. Skevington Wood, The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Galatians, Ephesians, ed. by F. E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 119.

6. Frank Thielman, Ephesians (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 20.

7. Op cit., 28. He had earlier made a similar point in "Ephesians," in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. by G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids/ Nottingham: Baker/Apollos, 2007), 815.

8. Clinton E. Arnold, "Ephesus," in Dictionary of Paul & His Letters, ed. By G. F. Hawthorne & R. P. Martin (Downers Grove/Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 252.

©Alberith
170822lch