“In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.”
I was reading a booklet published by Lighthouse Trails and was reminded of the expression “the gospel of your salvation.” I could not remember what I wrote about the phrase in my revised chapter on the word gospel in The Ten Most Misunderstood Words in the Bible.
Instead of specifically commenting on the gospel of your salvation in Eph 1:13, I wrote:
The word gospel in Ephesians four times (five percent of all uses of the word gospel) refers to Jews and Gentiles being united and at peace in one body, the Church (Eph 1:13; 3:6; 6:15, 19). Notice that Paul spoke in Eph 6:19 of the mystery of the gospel. The promise of everlasting life by faith in Christ was not a mystery in the Old Testament (John 5:39-40). What was a mystery was that the Church was coming, where Jews and Gentiles would be united in one body.
I checked commentaries and found an interesting comment by Bratcher and Nida:
The genitive phrase “the good news of your salvation” may mean (1) the good news that you are saved or (2) the Good News that accomplished your salvation; the second one seems more likely in the context. This may be rendered in some languages as “the Good News which caused you to be saved.” In some languages, however, only a personal agent can accomplish salvation, and accordingly the gospel must be treated as the instrument, for example, “The Good News which God used to cause you to be saved” or “… used in order to save you” (Ephesians, pp. 24-25).
The expression, the gospel of your salvation, is in apposition to the word of truth. Paul used that expression, the word of truth, in 2 Tim 2:15 to refer to God’s Word. The point is that after they heard God’s Word–the good news of their salvation–they believed it and were sealed forever.
The word gospel is used elsewhere in Ephesians to refer to the good news of Jews and Gentiles united together in one body.
What, then, would the expression the gospel of your salvation mean?
Does the gospel of your salvation in Eph 1:13 refer to the message of everlasting life?
That expression logically means the good news of Jews and Gentiles united in one body that resulted from their salvation. That would fit with the use of the word save in Eph 2:5, 8.
Paul was not explaining the saving message when he spoke of the gospel of your salvation. The saving message is nowhere in the immediate context. In fact, he did not discuss the saving message until Eph 2:5-8. Even there, he did not specifically mention Jesus’ name.
The gospel of your salvation in Eph 1:13 is good news that springs from the reception of everlasting life.
It is good news that we have everlasting life. Maybe that is all Paul meant in Eph 1:13. I think it is more likely that Paul was talking about the specific good news that each believer is part of the Body of Christ due to their salvation (i.e., their reception of everlasting life).i
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i In Greek, Ephesians 1:13 is part of a single long sentence that runs from verse 3 to verse 14. English translations break it up into multiple sentences to try to help clarify things for the reader.
