Strings Tuned to the Lyre

Ignatius, also called Theophorus, to the church at Ephesus in Asia — a church that deserves to be called happy, blessed with greatness by the fullness of God the Father; marked out beforehand, before the ages, to be always for a glory that stays and does not change; united and chosen in a true suffering, by the will of the Father and of Jesus Christ our God. Fullest greetings in Jesus Christ and in joy without blemish.

I welcomed in God that much-loved name of yours, which you hold by a righteous nature, in keeping with faith and love in Christ Jesus our Savior. You imitate God; and once you had been set alight again by the blood of God, you brought the work that belongs to your own family to its perfect finish. For when you heard that I was coming from Syria in chains for the sake of the name and the hope we all share, hoping that through your prayer I would succeed in fighting wild animals at Rome, so that by succeeding I might be able to be a disciple — you were eager to see me. So then, since in Onesimus I have received your whole great number in God’s name — Onesimus, a man of love beyond telling, and your overseer — I ask you, by Jesus Christ, to love him, and for all of you to be like him. Blessed is the one who granted you, who deserved it, to have such an overseer. [e]

About my fellow servant Burrhus, your deacon in the things of God and blessed in every way: I pray that he may stay on longer, for your honor and your overseer’s. And Crocus too, who is worthy of God and of you, and whom I received as a sample of the love that comes from you, has given me rest in everything — as the Father of Jesus Christ will also refresh him — along with Onesimus and Burrhus and Euplus and Fronto, through whom I have seen all of you in love. May I have joy of you always, if only I am worthy of it. So it is right to glorify Jesus Christ in every way, since he has glorified you, so that, fitted together in one act of submission, submitting to the overseer and to the council of elders, you may be made holy through and through. [j]

I am not giving you orders, as though I were somebody. Even though I am in chains for the name, I am not yet finished in Jesus Christ. I am only now beginning to be a disciple, and I talk to you as my fellow students. I am the one who needed to be rubbed down by you — with faith, correction, endurance, and patience. But since love will not let me keep quiet about you, I have gone ahead and urged you to run together with the mind of God. For Jesus Christ, our life that cannot be divided, is himself the Father’s mind — just as the overseers, appointed out to the ends of the earth, are in the mind of Jesus Christ. [l]

That is why it suits you to run together with your overseer’s mind — as in fact you do. Your council of elders, worthy of the name and worthy of God, is fitted to the overseer as exactly as strings to a lyre. So in your harmony, and in love that sounds in tune, Jesus Christ is sung. And every one of you, man by man, become a chorus, so that in tune together, in harmony, taking God’s own key in unity, you may sing with one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father — so that he may hear you, and may recognize, from the good you do, that you are limbs of his Son. It does you good, then, to be in unity without blemish, so that you may always have a share in God. [n]

For if I, in this short time, came to be so much at home with your overseer — an intimacy not human but spiritual — how much happier do I count you, who are mingled into him as the church is into Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ is into the Father, so that everything may sound together in unity. Let no one be misled: anyone who is not inside the altar goes without the bread of God. If the prayer of one or two has that much strength, how much more the prayer of the overseer and of the whole church. So the man who does not come to the common gathering is already showing his pride, and has judged himself. For it is written: “God ranges himself against the proud.” Let us take care, then, not to range ourselves against the overseer, so that we may be ranged under God. [o]

And the more anyone sees the overseer keeping quiet, the more he should hold him in awe. For whomever the master of a house sends to run his own household, we must receive him as we would receive the one who sent him. So it is plain that we must look to the overseer as we would to the Lord himself. Onesimus himself has nothing but praise for your good order in God: that all of you live by the truth, and that no sect makes its home among you. In fact you do not listen to anyone beyond what he says about Jesus Christ in truth. [r]

For some people make a habit of carrying the name around in evil deceit while doing other things unworthy of God. You must swerve away from them as from wild animals. They are rabid dogs that bite in secret, and you must be on guard against them, since they are hard to cure. There is one Physician: [t]

So let no one mislead you — and you are not being misled, since you belong wholly to God. When no quarrel has been driven in among you with the power to torture you, then you really are living God’s way. I am the scrapings you wipe away; I offer myself up for you, Ephesians — a church spoken of down all the ages. Those who live by the flesh cannot do the things of the spirit, and those who live by the spirit cannot do the things of the flesh — just as faith cannot do what belongs to unbelief, or unbelief what belongs to faith. But even the things you do in the flesh are spiritual, for you do everything in Jesus Christ. [w]