Chapter 1
Letter of St. Ignatius of Antioch to the Ephesians
Salutation
Ignatius, also called God-bearer, to the Church worthy of all honour, dwelling in Ephesus of Asia, blessed in the greatness of God the Father’s fullness, predestined before the ages to be for ever for his glory, unchanging, united and chosen in true passion, in the will of the Father and of Jesus Christ our God—abundant joy in Jesus Christ and in blamelessness.[1]
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1 I have received in God your much-beloved name, which you possess by a righteous nature according to faith and love in Christ Jesus our Saviour. Being imitators of God, you have rekindled through the blood of God the work of your kinship and brought it to perfect completion.
2 When you heard that I was bound from Syria for the sake of the common name and hope, hoping through your prayer to succeed in fighting wild beasts in Rome, so that by succeeding I might be a disciple, you made haste to see me.
3 Since I have received your great multitude in the name of God in Onesimus, your bishop, who is indescribable in love, I pray that you love him according to Jesus Christ and that you all be in harmony with him. Blessed is he who granted you to possess such a worthy bishop.[2]
2
1 Now concerning my fellow servant Burrhus, your deacon according to God, blessed in all things, I pray that he may remain with you for the honour of you and the bishop. And Crocus too, who is worthy of God and of you, whom I received as a living example of your love, has refreshed me in every way—may the Father of Jesus Christ refresh him, together with Onesimus and Burrhus and Euplus and Fronto, through whom I have seen all of you in love.
2 May I always have joy in you, if indeed I am worthy. So it is fitting in every way to glorify Jesus Christ who has glorified you, so that, united in one submission, submitting to the bishop and the presbytery, you may be sanctified in all things.
3
1 I’m not giving you orders as though I were someone important. For even though I am bound in the name, I am not yet perfected in Jesus Christ. Right now I’m only beginning to be a disciple, and I speak to you as my fellow students. For I needed to be anointed by you with faith, instruction, endurance, and long-suffering.
2 But since love doesn’t allow me to be silent about you, for this reason I’ve taken the initiative to encourage you to run together in harmony with the mind of God. For Jesus Christ, our undivided life, is the mind of the Father, just as the bishops appointed throughout the world are in the mind of Jesus Christ.
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1 Therefore you must run together with the mind of your bishop—which indeed you do. For your renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is so harmoniously arranged with the bishop as strings with a lyre. And so in your unity and harmonious love Jesus Christ is sung.
2 And each of you become a choir, so that being in harmony in unity, taking on God’s tone, you may sing with one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father, so that he may both hear you and recognize you through your good deeds, being members of his Son. It is therefore useful for you to be in blameless unity, so that you may always share in God.
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1 If in so short a time I have acquired such familiarity with your bishop—not a human one, but a spiritual one—how much more do I count you blessed, you who are so mingled with him as the Church is with Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ is with the Father, so that all things may be in harmony in unity?
2 Let no one be led astray. If anyone is not within the altar, he lacks the bread of God. For if the prayer of one or two has such power, how much more that of the bishop and the whole Church?[3]
3 So whoever doesn’t come to the common assembly is already showing pride and has cut himself off. For it is written: God resists the proud. Let us be eager, then, not to resist the bishop, so that we may be subject to God.
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1 And the more anyone sees the bishop keeping silent, the more he should revere him. For everyone whom the master of the house sends to manage his affairs, we must receive just as we would receive the one who sent him. Clearly, then, we must regard the bishop as we would the Lord himself.
2 Now Onesimus himself highly praises your good order in God, because you all live according to truth and because no heresy dwells among you; in fact, you don’t even listen to anyone more than to one who speaks about Jesus Christ in truth.
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1 For there are some who make a habit of carrying around the Name with wicked guile, while doing other things unworthy of God. You must shun them like wild beasts, for they are rabid dogs that bite in secret. You have to be on your guard against them, since their disease is hard to cure.
2 There is one physician, both fleshly and spiritual, begotten and unbegotten, God in man, true life in death, both from Mary and from God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord.
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1 So let no one deceive you, just as indeed you are not deceived, being wholly God’s. For when no strife that can torment you has taken root among you, then you are truly living according to God. I am your humble servant and I purify myself for you Ephesians, a Church renowned throughout the ages.
2 The fleshly cannot do spiritual things, nor can the spiritual do fleshly things, just as faith cannot do the things of unbelief, nor unbelief the things of faith. But even the things you do according to the flesh are spiritual, for you do all things in Jesus Christ.
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1 Now I’ve learned that certain people passed through from there who have evil teaching; but you didn’t allow them to sow it among you, stopping your ears so as not to receive what they were sowing, because you are stones of the Father’s temple, prepared for the building of God the Father, lifted up to the heights by the crane of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, using the Holy Spirit as a rope. Your faith is what lifts you up, and love is the road that leads up to God.
2 You are all fellow-travellers, God-bearers and temple-bearers, Christ-bearers, holy-bearers, adorned in every way with the commandments of Jesus Christ. In this I have rejoiced and been deemed worthy, through what I write, to speak with you and to share your joy, because you love nothing according to human life except God alone.
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1 And for the rest of mankind, pray without ceasing, for there is hope of repentance in them, that they may attain God. Allow them, then, even to be disciples through your works.
2 To their angers be you gentle; to their boastfulness be you humble-minded; to their blasphemies answer with your prayers; to their error be you steadfast, not striving to imitate them in return.[4]
3 Let us be found as their brothers in kindness. Be imitators of the Lord—who is more wronged, who is deprived, who is rejected?—so that no weed of the devil may be found among you, but rather in all purity and chastity remain in Jesus Christ, both in the flesh and in the spirit.
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1 These are the last days. So let us be ashamed, and let us fear God’s long-suffering, so that it may not become judgement for us. Either let us fear the coming wrath, or let us love the present grace—one or the other. Only in Christ Jesus let us be found for true life.
2 Apart from this, let nothing be fitting for you—I who carry these chains, the spiritual pearls—in which may it be granted to me to rise through your prayer, and may I always be a sharer in it, so that I may be found in the lot of the Christians of Ephesus, who have always agreed with the apostles in the power of Jesus Christ.
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1 I know who I am and to whom I write. I am condemned, you are shown mercy; I am in danger, you are established.
2 You are the passage of those being led to God, fellow initiates of Paul, the one who was sanctified, who was witnessed to, worthy of blessing—may it be granted to me to be found in his footsteps, when I attain to God, he who mentions you in every letter in Christ Jesus.
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1 So make every effort to come together more often to give thanks to God and to glorify him. For whenever you frequently gather in one place, the powers of Satan are overthrown, and his destructive work is undone by the harmony of your faith.
2 Nothing is better than peace, in which every war of things in heaven and things on earth is brought to an end.
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1 None of these things will escape your notice if you have perfect faith and love in Jesus Christ, which is the beginning and end of life: faith is the beginning, and love is the end. And the two, when they come together in unity, are God, and all other things follow as the fruit of goodness.
2 No one who professes faith goes on sinning, and no one who has acquired love hates. The tree is known by its fruit. In the same way, those who profess to belong to Christ will be recognized by what they do. For the work is not a matter of present profession, but of being found, in the power of faith, faithful to the end.
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1 It is better to be silent and to be real than to talk and not be real. Teaching is good, if the one who speaks also acts. Now there is one Teacher, who spoke and it came to be; and even the things He has done in silence are worthy of the Father.[5]
2 The one who truly possesses the word of Jesus can also hear his silence, so that he may be perfect, so that he may act through what he speaks and be known through what he keeps silent.
3 Nothing escapes the Lord; even our hidden things are close to him. So let us do everything as though he were dwelling within us, that we may be his temples and he himself may be our God within us — as indeed he is, and will be made manifest before our face, for which reasons we rightly love him.
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1 Don’t be deceived, my brothers: those who corrupt households will not inherit the kingdom of God.
2 If those who did such things in the flesh were put to death, how much more will it be for anyone who corrupts by false teaching the faith of God for which Jesus Christ was crucified? Such a person, having become defiled, will go off into the unquenchable fire — and so will anyone who listens to him.
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1 For this reason the Lord received myrrh on his head, so that he might breathe incorruption to the Church. Don’t anoint yourselves with the foul stench of the teaching of the ruler of this age, lest he take you captive from the life that lies before you.
2 Why then don’t we all become wise, having received the knowledge of God, which is Jesus Christ? Why do we foolishly perish, ignoring the gift that the Lord has truly sent?
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1 My spirit is devoted to the cross, which is a stumbling block to those who don’t believe, but to us salvation and eternal life. Where is the wise man? Where is the debater? Where is the boasting of the so-called intelligent?[6]
2 For our God, Jesus Christ, was carried in the womb by Mary according to God’s oikonomia, from the seed of David, but of the Holy Spirit; he was born and baptized, so that by his passion he might purify the water.
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1 And the ruler of this age was kept in ignorance of Mary’s virginity and her childbearing, and likewise of the Lord’s death—three mysteries of proclamation, which were accomplished in the silence of God.
2 How then was he revealed to the ages? A star shone in heaven above all the stars, and its light was ineffable and its newness caused astonishment, and all the other stars together with the sun and moon became a chorus for the star, and its light surpassed them all; and there was confusion about where this newness came from that was so unlike them.
3 From that moment all magic was dissolved and every bond of vice vanished; ignorance was destroyed, the old kingdom was overthrown when God appeared in human form for the newness of eternal life; and what had been perfected in God’s presence began to take effect. From that point everything was shaken because the destruction of death was being planned.
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1 If Jesus Christ counts me worthy through your prayer and it is his will, in the second letter that I intend to write to you I will explain further the oikonomia I have begun to speak of concerning the new human being Jesus Christ, in his faith and in his love, in his passion and resurrection;
2 especially if the Lord reveals to me that each one of you, all together in grace, assembles in his name in one faith and in Jesus Christ, who according to the flesh was of the line of David, the son of man and Son of God, so that you may obey the bishop and the presbytery with undivided mind, breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality, the antidote that we should not die but live in Jesus Christ forever.
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1 I am your ransom, as are those whom you sent to Smyrna for the honour of God, from where I am also writing to you, giving thanks to the Lord, loving Polycarp as I do you. Remember me, as Jesus Christ also remembers you.
2 Pray for the Church in Syria, from where I am being led in chains to Rome, being the least of the faithful there, though I have been counted worthy to be found for the honour of God. Farewell in God the Father and in Jesus Christ, our common hope. en:Epistle to the Ephesians