The Message of Ephesians - Paperback

The Gospel Is Bigger Than You Think

There is a common blind spot among evangelical Christians — one that has grown more pronounced the more individualistic our surrounding culture becomes. We hear the gospel as a personal message: God loves you, Christ died for you, you can be forgiven, you can have eternal life. All of that is gloriously true. But it is not the whole truth.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians will not let us stop there. No one, as John Stott writes, can come away from a careful reading of Ephesians with a privatized gospel. Because the gospel in Ephesians is not just about saving individuals. It is about creating something unprecedented in history: a new society, drawn from every tribe and tongue, in which every barrier that divides human beings — Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free — has been broken down by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Message of Ephesians is Stott’s passionate, careful, and comprehensive guide to that vision.

About This Book

First published in 1979 and now in a revised edition with updated interior design and Scripture quotations, The Message of Ephesians is part of the Bible Speaks Today series edited by John Stott and published by IVP. It is widely regarded as one of the finest volumes in the series — the fruit of Stott’s many years of studying and teaching this letter, brought together in a guide that is both academically responsible and pastorally alive.

Stott’s exposition works passage by passage through all six chapters of Ephesians — from Paul’s breathtaking opening panorama of God’s eternal purpose to the famous call to spiritual warfare in chapter 6 — providing historical background, careful theological exposition, and clear, searching application for Christians today.

The book’s central argument follows Paul’s own: that God’s eternal purpose is to unite all things in Christ by uniting his church. Ephesians is not a book about individual spiritual growth, though it addresses that. It is a book about the new community that God is building — a community that is the most powerful evidence for the gospel in the world.

What the Book Covers — The Vision of Ephesians

God’s Eternal Purpose — Ephesians 1 The most soaring passage in the letter is also one of the most demanding. Stott unpacks Paul’s declaration that God chose his people in Christ before the foundation of the world, predestined them for adoption, and purposed to unite all things in him — with the precision of a theologian and the wonder of a worshipper.

God’s New Society — Ephesians 2 The magnificent pivot of chapter 2: from the death of sin to the life of grace (2:1–10), and from the division of humanity to the unity of the church (2:11–22). Stott shows how the second half of chapter 2 is as important as the first — and how the cross that reconciles us to God also reconciles us to one another.

The Mystery of the Gospel — Ephesians 3 Paul’s explanation of the mystery now revealed: that Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, partakers of the same promise. Stott draws out why this was so explosive in the first century — and why it remains explosive today wherever the gospel creates communities that cross the deepest human divisions.

A Life Worthy of the Calling — Ephesians 4:1–16 The great hinge of the letter — “walk worthy of the calling” — launches Paul’s extended ethical section. Stott handles the unity of the Spirit, the diversity of gifts, and the goal of maturity with theological care and ecclesiological vision.

New Standards for a New Society — Ephesians 4:17 – 5:21 The practical section of Ephesians addresses how the new community lives differently from the surrounding culture: put off the old, put on the new; speak truth; be angry without sinning; work honestly; speak graciously; be filled with the Spirit. Stott brings these practical instructions to life with the same theological grounding that has marked every preceding chapter.

New Relationships — Ephesians 5:22 – 6:9 The “household code” — husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants — is examined with particular care. Stott handles the controversial passages on marriage with both theological integrity and pastoral sensitivity, showing how the mutual submission of verse 21 governs all that follows, and how Christ’s relationship to the church is both the model and the motive for Christian marriage.

Spiritual Warfare — Ephesians 6:10–20 The call to put on the whole armour of God is examined not as a dramatic passage about supernatural phenomena but as a sober description of the ongoing spiritual conflict that every Christian faces — and of the resources God provides for the fight.

What Readers Will Learn

• Why Paul’s vision of the church in Ephesians is not secondary to his gospel but inseparable from it
• How to understand God’s eternal purpose — election, predestination, and the summing up of all things in Christ — with theological clarity and devotional wonder
• How the cross accomplishes both vertical reconciliation (with God) and horizontal reconciliation (with others)
• What Paul means by the mystery of the gospel — and why the multiethnic church is its most visible demonstration
• How the gifts of the Spirit serve the unity and maturity of the whole body, not primarily the enrichment of individuals
• How Christian marriage, parenting, and work are all transformed by the gospel vision of Ephesians
• How to stand in spiritual warfare — understanding both the nature of the conflict and the armour God provides

Who Should Read This Book

Pastors and church leaders who want to ground their ministry in the vision of the church that Ephesians sets out — and who need a theological partner in the text who has spent decades wrestling with it.

Anyone who has found the church disappointing — whose experience of the local church has felt far from Paul’s vision — will find in Stott’s exposition both an honest diagnosis of why that gap exists and a compelling vision of what the church is called to be.

Christians in diverse communities — in India’s multiethnic, multi-denominational church landscape — who want to understand what Paul’s vision of a community that breaks down every dividing wall looks like in their context.

Small groups and Bible study groups working through Ephesians together who need a guide that explains the background, unpacks the argument, and draws searching application.

Anyone who has read Stott’s Message of Galatians — also available at forthetruth.in — and wants to continue through the Pauline letters with the same quality of exposition.

About the Author — John R. W. Stott (1921–2011)

John Stott served as Rector of All Souls Langham Place in London for twenty-five years, and as Rector Emeritus until his death in 2011. Time magazine named him one of the hundred most influential people in the world. He was the founding editor of the Bible Speaks Today series and the author of more than fifty books. His writing is marked throughout by faithfulness to the biblical text, clarity of argument, warmth of pastoral application, and a deep conviction that the gospel is both true and transforming.

The Message of Ephesians is the fruit of Stott’s lifelong engagement with this letter — a letter he described as one of the most magnificent in the entire New Testament. It remains one of the most widely recommended expositions of Ephesians in the evangelical world.

Series Information — Bible Speaks Today

The Message of Ephesians is part of the Bible Speaks Today series published by IVP — one of the most respected biblical exposition series in the evangelical world, covering books across both testaments. The Message of Galatians, also by John Stott, is available at forthetruth.in.

What Others Have Said

“Stott’s exposition of Ephesians is a model of what Christian preaching and teaching should be — faithful to the text, clear in its theology, and warm in its application. This is one of the most important books for recovering a high view of the church.” — from a published commendation

“The Message of Ephesians remains one of the best available guides to Paul’s greatest ecclesiological letter. If you want to understand what the church is and what it is for, begin here.” — from a pastoral commendation