Ephesians 1:13

Note

Ephesians 1:3–14 is one long sentence in Greek, a blessing of God for the Father's choosing, the Son's redemption and the Spirit's pledge. Near its end Paul turns from "we" to "you." The Gentile believers share the same blessing, and for them it began when they heard the gospel.

Verse 12 spoke of "we, who were the first to hope in Christ" (Ephesians 1:12): Paul and the Jewish believers who had waited for the Messiah. Verse 13 turns to the others, and Wesley glosses the "you" with a single word, "Gentiles" Wesley. Those who hoped first and those who heard later now hold one inheritance, and the Spirit is its pledge for both, "to the praise of His glory" (Ephesians 1:14).

The noun euangelion stands in apposition to "the word of truth": the gospel is the word of truth, and what it says is "your salvation." The verse has a single main verb, esphragisthēte, "you were sealed," an aorist passive. Before it come two aorist participles, akousantes, "having heard," and pisteusantes, "having believed." The order is the gospel's own: it is heard, it is believed, and God, the unnamed agent behind the passive, sets His seal on the one who believes. In the ancient world a seal marked who owned a thing and vouched that a document or a cargo was genuine. Verse 14 adds that the Spirit is "the pledge of our inheritance" (1:14), a first instalment of what is still to come.

The KJV reads: "In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise." Its "trusted" has no word of its own in the Greek; the translators carried it over from verse 12 and printed it in italics to show that it was supplied. The BSB folds the two participles into one phrase, "having heard and believed," and the LSV keeps the article and the older word: "the word of the truth—the good news of your salvation." The KJV's "holy Spirit of promise" and the BSB's "promised Holy Spirit" say the same thing in two ways: the Spirit is the gift God had promised, the one Jesus told the disciples to wait for in Jerusalem (Acts 1:4).

Wesley calls this the gospel "Which God made the means of your salvation," and says the sealing implies "A full impression of the image of God on their souls" Wesley. He places the sealing after faith, "Probably some time after their first believing" Wesley. Many readers take the aorist participle the other way, as describing the same moment: believing, you were sealed. Here Christian traditions speak differently. Reformed and Baptist Christians generally hold that the seal is given when a person comes to faith; Lutherans teach that God gives faith and the Spirit through Baptism; the Catholic Church connects the seal with Confirmation, and the Orthodox Church with Chrismation, each of whose rites speaks of the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit; Wesleyan and Pentecostal churches, while confessing the Spirit given at conversion, also speak of a later and deeper work of the Spirit. Matthew Henry puts the common ground plainly: "The sanctifying and comforting influences of the Holy Spirit seal believers as the children of God, and heirs of heaven" Matthew Henry.

The verse traces how the gospel reaches a person. Someone hears a word; the word is true; and what it announces is the hearer's own salvation. The seal that follows is God's doing, not the hearer's.