Ephesians 3:1

Τούτου χάριν resumed in Ephesians 3:14. It is closely connected with Ephesians 2:22, the climax of the whole paragraph Ephesians 2:11-22.

ἐγὼ Παῦλος. This personal appeal is characteristic of the writer, and marks all the groups of his Epistles; cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:18; 2 Corinthians 10:1; Galatians 5:2; Colossians 1:23; Philemon 1:9; Philemon 1:19. It is very difficult to explain except on the hypothesis of the genuineness of the letters.

ὁ δέσμιος τοῦ χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ. Cf. Ephesians 4:1; Ephesians 6:19; Colossians 4:3; Colossians 4:18; Philemon 1:9-10; Philippians 1:12-14; 2 Timothy 1:8; 2 Timothy 2:9; Acts 21:13; Acts 26:29. St Paul seems to have felt both the restraint and the indignity. It is difficult for us, who have the experience of the Christian centuries behind us to help us to see the sufferings of Christian Martyrs in their true light, to judge their effect on public opinion in the first generation of Christians. There is a sublime originality in St Paul’s attitude with regard to his own experiences which it is easy to overlook. To his Jewish and to his Judaizing contemporaries outward success was a decisive criterion of Divine favour, and the capital that his opponents made out of St Paul’s sufferings can be measured by the passionate stress which he lays on them as his chief credentials in 2 Cor., e.g. 2 Corinthians 11:23. Here he seems to be afraid lest the fact of his imprisonment should be regarded as bringing discredit on his Gospel. The same thought underlies the assertion of his own joy in his sufferings in Colossians 1:24. In each case he claims an efficacious character for them. They were the direct result of his advocacy of the Gentile cause, and he is confident that good would come out of them. He does not of course claim any merit for them because they were his. The cause for the sake of which he suffered was the ground of his assurance that his sufferings would not be fruitless. The teaching of the Lord on the blessedness of enduring persecution for His sake and after His example (Matthew 5:10 f.; Mark 8:34; Mark 13:13; John 15:21) had sunk deep into the heart of him who had once been a persecutor, and he passed on the consolation of it to all who were called to drink of the same cup: 1 Thessalonians 1:6; 1 Thessalonians 2:14; 2 Thessalonians 1:5; 2 Corinthians 1:4 f.; Philippians 1:29. The same teaching underlies James 1:2 ff.; 1 Peter 2:20 ff; 1 Peter 4:14; Acts 5:41. But it is only in St Paul that blessings accruing to others from our sufferings form part of the consolation. Cf. Intr., p. xiv.

ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν τῶν ἐθνῶν. Cf. Ephesians 3:13; Ephesians 6:20; Colossians 1:24. Similarly the Thessalonians (2 Thessalonians 1:5) are taught that their sufferings are ‘on behalf of the kingdom of God.’ The quiet confidence with which St Paul claims the whole world as his parish would be startling, if it were not so familiar. The truth that had been revealed to him had a direct relation to every man, and, as he believed, the express commission of his Lord laid on him personally the burthen of giving the truth a world-wide dissemination (Acts 9:15; Acts 22:21; Acts 26:17). The consciousness of the work that he had to do is never far below the surface with him. It comes into clear expression whenever, as in Gal. (Ephesians 1:16; Ephesians 2:2; Ephesians 2:8 f.) and in his letters to Timothy (1 Timothy 2:7; 2 Timothy 4:17), his thoughts go back to the fact of his commission, or, as here and in Colossians 1:27 and especially in Romans 1:5; Romans 11:13; Romans 15:16, he has to explain the interest that he taken in congregations as yet personally unknown to him. The Apostles as a body had received a similar world-wide commission (Acts 1:8; Matthew 28:19 f.), but the call of the heathen world does not, judging from the extant literature, seem to have come home to any of them with the same urgency; whereas this trait appears in every group of the Pauline Epp. (cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:4; 1 Thessalonians 2:16).