100 Fun Facts About Book of Ephesians

Which goddess's temple at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders, did Paul's preaching threaten in Acts 19?

Artemis of the Ephesians was the rioters' chant, and the city clerk calmed them by insisting Ephesus was 'the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven'.

Ephesians 2 says Christ 'has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of' what?

Hostility is the wall that falls, and the stated purpose is 'to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace'.

Ephesians 2 says believers are saved by grace 'through faith' and 'not by works', so that no one can do what?

Boast is ruled out because being saved 'is the gift of God', yet the very next verse says believers were 'created in Christ Jesus to do good works'.

Which shield in Ephesians 6 can 'extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one'?

The shield of faith is named with the Greek word for a door-shaped shield big enough to stand behind, and flaming arrows were real weapons, tipped with burning tow.

Ephesians 6:12 says the believer's struggle is not against what, but against 'the spiritual forces of evil'?

Flesh and blood are set aside for 'the rulers', 'the authorities' and 'the powers of this dark world', which the KJV calls 'principalities' and 'powers'.

Ephesians 4 counts one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one God and one what?

Baptism completes the list, which follows the plea to 'keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace' and the call to be 'completely humble and gentle'.

Which of the Ten Commandments does Ephesians 6 call 'the first commandment with a promise'?

Honor your father and mother carries the promise 'that you may enjoy long life on the earth', quoted from Deuteronomy, and is addressed to children told to obey 'in the Lord'.

Ephesians 3 ends by praising God as able to do 'immeasurably more than all we ask or' what?

Imagine closes the line, with the power 'at work within us', and the doxology ends the doctrinal half before chapter 4 urges a life 'worthy of the calling'.

Ephesians 4 permits anger but not sin, and sets which daily event as the deadline for staying angry?

Sunset is the cut-off: 'do not let the sun go down while you are still angry', and the next verse adds 'do not give the devil a foothold'.

Ephesus, whose congregation Paul's letter addresses, lies near the town of Selçuk in which modern country?

Turkey's İzmir province holds the ruins, and the harbour that made Ephesus a great port silted up under the Küçükmenderes river, so the site now sits inland.

Ephesians 6 identifies the sword of the Spirit, the last piece of armour it lists, as what?

The word of God is the sword, and the passage then turns from armour to prayer 'in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests'.

Which book does Ephesians 5 quote for 'the two will become one flesh', before calling it 'a profound mystery'?

Genesis 2:24 is the line, and the writer says the mystery is really 'about Christ and the church', husbands being told to love their wives 'just as Christ loved the church'.

Which role completes the list in Ephesians 4:11: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and what?

Teachers close the list, given 'to equip his people for works of service' until all 'become mature', no longer 'infants, tossed back and forth by the waves'.

Ephesians 4:32 asks readers to be 'kind and compassionate to one another' and what, as God in Christ was to them?

Forgiving each other 'just as in Christ God forgave you' closes a chapter that has just banned 'bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander'.

In Revelation 2, what does the risen Christ hold against the Ephesian church despite praising its hard work?

Forsaking its first love is the charge, with a threat to 'remove your lampstand from its place' unless they 'do the things you did at first'.

Which co-worker did Paul urge to 'stay there in Ephesus' and silence false teaching, in a letter bearing his name?

Timothy was left in Ephesus while Paul went on to Macedonia, and the same letter has Paul call himself the 'worst' of sinners.

What was the trade of Demetrius, who stirred the Ephesus riot of Acts 19 by warning craftsmen about Paul?

Silversmith Demetrius made miniature silver shrines of the city's goddess and complained that Paul 'says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all'.

Ephesians 2 builds the church on 'the foundation of the apostles and prophets', with Christ Jesus himself as what?

Cornerstone is a title lifted from Isaiah 28 that 1 Peter also gives Christ, and the building 'rises to become a holy temple in the Lord'.

Ephesians 2 calls the devil 'the ruler of the kingdom of' what, a title used nowhere else in the New Testament?

The air is the devil's domain in the KJV's 'prince of the power of the air', 'the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient'.

Which 'dear brother and faithful servant' does Ephesians 6 send to tell readers 'everything' about the writer?

Tychicus came from the province of Asia, Acts 20 says, and one of the Pastoral letters records him being sent to Ephesus again near the end of Paul's life.

Ephesians 1 calls the Holy Spirit a seal and what, 'guaranteeing our inheritance' until the redemption?

A deposit, 'earnest' in older Bibles, renders the Greek arrabōn, a down-payment that binds a bargain, so the Spirit is the first instalment of what is promised.

Ephesians 1 says God 'predestined us' for what 'through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will'?

Adoption to sonship renders a Roman legal term for the full standing of an adopted son, and the same sentence dates the choice to 'before the creation of the world'.

What is the 'mystery' Ephesians 3 says was hidden from earlier generations but now revealed through the gospel?

Gentiles are heirs with Israel, 'members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise', a secret that 'for ages past was kept hidden in God'.

Which line, possibly a fragment of an early hymn, does Ephesians 5 introduce with 'This is why it is said'?

Wake up, sleeper, 'rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you', may be a snatch of early Christian song, and it follows the promise that 'everything exposed by the light becomes visible'.

Which four words does Ephesians 3 use to measure the love of Christ, a love that 'surpasses knowledge'?

Wide, long, high, deep is the measure, and the prayer's goal is that readers be 'filled to the measure of all the fullness of God'.

Ephesians 6:4 tells fathers not to do what to their children, but to give them the Lord's 'training and instruction'?

Exasperate is the NIV's verb where the KJV has 'provoke not your children to wrath', and it comes right after children are told to obey 'in the Lord'.

Ephesians 6 tells masters to stop doing what to their slaves, since their own Master in heaven shows no favoritism?

Threatening them is the one practice named, after slaves are told to obey 'not only to win their favor when their eye is on you'.

Ephesians 4:28 tells a former thief to work 'with their own hands' for what purpose?

To share with the needy is the stated aim, not restitution, and the rule sits just before the ban on 'unwholesome talk'.

In the armour of God, Ephesians 6 makes the breastplate out of which virtue, an image borrowed from Isaiah 59?

Righteousness is the breastplate in both passages, and in Isaiah the warrior wearing it is the Lord himself, wrapped 'in zeal as in a cloak'.

What is the helmet in Ephesians 6, where 1 Thessalonians 5 instead makes the helmet 'the hope of' it?

Salvation is the helmet here, and Isaiah 59 already has God put 'the helmet of salvation on his head', the verse both letters draw on.

Where does the KJV of Ephesians 6:12 locate 'spiritual wickedness', beside 'principalities' and 'powers'?

In high places is the KJV's wording for what the NIV calls 'the heavenly realms', so the phrase points at the skies and not at thrones or palaces.

What does the KJV of Ephesians 5:16 tell readers to be 'redeeming', 'because the days are evil'?

The time is kairos in the Greek, the opportune moment, and 'redeeming' is a verb for buying something up, which is why the NIV has 'making the most of every opportunity'.

With 'in Ephesus' missing from the earliest manuscripts, what kind of letter do many scholars think Ephesians was?

An encyclical meant for several churches would explain why the writer greets nobody by name, though Acts has Paul spend more than two years in Ephesus.

From which city is Ephesians traditionally dated to around AD 62, with Paul imprisoned and awaiting trial?

Rome is the traditional setting, but scholars who doubt Paul wrote the letter place it after his death, later in the first century.

Ephesians is grouped with Philippians, Philemon and which other letter as Paul's four 'prison epistles'?

Colossians overlaps with Ephesians so heavily that many scholars think one writer worked from the other, and both letters name the same courier.

For about how long did the crowd in the Ephesus theatre chant their goddess's greatness in unison in Acts 19?

Two hours of shouting began when the crowd realised Alexander, pushed forward to speak, was a Jew; the city clerk then warned they risked a charge of rioting.

The sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest in Ephesus, were beaten and stripped after attempting what in Acts 19?

An exorcism 'in the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches' backfired when the spirit answered, 'Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?'

In Acts 19, Ephesian converts who had practised sorcery publicly burned what, valued at fifty thousand drachmas?

Their scrolls went up in a public bonfire, and since a drachma was about a day's wage, the fire consumed roughly fifty thousand days of pay.

Where in Ephesus did Paul hold daily discussions for two years after leaving the synagogue, according to Acts 19?

The hall of Tyrannus hosted Paul after the synagogue turned 'obstinate', and Acts claims that as a result 'all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord'.

At which port did Paul bid farewell to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, warning that 'savage wolves' would come?

Miletus is where they 'all wept as they embraced him', grieved most by his word that 'they would never see his face again'.

Under what title did Marcion's followers know Ephesians, according to Tertullian?

To the Laodiceans fits a letter whose earliest copies lack 'in Ephesus', and the Muratorian fragment condemns a letter of that name as a forgery in Paul's name tied to Marcion.

Papyrus 46, among the earliest surviving copies of Ephesians, puts which disputed letter straight after Romans?

Hebrews comes second in Papyrus 46, a codex of about AD 200 now split between Dublin and Michigan, because whoever compiled it counted the anonymous letter among Paul's.

Which German term from Luther's Small Catechism do scholars use for the household rules in Ephesians 5 and 6?

Haustafel, 'house table', covers three pairs, wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters, the same three relationships Aristotle used to analyse a household in his Politics.

Which verb is missing from the oldest Greek copies of Ephesians 5:22 on wives, carried over from verse 21's 'to one another'?

Submit appears only in verse 21 in the earliest Greek manuscripts, so the wives' verse hangs on 'submit to one another out of reverence for Christ'.

Which bishop of Ephesus, praised by Ignatius of Antioch around AD 107, may have been the runaway slave of Philemon?

Onesimus is 'a man of inexpressible love, and your bishop in the flesh' in Ignatius's letter to Ephesus, written while he was being taken to his execution.

Who first framed the 'recapitulation' theory of atonement, built on Ephesians 1:10, 'to sum up all things in Christ'?

Irenaeus of Lyons wrote that Christ did 'become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself', with the Ephesians verse among his main proof texts.

Psalm 68's victor 'received gifts from people'; how does Ephesians 4:8 reword it?

He gave gifts flips the psalm's picture of a conqueror collecting tribute, and three verses later the gifts turn out to be people, the church's own leaders.

Whose hymn 'Soldiers of Christ, Arise' began as a poem titled 'The Whole Armour of God, Ephesians VI'?

Charles Wesley wrote it while early Methodists were being stoned and having their homes vandalised, real attacks alongside the spiritual battle the hymn describes.

Which sin does Ephesians 5:5 brand as idolatry, listing it beside immorality and impurity?

Greed makes a person 'an idolater' with no inheritance 'in the kingdom of Christ and of God', and verse 3 bans 'even a hint' of it.

What does Paul do in Ephesians 3 'before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name'?

Kneel is the posture he names before asking that Christ 'may dwell in your hearts through faith' and that readers be 'rooted and established in love'.

Which saying of Jesus, recorded in none of the Gospels, does Paul quote to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20?

More blessed to give than to receive is the line, and Paul uses it to end his farewell, having reminded the elders that he earned his own keep with manual work.

Ephesians 2:14 says Christ made two hostile peoples one by breaking down what kind of barrier between them?

A dividing wall of hostility is the image, and Jerusalem's temple had a literal one: a balustrade whose notices warned outsiders not to pass on pain of death.

In 1 Corinthians 15, defending the resurrection of the dead, Paul says he fought with what at Ephesus?

Wild beasts are Paul's example of a risk not worth taking if the dead stay dead, and he follows it with the motto of people who think so: eat and drink.

In Acts 19, which items that had touched Paul were carried to the sick in Ephesus, who were then cured?

Handkerchiefs and aprons are how Acts shows the miracles were out of the ordinary: cloth that had merely touched Paul drove out diseases and evil spirits.

Ephesians 5:27 pictures Christ receiving the church as a bride in splendour, free of stain, blemish or what else?

Wrinkle completes a bridal picture: the verse before has Christ cleansing the church by a washing with water, so that she comes out holy and blameless.

According to Ephesians 5:28, a husband who loves his wife is by that very act loving whom?

Himself is the answer because the letter treats the couple as one: nobody ever hated his own body, it reasons, but feeds it and takes care of it.

Which everyday verb does Ephesians use for how to live, telling readers to do it 'in love' and 'as children of light'?

Walk is the letter's running metaphor for conduct: readers must also do it in a manner worthy of their calling and pay careful attention to how they do it.

In Ephesians 4:15, the church is a body that must 'grow up' into Christ, who is which part of it?

The head is where growth comes from in this picture: from Christ the whole frame is fitted and held together, and it builds itself up as each part does its work.

Which married couple, tentmakers like Paul, did he leave behind in Ephesus on his first brief visit in Acts 18?

Priscilla and Aquila stayed on when Paul sailed away, and they were soon taking aside a gifted new preacher in the synagogue to set his message straight.

By early tradition, which of the twelve apostles spent his old age in Ephesus, where a basilica marks his tomb?

John is said to have died there of natural causes, which would make him the only one of the twelve who did not die a martyr.

Ephesians 5:4 rules out obscenity, foolish talk and crude joking, and names which kind of speech to put in their place?

Thanksgiving is the cure the letter keeps prescribing: a few verses on, readers are told to be thankful always and for everything.

Ephesians 4:3 asks readers to work hard at keeping what 'of the Spirit' through the bond of peace?

The unity gets its reasons in the next breath, a run of seven 'ones' that starts with a single body and ends with a single God over all.

In Acts 20, Paul sails straight past Ephesus because he is hurrying to reach Jerusalem by which festival?

Pentecost was close, so Paul skipped the city where he had spent three years and summoned its elders to meet him at a port down the coast instead.

Ephesians 2:19 tells former outsiders they are no longer strangers and foreigners but what 'with the saints'?

Fellow citizens is paired at once with a warmer image, members of God's household, before the passage turns the readers into a building.

Ephesians 5:19 lists psalms, hymns and which third kind of music for believers to address one another with?

Spiritual songs follow a contrast: the verse before says to be filled with the Spirit instead of getting drunk on wine, and the singing comes next.

Which letter of Paul, a defence of freedom from the law of Moses, sits just before Ephesians in the New Testament?

Galatians is the ninth book of the New Testament and Ephesians the tenth, so the two letters sit side by side between the Corinthian pair and Philippians.

Ephesians 2:4 calls God 'rich' in which quality, the reason he made people alive with Christ?

Mercy is the hinge of the chapter: after three verses on people ruled by their cravings, the King James text turns on two words, 'But God'.

Ephesians 4:14 warns against staying infants, tossed by waves and carried about by every what 'of doctrine'?

Wind completes a picture of a small boat at sea, and the verse says who stirs the weather: people with clever cunning and deceitful schemes.

Ephesians 5:1 tells readers that, 'as beloved children', they should be what 'of God'?

Imitators is the bold word here, and the model follows at once: readers are to live in love as Christ did in going to his death for them.

Paul spent three years in Ephesus, yet the letter to the Ephesians oddly lacks which usual feature of his letters?

Personal greetings are missing: the writer names nobody in the congregation and mentions no local news, although Acts records an emotional parting from its leaders.

Which eloquent Jew from Alexandria preached in the Ephesus synagogue in Acts 18 before Paul returned to the city?

Apollos knew the story of Jesus only in part, so a tentmaking couple took him home and filled in the rest before he moved on to Corinth.

Which official finally quieted the mob in the Ephesus theatre in Acts 19, warning that the courts were open?

The town clerk feared the authorities more than Paul: an unlawful assembly could bring a charge of rioting, he said, so any grievance belonged before the proconsuls.

In Acts 19, an Ephesian official calms a mob by recalling that their goddess's sacred image came from where?

The sky is the claim: the image 'fell from heaven', he says, and since nobody could deny it there was no reason to riot over a travelling preacher.

Ephesus was the capital of which Roman province, whose name now belongs to a whole continent?

Asia then meant only the western end of Anatolia, and Acts claims that during Paul's two years of daily lectures everyone living in it heard his message.

In Revelation 2, what does the risen Christ warn he will remove from Ephesus unless the church repents?

Its lampstand stands for the congregation itself: the vision has just explained that the seven golden lampstands are the seven churches.

Revelation 2 promises whoever overcomes in Ephesus the right to eat from what, in the paradise of God?

The tree of life had been barred to humanity since Eden, so the promise to Ephesus amounts to reopening the garden.

Which archaic verb does the KJV of Ephesians 2 use for God making people alive 'together with Christ'?

Quickened keeps the old sense of 'quick' as living; the meaning 'fast' grew later out of the idea of being full of vigour.

Ephesians 2:3 says that all people, following their cravings, were 'by nature children of' what?

Wrath is where the writer joins the accused, switching from 'you' to 'all of us', before the chapter turns to rescue.

In Ephesians 3:8, what rank does Paul claim among all God's people while preaching Christ's 'unsearchable riches'?

Less than the least is a deliberate stretch of grammar: the Greek adds a comparative ending to a word that already means 'smallest', a form found nowhere else in the New Testament.

Ephesians 3:17 prays that readers, with Christ dwelling in their hearts, will be what 'in love'?

Rooted and grounded mixes a plant with a foundation, and the prayer wants both for one purpose: the strength to grasp how vast Christ's love is.

Which quality comes first in Ephesians 4:2, ahead of gentleness and patience, for living 'worthy of the calling'?

Humility comes first because the list is about getting along: it ends with bearing with one another in love, which is how the letter expects peace to be kept.

Ephesians 5:33 sums up its teaching on marriage with one duty each: the husband must love, and the wife must do what?

Respect him is all the summary asks of her, while the passage gives far more space to the man, who is told to love as sacrificially as Christ loved the church.

Ephesians 2:6 says God raised believers up with Christ and then did what 'in the heavenly realms'?

Seated them is in the past tense, as if already done, echoing chapter 1, where Christ is seated at God's right hand above every power.

Ephesians 5:2 describes the death of Christ 'for us' as what kind of sacrifice to God?

A fragrant offering borrows the language of the altar, where the smoke of a burnt sacrifice was called a pleasing aroma, and applies it to a death.

Ephesians 5:6 warns readers to let nobody deceive them with what kind of words?

Empty words here are reassurances that vice carries no consequences; the verse insists that such things bring God's anger on the disobedient.

Rather than join in the 'fruitless deeds of darkness', what does Ephesians 5:11 tell readers to do instead?

Expose them comes with a caution in the very next verse: what the disobedient do in secret is shameful even to mention.

Ephesians 3:12 says that through faith in Christ believers may enter God's presence with boldness and what else?

Confidence is the point of the paragraph: the next verse tells readers not to lose heart over the writer's sufferings, which he calls their glory.

In Acts 20, Paul reminds the Ephesian elders that he warned them 'night and day' for three years with what?

Tears run in both directions in the scene: when Paul says they will never see his face again, the elders weep, embrace him and see him to the ship.

Acts 19 calls the Ephesus riot 'a great disturbance' about what, an early name for the Christian movement?

The Way also appears earlier in the chapter, when opponents in the synagogue malign it and Paul takes his disciples elsewhere.

Which group's works does the risen Christ praise the church in Ephesus for hating, in Revelation 2?

Nicolaitans are named only in Revelation, so nobody is sure what they taught; early writers linked them to Nicolas, one of the seven deacons in Acts.

Which Ephesian was Paul wrongly thought to have taken into the Jerusalem temple, sparking his arrest in Acts 21?

Trophimus had only been seen with Paul in the streets, but the rumour that a foreigner had crossed the temple barrier was enough to start a riot.

Outside Paul's letters, which New Testament epistle also contains a household code for wives, husbands and slaves?

1 Peter adds a twist of its own, telling wives that quiet conduct may win over husbands who do not hold their beliefs.

Which KJV phrase in Ephesians 4:14 for human trickery translates a Greek word that literally means dice-playing?

Sleight of men pictures false guides as cheating dice-players, using a word the New Testament has only this once.

In the KJV of Ephesians 2:3 and 4:22, which now-misleading word means conduct or manner of living?

Conversation in 1611 meant behaviour in general, so the 'former conversation' to be put off in chapter 4 is an old pattern of conduct, not old chatter.

Which adverb does the KJV of Ephesians 5:15 use for how readers should conduct themselves, 'not as fools'?

Circumspectly comes from the Latin for looking all around, and newer translations simply tell readers to pay careful attention to how they live.

In the original Greek, the great opening hymn of praise in Ephesians 1:3–14 can be punctuated as one single what?

Sentence is right, and the prayer that follows is a second one, so twenty-one verses of the Greek hold just two of them.

Which phrase closes the doxology of Ephesians 3:21 in the KJV, just before the Amen, as in the English Gloria Patri?

World without end is also how Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer rendered the Latin 'in saecula saeculorum', which is why the phrase sounds so familiar in church.

Which list of New Testament books, perhaps the oldest known, already counts Ephesians among Paul's letters?

The Muratorian fragment takes its name from Ludovico Muratori, the Italian historian who found the 85-line Latin text in a Milan library and published it.

Ephesians 4:9, on Christ going down to 'the lower parts of the earth', is often cited for which traditional doctrine?

The Harrowing of Hell is Christ's triumphant descent to the dead between his crucifixion and rising, and 'harrow' here is an old word for a raid.

Ephesians 3:10 says which 'manifold' attribute of God is now shown through the church to rulers in the heavenly realms?

Wisdom is put on show to an unexpected audience: not the neighbours but unseen rulers and authorities, with the church itself as the exhibit.