Ephesians 3 - Introduction

Ephesians 3:1-13. He would pursue the subject of the Temple, but digresses to say more of the world-wide scope of the Gospel

For this cause With such a present and such a future for my reason, motive, hope. Here begins a sentence broken immediately by a great digression. Where is it resumed? At Ephesians 3:8, or at Ephesians 3:13, or at Ephesians 3:14? On the whole we decide for the latter, not only because the identical phrase "for this cause" recurs there, but because the thought of the Indweller, and the Foundation (" grounded," Ephesians 3:17), recurs there also. It is thus as if the Apostle had been just about to pray that the great Lord of the Temple might take a new (an ever new) possession of the Edifice preparing for Him; but had been diverted, by the designation he gives himself, to speak at large of his Gentile commission. For a parenthesis on the like scale see the latter half of Romans 5. Such deviations into side-fields of pregnant thought are characteristic of some minds of high calibre; and we are never to forget that while it is everywhere the Inspirer who speaks through the Apostle, He as truly uses the Apostle's type of mind as He uses the Greek type of language to be His perfect vehicle of expression.

I Paul For a similar emphatic Ego, cp. 2 Corinthians 10:1; Galatians 5:2; Colossians 1:23; Philemon 1:19. (1 Thessalonians 2:18 is not quite in point, nor the passages, Colossians 4:18; 2 Thessalonians 3:17; where he speaks of his autographname.) The motive here seems to be the profound personal interest of the Apostle in his great commission, brought to the surface by the statement he has just made of the grandeur of its issue in the completion of the Temple of the Universal Church. "It is I, positively I, who am, wonderful to say, chief minister in the process." And there may also be the emphasis of intense personal interest in the Ephesian converts; a loving pressure, so to speak, of his personality upon theirs. On the "self-consciousness" of St Paul, see Howson, Character of St Paul, Lect. II.

the prisoner of Jesus Christ So Philemon 1:1; Philemon 1:9; 2 Timothy 1:8; and below, Ephesians 4:1, with an interesting difference, which see. Our Epistle thus stands grouped with Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, 2 Timothy, as an Epistle written from prison. "Of Jesus Christ" :under all aspects of life Paul belongs to Christ. Whatever he is, does, or suffers, it is as Christ's property. There is also an obvious reference to the fact that his imprisonment was for Christ's cause;but this is not all.

for you On behalf of you. See Acts 22:21 for illustration. His imprisonment, due to Jewish hostility, was thus ultimately due to his assertion of the free welcome of the Gentiles to Messiah's covenant. Acts 15 records the crisis within the Church which corresponded to this assault from without.