Ephesians

1:1 - Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
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No one is more self-conscious than Paul that he was "an apostle by the will of God," a fact that he states several times elsewhere in the NT:

Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God . . . (1 Cor 1:1)

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God . . . (2 Cor 1:1)

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God . . . (Col 1:1)

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus . . . (2 Tim 1:1)

Paul knows full well that, by his own will, he would have remained a terror to the Church of Jesus Christ, aroused to destroy as many as he could those who follow the Way. If God had not confronted him on the road to Damascus, struck him blind, and willed that he be "my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel" (Acts 9:15), that was where he would have remained. So it is, as Hendriksen notes, that:

The apostle has attained his high office neither through aspiration nor through usurpation nor yet through nomination by other men but by divine preparation, having been set apart and qualified by the activity of God's sovereign will.¹

In noting that he was "an apostle by the will of God," Paul was acknowledging the grace of God in his life:

He had not appointed himself to this position; God chose him. Hence the words "by the will of God" have overtones of God's unmerited grace, and emphasize that there was no personal merit on Paul's part either in becoming an apostle or continuing as one.²

Notes:

Ephesians (New Testament Commentary; London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1972), 70.

Peter T. O'Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians (Pillar New Testament Commentary; Leicester: Apollos, 1999), 84.

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