The apostle recurs to a subject already treated in few words" in the first chapter - words which he requests them to read, that they may fully understand his meaning - respecting the new position of the Gentiles in the kingdom of God. Their position was determined by a dispensation, that is, by an arrangement organized in all its parts in relation to space and time; for God works by order in grace as well as in nature. Consider -

I. THE ORIGIN OF THIS DISPENSATION. "The grace of God given to me to you-ward." It was an act of Divine favor to select the apostle as the person through whom "the mystery" of the dispensation was to be, not only revealed, but applied in its redeeming effects to the Ephesian heathens. It was not the honor or the authority involved in it that made it precious in his eyes; it was the privilege of making known the unsearchable riches of Christ. Thus, as a good steward of the mysteries of God, it was the delight of his life to dispense them in all their gracious manifoldness to the family of God.

II. THE MYSTERY THAT SHROUDED THE DISPENSATION' FOR AGES.

1. It is called "the mystery of Christ," not because he is its Author, but because he is the Center or Subject of it; for it included far more than the truth that the Gentiles were fellow-citizens of the saints. Christ is the Mystery of godliness, as he is God manifest in the flesh, but he is emphatically so as "Christ the Hope of glory" for the Gentiles (Colossians 1:27).

2. It was hidden for ages from the sons of men, both Jew and Gentile. A mystery is either something which has been concealed, perhaps for ages, and which probably would never have been discovered unless the voice of revelation had proclaimed it; or something which, even when revealed, transcends the power of the human faculties to comprehend it. Now, the Incarnation is a mystery in this double sense; but the call of the Gentiles, as part of "the mystery of Christ," is a mystery only in the first-named sense. It was known to the Jews for ages that the Gentiles would share in the blessings of the Messiah's kingdom - and the Apostle Paul quotes Old Testament predictions to prove the fact (Romans 9:25-33); but it was not known that the Gentiles would be included within the circle of religious privilege by the complete sacrifice of the Hebrew theocracy and the reconstitution of religion on a perfectly new basis, designed equally for all mankind, under which the old distinctions of Jew and. Gentile would be done away. There was to be no further room for Jewish particularism. The dispensation which was to carry the world to its last destinies was to be as universal as that embodied in the first promise made to our first parents.

3. The revelation of the mystery. So far as it involved a mission to the Gentiles, it was revealed first to the Apostle Paul at his conversion; for when Christ appeared to him on his journey to Damascus, he said, "I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness... delivering thee from the people, and. from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God" (Acts 26:16-18). But the fuller exhibition of Gentile privilege is made in this glorious Epistle as well as elsewhere. It was a revelation made by the Lord himself (Galatians 1:12). But it was made especially to "apostles and prophets," both of them belonging to the new dispensation the only class of inspired men connected with it who received special information from the Holy Spirit, who searches the deep things of God, respecting the new development of the kingdom. The revelation was, indeed, one of facts as well as of truths. The calling of the Gentiles was made manifest in the Spirit's falling upon Cornelius, and in the widespread success of the gospel among the Gentiles, so that the logic of facts beautifully reinforced the more formal revelations of "apostles and prophets."

4. The substance of the revelation. "That the Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel." These are the three points of Gentile privilege. They were not to receive the blessings of the Messiah's kingdom by being merged as proselytes into the old theocracy, which was to abide in all its narrow ritualism.

(1) The Gentiles are fellow-heirs. Possession by inheritance involves the ideas of right, certainty, and inalienableness. All that is involved in the benefits of the covenant of grace is our inheritance. Now, the Gentiles are "heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ" as well as the Jews, just because they are "children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." They cannot be heirs unless they are children; they cannot be children unless they have faith. And because they have faith, they are Abraham's seed. "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Galatians 3:29). The Gentile interest in the inheritance may be recent, but it is entire and beyond cavil. Jews and Gentiles have an equal share in all the blessings of the inheritance.

(2) The Gentiles are of the same body. This marks a more intimate relationship. They were all Jews and Gentiles alike, baptized into one body by one Spirit, and thus coalesced into one Church-state, with Christ as the Head of both. But while they were thus, as members of one body, partakers of a common life, the Gentile was not there by the permission of the Jew, or the Jew by the permission of the Gentile. They were both equally baptized into it by the Spirit. The union in one body obliterates all previous distinctions of character or culture, and all varieties in dispensational privilege; for there is no schism in the body. The Judaistic section of the Church in the apostle's day fought strenuously against the doctrine of the one body.

(3) The Gentiles are fellow-partakers of the promise. This refers, not so much to the promise of redemption made first to Adam, repeated to Abraham, and embodied in many Old Testament predictions, as to the promise of the Spirit, who enables us to realize all the blessings involved in this first promise. This was, indeed, the blessing of Abraham which came upon the Gentiles (Galatians 3:14). It was conspicuously realized when, in the words of the Apostle Peter, "the Holy Ghost fell upon them as on us." There is no promise of the new covenant that is not equally sure to Gentile and to Jew. All the three points of Gentile privilege, setting forth apparently the relation to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and represented in a sort of spiritual climax, are realized by union with Christ, made known to us in the gospel. Salvation centers, as its objective ground, in Christ Jesus, and the gospel is the medium by which it is subjectively applied to sinners el mankind. - T.C.

1. Those whom God sends, He also teaches.

2. We have by nature a veil before our eyes, that we cannot see spiritual matters till they be revealed.(1) Wherefore we must all pray that the veil may be removed from these points of the gospel, that the spirit of liberty may be given us, which brings light and understanding wherever it comes.(2) See what we must impute our not profiting to, viz., this, that we have not got that eyesight of the Spirit, wherewith our eyes should be cleared. Many of us are like the woman who, going to bed seeing and in the night taken blind, waking in the morning, complained of the curtain; for, not discerning our spiritual blindness, we complain of the curtain — strange manner of teaching, obscure speaking, perplexed sentences, I know not what in the teacher — when the fault is nearer home; we are too much in our own light, not knowing ourselves.

3. The doctrine of salvation is a hidden thing to the world. Things are lightsome or obscure in themselves, or to us. To be made lightsome in themselves, there needs but the light of the sun to shine upon them; but to make them lightsome to us, we must have inward light in the eye whereby to discern them: thus the counsel of God is for the nature of it light itself.

4. It is made sensible or visible, the light of revelation shining on it.

5. It is so discerned where there is the supernatural eye of the Spirit, by benefit of this external light to discern it. We need to pray with David, "Lord, open our eyes, that we may see the wonders or hidden things of Thy law." You see, we are all of us men of clay, and living here as it were in the bottom of the ship, walking upon clay; and therefore, if we would know the will of God, concerning us men here below, either God must be revealed from heaven extraordinarily, whereof we have no warrant, or ordinarily, and that is by these books written and indited by the Spirit of God, to be seen, read, and understood. Now this must stand by great reason, for if a man were in a mineral or coal pit, infinite fathoms toward the centre of the earth, it were impossible he should know the will of us men here above, unless we either descend ourselves, or send, or at least throw in a letter of our mind, which notwithstanding will be never the nearer unless we convey light to read the same: so I say, either God must call to us in an audible voice, or send His angels, or raise up afresh some extraordinary means of revealing His will, or else send His letter of His mind to us His loving friends, redeemed by the blood of Christ, yea, and reach us light also for the perusing of the same, or surely we shall never as long as we live attain to the knowledge of His will. Now I grant that the books of Scripture contain the Divine will of God, but such is the darkness of our understanding, that we cannot conceive thereof unless the outward means of the preaching of the Word be joined with the inward working of the Spirit, as fire to enlighten the whole house. Not that the Word in itself is obscure and dark, but that it lighteth into those hands of such blind expositors, in whom is nothing but darkness, as the bright silver lying in a dark chest.

(Paul Bayne.)

No revelation can be adequately given by the address of man to man, whether by writing or orally, even if he be put in possession of the truth itself. For all such revelation must be made through words: and words are but counters — the coins of intellectual exchange. There is as little resemblance between the silver coin and the bread it purchases, as between the word and the thing it stands for. Looking at the coin the form of the loaf does not suggest itself. Listening to the word, you do not perceive the idea for which it stands, unless you are already in possession of it. Speak of ice to an inhabitant of the torrid zone, the word does not give him any idea, or if it does, it must be a false one. Talk of redness to one who cannot distinguish colours, what can your most eloquent description present to him resembling the truth of your sensation? Similarly in matters spiritual, no verbal revelation can give a single simple idea: for instance, what means justice to the unjust — or purity to the man whose heart is steeped in licentiousness? What does infinitude mean to a being who has never stirred from infancy beyond a cell, never seen the sky or the sea, or any of those occasions of thought, which, leaving vagueness on the mind, suggest the idea of the illimitable? It means, explain it as you will, nothing to him but a room: vastly larger than his own, but still a room terminated by four walls. Talk of God to a thousand ears, each has his own different conception of the Almighty Being who rules all. The sensual man hears of God, and conceives one idea; the pure man hears, and pictures another. Whether you speak in metaphysical or metaphorical language; in the purest words of inspiration, or the grossest images of materialism; the conceptions conveyed by the same word are essentially different, according to the soul which receives them.

(F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

The decree of God is a sealed book, and the names in it are secret; therefore thy part is to look to God's revealed will — namely, to "make thy calling and election sure" by making thy regeneration sure. Dost thou not know that secret things belong to God, but revealed things, to us and to our children? Oh 'tis dangerous to meddle with the secrets of princes!

(G. Swinnock.)

It is an historical fact which has not been sufficiently noticed, that human nature is always below revelation. This fact indicates the Divine origin of revelation. Great discoveries are usually the product of preceding ages of thought. One mind develops the idea; but it is the fruit of the age ripened in that mind. A pearl is found, but the location had been indicated by previous researches. But revealed religion is something different from this. It is separate from and superior to the thought of the age. It calls the wisdom of the world foolishness, and introduces a new standpoint, and starting point, around which it gathers what was valuable in the old, and destroys the remainder.

(J. B. Walker.)

Very wisely does an American writer say, "There is a mighty difference between preaching the everlasting gospel and preaching the gospel everlastingly." There is no end to the truth, but there should be an end to the sermon, or else it will answer no end but that of wearying the hearer. A friend who occasionally visits the continent always prefers the passage from Dover to Calais, for a reason which we commend to the notice of certain prosy speakers — it is short. If you speak well, you will not be long; if you speak ill, you ought not to be so. We commend to the verbose brother the counsel of a costermonger to an open-air preacher — it was rather rude, but peculiarly sensible — "I say, old fellow, CUT IT SHORT."

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

Ephesians, PaulEphesusAfore, Already, Brief, Briefly, Clear, Explained, Hitherto, Kept, Letter, Mystery, Revelation, Secret, Short, Truth, Written, Wrote1. The hidden mystery that the Gentiles should be saved was made known to Paul by revelation;
8. and to him was that grace given, that he should preach it.
13. He desires them not to be discouraged over his tribulation;
14. and prays that they may perceive the great love of Christ toward them.

Ephesians 3:2-3

     1403   God, revelation

Ephesians 3:2-6

     4963   past, the

Ephesians 3:3-6

     3281   Holy Spirit, inspiration
     5195   veil
     8425   evangelism, nature of

Ephesians 3:3-11

     1444   revelation, NT

April 15. "Rooted and Grounded in Love" (Eph. Iii. 17).
"Rooted and grounded in love" (Eph. iii. 17). There is a very singular shrub, which grows abundantly in the west, and is to be found in all parts of Texas. It is no less than the "mosquito tree." It is a very slim, and willowy looking shrub, and would seem to be of little use for any industrial purposes; but is has extraordinary roots growing like great timbers underground, and possessing such qualities of endurance in all situations that it is used and very highly valued for good pavements. The …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

August 28. "According to the Power that Worketh in Us" (Eph. Iii. 20).
"According to the power that worketh in us" (Eph. iii. 20). When we reach the place of union with God, through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, we come into the inheritance of external blessing and enter upon the land of our possession. Then our physical health and strength come to us through the power of our interior life; then the prayer is fulfilled, that we shall be in health and prosper, as our soul prospereth. Then, with the kingdom of God and His righteousness within us, all things are added …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity Paul's Care and Prayer for the Church.
Text: Ephesians 3, 13-21. 13. Wherefore I ask that ye may not faint at my tribulations for you, which are your glory. 14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 and that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man; 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be strong …
Martin Luther—Epistle Sermons, Vol. III

'The Whole Family'
'The whole family in heaven and earth.'--Eph. iii. 15. Grammatically, we are driven to recognise that the Revised Version is more correct than the Authorised, when it reads 'every family,' instead of 'the whole family.' There is in the expression no reference to the thought, however true it is in itself, that the redeemed in heaven and the believers on earth make up but one family. The thought rather is, that, as has been said, 'the father makes the family,' and if any community of intelligent beings, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

Strengthened with Might
'That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory; to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.'--Eph. iii. 16. In no part of Paul's letters does he rise to a higher level than in his prayers, and none of his prayers are fuller of fervour than this wonderful series of petitions. They open out one into the other like some majestic suite of apartments in a great palace-temple, each leading into a loftier and more spacious hall, each drawing nearer the presence-chamber, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

The Indwelling Christ
'That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; ye being rooted and grounded in love.'--Eph. iii. 17. We have here the second step of the great staircase by which Paul's fervent desires for his Ephesian friends climbed towards that wonderful summit of his prayers--which is ever approached, never reached,--'that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.' Two remarks of an expository character will prepare the way for the lessons of these verses. The first is as to the relation of this clause …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

The Paradox of Love's Measure
The breadth, and length, and depth, and height.'--Eph. iii. 18. Of what? There can, I think, be no doubt as to the answer. The next clause is evidently the continuation of the idea begun in that of our text, and it runs: 'And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.' It is the immeasurable measure, then; the boundless bounds and dimensions of the love of Christ which fire the Apostle's thoughts here. Of course, he had no separate idea in his mind attaching to each of these measures …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

The Climax of all Prayer
'That ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.'--Eph. iii. 19. The Apostle's many-linked prayer, which we have been considering in successive sermons, has reached its height. It soars to the very Throne of God. There can be nothing above or beyond this wonderful petition. Rather, it might seem as if it were too much to ask, and as if, in the ecstasy of prayer, Paul had forgotten the limits that separate the creature from the Creator, as well as the experience of sinful and imperfect men, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

Love Unknowable and Known
'That ye ... may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.'--Eph. iii. 18, 19. This constitutes the third of the petitions in this great prayer of Paul's, each of which, as we have had occasion to see in former sermons, rises above, and is a consequence of the preceding, and leads on to, and is a cause or occasion of the subsequent one. The two former petitions have been for inward strength …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

Measureless Power and Endless Glory
'Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, 21. Unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.'--Eph. iii. 20, 21. One purpose and blessing of faithful prayer is to enlarge the desires which it expresses, and to make us think more loftily of the grace to which we appeal. So the Apostle, in the wonderful series of supplications which precedes the text, has found his …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

The Christian Church a Family.
Preached January 11, 1852. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH A FAMILY. "Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named."--Ephesians iii. 14, 15. In the verses immediately before the text the Apostle Paul has been speaking of what he calls a mystery--that is, a revealed secret. And the secret was this, that the Gentiles would be "fellow-heirs and of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ by the gospel." It had been kept secret from the former ages and generations; …
Frederick W. Robertson—Sermons Preached at Brighton

The Measure of the Cross
EPHESIANS iii. 18, 19. That ye may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. These words are very deep, and difficult to understand; for St. Paul does not tell us exactly of what he is speaking. He does not say what it is, the breadth and length, and depth, and height of which we are to comprehend and take in. Only he tells us afterwards what will come of our taking it in; we shall know the …
Charles Kingsley—The Good News of God

Past Knowledge.
(Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity.) EPHESIANS iii. 19. "To know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge." There are some things which no earthly school can teach us, no earthly science explain. Science can do very much, it has done marvellous things, and will do still more. Men can work now with ease such wonders as would have sent them to the fire as wizards three hundred years ago. Science can calculate the exact time of an eclipse ages before the time, science can connect two worlds with the …
H. J. Wilmot-Buxton—The Life of Duty, a Year's Plain Sermons, v. 2

First Day for the Power of the Holy Spirit
WHAT TO PRAY.--For the Power of the Holy Spirit "I bow my knees unto the Father, that He would grant you that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit."--EPH. iii. 16. "Wait for the promise of the Father."--ACTS i. 4. "The fuller manifestation of the grace and energy of the Blessed Spirit of God, in the removal of all that is contrary to God's revealed will, so that we grieve not the Holy Spirit, but that He may work in mightier power in the Church, for the exaltation of Christ and …
Andrew Murray—The Ministry of Intercession

Strength and Indwelling.
"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of Whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that …
W. H. Griffith Thomas—The Prayers of St. Paul

The Love of Christ.
THE Patience of Christ was recently the object of our meditation in these pages. Blessed and inexhaustible it is. And now a still greater theme is before our hearts. The Love of Christ. The heart almost shrinks from attempting to write on the matchless, unfathomable love of our blessed and adorable Lord. All the Saints of God who have spoken and written on the Love of Christ have never told out its fulness and vastness, its heights and its depths. "The Love of Christ which passeth knowledge" (Ephesians …
Arno Gaebelein—The Lord of Glory

The Holy Spirit Forming Christ Within Us.
It is a wonderful and deeply significant prayer that Paul offers in Eph. iii. 16-19 for the believers in Ephesus and for all believers who read the Epistle. Paul writes, "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and …
R. A. Torrey—The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit

"Love that Passeth Knowledge. "
"To know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge." (Ephesians iii. 19.) If I could only make men understand the real meaning of the words of the apostle John--"God is love," I would take that single text, and would go up and down the world proclaiming this glorious truth. If you can convince a man that you love him you have won his heart. If we really make people believe that God loves them, how we should find them crowding into the kingdom of heaven! The trouble is that men think God hates them; …
Dwight L. Moody—The Way to God and How to Find It

Another Archbishop
Paul did not say, Let everyone desire the episcopate. It is a work, not a relaxation; a solicitude, not a luxury; a responsible ministration, not an irresponsible dominion; a fatherly supervision, not a tyrannical autocracy.--Isidore of Pelusium, Ep. iii. 216. Nectarius, then, on September 27, 397, lay dead in his splendid palace; and the breath was hardly out of the Archbishop's body when there were a dozen austere intriguers' in the field, and the subterranean plots and whisperings began, and the …
Frederic William Farrar—Gathering Clouds: A Tale of the Days of St. Chrysostom

His Dwelling-Place
T. S. M. Eph. iii. 17 Thou knewest not where to lay Thy head; When over the twilight sea The birds of the mountains homeward sped, There was no home for Thee. But God had prepared for the weary feet A home when the toil was past, And there, in His chamber still and sweet, O Lord, Thou shouldst rest at last. A Home to be won by deadly fight, The price to be paid in blood-- Oh where is that palace of fair delight, That glorious Home of God? The City that hath foundations shone To Abram's eyes of …
Frances Bevan—Hymns of Ter Steegen, Suso, and Others

The Apology of Rufinus.
Addressed to Apronianus, in Reply to Jerome's Letter to Pammachius, [2814] Written at Aquileia a.d. 400. In Two Books. In order to understand the controversy between Jerome and Rufinus it is necessary to look back over their earlier relations. They had been close friends in early youth (Jerome, Ep. iii, 3, v, 2.) and had together formed part of a society of young Christian ascetics at Aquileia in the years 370-3. Jerome's letter (3) to Rufinus in 374 is full of affection; in 381 he was placed in …
Various—Life and Works of Rufinus with Jerome's Apology Against Rufinus.

Whether Only a Bishop Can Confer this Sacrament?
Objection 1: It seems that not only a bishop can confer this sacrament. For Gregory (Regist. iv), writing to Bishop Januarius, says: "We hear that some were scandalized because we forbade priests to anoint with chrism those who have been baptized. Yet in doing this we followed the ancient custom of our Church: but if this trouble some so very much we permit priests, where no bishop is to be had, to anoint the baptized on the forehead with chrism." But that which is essential to the sacraments should …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

"And if Christ be in You, the Body is Dead Because of Sin; but the Spirit is Life Because of Righteousness. "
Rom. viii. 10.--"And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." God's presence is his working. His presence in a soul by his Spirit is his working in such a soul in some special manner, not common to all men, but peculiar to them whom he hath chosen. Now his dwelling is nothing else but a continued, familiar and endless working in a soul, till he hath conformed all within to the image of his Son. The soul is the office house, or workhouse, …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

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