Have You Ever Read Ephesians?

The word 'abolished' is karargeo, 'to render inoperative.'

For He Himself is our peace, the One who made the both one, having broken down the middle wall of the partition, the enmity, in is flesh He rendered inoperative the law of the commandments in ordinances, in order that the two He might create in Himself, resulting in one new man, making peace.

7:4 So then, my brothers, you also have been made dead to the law through the body of Christ

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against such things there is no law." (Gal. 5:22,23)

RcV Galatians 2:16 And knowing that a man is not justified out of works of law, but through faith in Jesus Christ, we also have believed into Christ Jesus that we might be justified out of faith in Christ and not out of the works of law, because out of the works of law no flesh will be justified.2:19 For I through law have died to law that I might live to God.2:21 I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness is through law, then Christ has died for nothing.3:2 This only I wish to learn from you, Did you receive the Spirit out of the works of law or out of the hearing of faith?3:10 For as many as are of the works of law are under a curse; for it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all the things written in the book of the law to do them.
3:11 And that by law no one is justified before God is evident because, The righteous one shall have life and live by faith;
3:12 But the law is not of faith, yet, He who does them shall live because of them.
3:13 Christ has redeemed us out of the curse of the law, having become a curse on our behalf; because it is written, Cursed is everyone hanging on a tree;
3:14 In order that the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.3:17 And I say this: A covenant previously ratified by God, the law, having come four hundred and thirty years after, does not annul so as to make the promise of none effect.
3:18 For if the inheritance is of law, it is no longer of promise; but to Abraham God has graciously given it through promise.3:21 Is then the law against the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given which was able to give life, righteousness would have indeed been of law.
3:22 But the Scripture has shut up all under sin in order that the promise out of faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
3:23 But before faith came we were guarded under law, being shut up unto the faith which was to be revealed.
3:24 So then the law has become our child-conductor unto Christ that we might be justified out of faith.4:4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under law,
4:5 That He might redeem those under law that we might receive the sonship.
4:6 And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father!
4:7 So then you are no longer a slave but a son; and if a son, an heir also through God.4:21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?
4:22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one of the maidservant and cone of the free woman.
4:23 However the one of the maidservant was born according to the flesh, but the one of the free woman was born through promise.5:3 And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole law.
5:4 You have been brought to nought, separated from Christ, you who are being justified by law; you have fallen from grace.
5:5 For we by the Spirit out of faith eagerly await the hope of righteousness.5:13 For you were called for freedom, brothers; only do not turn this freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
5:14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.5:18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
5:23 Meekness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

I Timothy 1:8 But we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully
1:9 And knows this, that the law is not enacted for a righteous man but for the lawless and unruly, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and those who strike their mothers, for murderers,
1:10 For fornicators, homosexuals, kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and whatever other thing that is opposed to the healthy teaching,

Romans 7:7 What then shall we say? Is the law sin? Absolutely not! But I did not know sin except through the law; for neither did I know coveting, except the law had said, You shall not covet.7:12 So then the law is holy, and the commandment holy and righteous and good.
7:13 Did then that which is good become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin did, that it might be shown to be sin by working out death in me through that which is good, that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.
7:14 For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am fleshy, sold under sin.8:3 For that which the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin and concerning sin, condemned sin in the flesh,

NAS Ephesians 3:8 To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ,NIV Ephesians 3:8 Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,DBY Ephesians 3:8 To me, less than the least of all saints, has this grace been given, to announce among the nations the glad tidings of the unsearchable riches of the Christ,

NAS Acts 5:42 And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ - 'evangelize Jesus as the Christ'NAS Acts 8:4 Therefore, those who had been scattered went about preaching the word. - 'evangelize the word'NAS Acts 8:12 But when they believed Philip preaching the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were being baptized, men and women alike. - 'evangelize regarding the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ'NAS Acts 8:25 And so, when they had solemnly testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they started back to Jerusalem, and were preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans. - 'evangelized the Samaritans'NAS Acts 8:35 And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture he preached Jesus to him. - 'evangelized Jesus'NAS Acts 8:40 But Philip found himself at Azotus; and as he passed through he kept preaching the gospel to all the cities, until he came to Caesarea. - 'evangelizing all the cities'NAS Acts 10:36 "The word which He sent to the sons of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)--'evangelizing peace'NAS Acts 13:32 "And we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers, 'evangelizing the good news of the promise'

Even if we regard it as probable that anyone could have poured forth truths so exalted, and moral teachings so pure and profound, in an epistle by which he deliberately intended to deceive the Church and the world, it is not possible that one actuated by such a purpose should successfully imitate the glow and rush of feeling which marks the other writings of the Apostle, and expresses itself in the to-and-fro-conflicting eddies of thought, in the one great flow of utterance and purpose. The style of St. Paul may be compared to a great tide advancing irresistibly towards the destined shore, but broken and rippled over every wave of its broad expanse, and liable at any moment to mighty refluences as it foams and swells about opposing sandbank or rocky cape. With even more exactness we might compare it to a river whose pure waters, at every interspace of calm, reflect as a mirror the hues of heaven, but which is liable to the rushing influx of mountain torrents, and whose reflected images are only dimly discernable in the ten thousand fragments of quivering colour, when its surface is swept by ruffling winds. If we make the difficult concession that any other mind that that of St. Paul could have originated the majestic statement of Christian truth which is enshrined in the doctrinal part of the Epistle, we may still safely assert, on literary grounds alone, that no writer, desirous to gain a hearing for such high revelations, could so have so completely merged his own individuality in that of another as to imitate the involutions of parentheses, the digressions at a word, the superimposition of a minor current of feeling over another that is flowing steadily beneath it, the unconscious recurrence of haunting expressions, the struggle and strain to find a worthy utterance for thoughts and feelings which burst through the feeble bands of language, the dominance of the syllogism of emotion over the syllogism of grammar - the many minute characteristics which stamp so ineffaceable an impress on the Apostle’s undisputed works.

Goodspeed on Ephesians
But if a name and an identity be demanded for the author of Ephesians, the name of Onesimus of Ephesus comes at once to the mind. The Pauline corpus came into being in the days when Onesimus and Polycarp seem to have been active in Christian work in AsiaPolycarp in Smyrna and Onesimus in Ephesus. Onesimus may have been the Laodicean Christian who brought Colossians-Philemon to Ephesus; who so likely to have cherished and pored over them as he? He may have been the collector of the Pauline corpus, of which he thus had the nucleus. And he may have been the writer of the great preface which we know as Ephesians, building thus a splendid monument to his great friend and teacher, who had saved him from slavery and paganism and opened before him a new life. One would like to think so.

Here we come to those features of John Knox's Philemon among the Letters of Paul which make it one of the most important and fascinating studies of this letter ever to have been published.Knox’s work took shape against the background of the Chicago school of NT studies led by Edgar J. Goodspeed. Goodspeed pioneered the view that the Pauline corpus of ten letters (that is, lacking the three Pastorals) was edited and published at Ephesus about the end of the first century A.D., and that the document which we know as the letter to the Ephesians was composed by the editor to server as an introduction to the corpus. Other members of the school undertook supporting studies, and Knox’s book belongs to this category.Knox accepts the general Goodspeed position and goes on toe suggest a reason for the inclusion of Philemon in the ten-letter corpus. It was included because it meant very much to the man who played a prominent part in the publication of the corpus - namely, Onesimus.Here is his argument. When Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in Syria, was being taken to Rome for execution about A.D. 110, he was visited in Smyrna by the bishop of Ephesus, who was named Onesimus. But why should one connect this Onesimus with the Onesimus who figures in the letter to Philemon fifty years earlier.Because, says, Knox, Ignatius shows himself familiar with the letter with the writes a letter of thanks to the church of Ephesus. Ignatius’s letter to the Ephesians is, indeed, one of the few places in patristic literature which clearly echoes the language of the letter to Philemon. Not only so, but the part of Ignatius’s letter which echoes the language of the letter to Philemon is the part which mentions Bishop Onesimus - the first 6 chapters. In these six chapters the bishop is mentioned 14 times; in the remaining 15 chapters he is not mentioned at all (apart from one more general reference to the bishop’s office; obey the bishop and the presbytery with an undisturbed mind).This consideration is impressive. One especially impressive point is that, just as Paul plays on the meaning of Onesimus’s name (profitable) when he says to Philemon, may I have this ‘profit’ from you (v. 20), so apparently does Ignatius when he writes to the Ephesian church, may I always have ‘profit’ form you (2:2).All this does not demonstrate the identify of the two Onesimi; it could simply be that the name of the bishop of Ephesus reminded Ignatius of the Onesimus whom Paul befriended. As the earlier Onesimus, formerly unprofitable, was henceforth going to be as profitable as his name promised, so Onesimus of Ephesus was eminently worthy of that well-loved name. But the identification is not impossible one might go further and say that is not improbable. We have no idea how old Paul’s Onesimus was when he wrote about him; but a young man in his later teens or early twenties at that time would be about seventy by the time of Ignatius’s martyrdom - not a incredible age for a bishop in those days,Knox then ventures farther in his reconstruction of the situation. If (as the Goodspeed school held) Ephesus was the place where the Pauline corpus was first published, early in the second century, then the Onesimus of Ignatius’s letter was bishop of Ephesus around that time and must have had some responsibility with regard to the editing of the corpus. Why should he not have been the editor himself? If so, we need look no farther for the reason for the careful preservation of the letter to Philemon and its inclusion in the corpus of Paul’s letters. But if Onesimus was the editor of the corpus, then (according to the Goodspeed school) he would have been author of the canonical letter to the Ephesians. If that were so, Paul accomplished something more wonderful that he could have realized the day he won Onesimus to faith in Christ.But the Goodspeed line has not found wide acceptance. For those who are unable to follow it, Knox’s reconstruction has more of fancy than of fact about it. Yet the preservation and canonization of this private letter must be explained. To Onesimus the letter was his charter of liberty. That Onesimus did become bishop of Ephesus is not improbable. If so, then, wherever and by whomsoever the Pauline corpus was first compiled and published, Onesimus could scarcely fail; to get to know about it, and would make sure that his Pauline letter found a place in the collection.

Eph 1:22-23 And He subjected all things under His feet and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, 23 Which is His Body, the fullness of the One who fills all in all.Heb 2:8-9 You have subjected all things under His feet. For in subjecting all things to Him, He left nothing unsubject to Him. But now we do not yet see all things subjected to Him, 9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little inferior to the angels because of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death on behalf of everything.I Cor 15:24-28 Then the end, when He delivers up the kingdom to His God and Father, once He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. 25 For He must reign until God buts all His enemies under His feet. 26 Death, the last enemy, is being abolished. 27 For He has subjected all things under His feet. But when He says that all things are subjected, it is evident that all things are except Him who has subjected all things to Him. 28 And when all things have been subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to Him who has subjected all things to Him, that God may be all in all.

NIV Ephesians 3:13 I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.NIV Ephesians 6:21 Tychicus, the dear brother and faithful servant in the Lord, will tell you everything, so that you also may know how I am and what I am doing. 22 I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage you.

I had to read you post about 3 times and then it finally sunk in. That was not obvious to me. Thanks.