“Sleeper Awake, Rise from the Dead”: Future Resurrection and Present Ethics in Ephesians

Within Ephesians, resurrection is the defining evidence of God’s divine power. A scholarly consensus contends that the letter is characterized by a realized eschatology in which the two references to individuals’ resurrection in Eph 2:5–6 and Eph 5:14 refer to an already accomplished salvation. This article, however, argues that interpreting the reference to believers’ resurrection in overly realized terms breaks the logic by which the letter roots Christian ethical action in future expectation. It reevaluates both references to resurrection within its epistolary context, demonstrating how the already accomplished resurrection of Christ is the surety of believers’ future resurrection and the basis for life in the present. This analysis challenges the overly realized interpretation of Ephesians’ eschatology and suggests that, rather than an already accomplished event or a spiritualized metaphor, Ephesians’ references to resurrection refer to the future hope that Christian believers will be bodily resurrected—a hope that is patterned on Christ’s resurrection in history. It is this vision of future hope, then, that acts as the foundation for ethical action within the letter. Christ’s resurrection light—the light that will fully be realized in the eschatological resurrection—becomes the evaluative measure of ethical action in the present.