D.A. Carson on Ephesians

D.A. Carson, ‘Partakers of the Age to Come’, in Richard D. Phillips and Gabriel N.E. Fluhrer (eds.), These Last Days: A Christian View of History (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2011), 89-106.

This essay by D.A. Carson, part of a collection devoted to eschatology, is available as a pdf here.

It reads as if it has its origins in a fairly informal oral delivery rather than being a technical, academic piece, but it’s a nice way in to an overview of the main contours of Ephesians.

After some comments about the dangers of over- and under-realised eschatologies, the essay falls into three main sections:

1. Partakers of the age to come – largely focused on Ephesians 1:3-14, showing the ‘Trinitarian grounding of our salvation’ (93).

2. How Paul prays – looking at Ephesians 1:15-23, particularly Paul’s prayer for hope and power.

3. How God provides – dealing with the rest of the letter under six points:

• God provides for partakers of the age to come in our utter transformation in anticipation of the end (2:1-10)

• God creates a new humanity in anticipation of the end (2:11-22)

• God provides for the partakers of the age to come in that he discloses his concealed purposes in anticipation of the end (3:1-13)

• God does more than we ask or imagine and thereby elicits prayer from us in anticipation of the end (3:14-21)

• God builds truth and unity into his body in anticipation of the end (4:1-6:9)

• God equips and arms his people in anticipation of the end (6:10-20)