Christ and the Salvation of Believers
Chapter 1 of Ephesians is dominated by the theme of praise and thanksgiving. In verses 3–14 the apostle utilizes a redemptive eulogy to praise God for all the spiritual blessings that he has bestowed upon the believer. These blessings are mediated through the Son and are confirmed in the believer through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. The use of baptismal themes suggests that the hymn may have been connected with the celebration of baptism in the early church.
From doxology, he turns to a prayer in which he expresses the wish that his readers personally understand and appropriate the blessings that he has just enumerated. Consequently, there are many verbal and doctrinal similarities between these two sections. In the prayer, the apostle asks that…