Ephesians 3:2

If ye have heard. — The original word rendered “if” (the same used below, Ephesians 4:21, and in 2 Corinthians 5:3; Galatians 3:4; Colossians 1:23) conveys, in such collocation as this, a supposition which is only a supposition in form — a half-ironical reference to a thing not doubtful. The sense is “if (that is),” or “if, as I suppose,” “ye heard the dispensation,” &c. The passage bears on the question whether the Epistle was an encyclical letter, or one addressed to the Ephesian Church. The argument which has been drawn from it in the former direction is not so strong as appears in the English; for the original implies no doubt that the readers of the Epistle had heard, and the hearing might have been not about St. Paul, but from St. Paul himself. Still, there is a vague generality about the expression, which suits well an address to the Asiatic churches generally, but could hardly have been used to a church so well known and beloved as Ephesus, where “the signs of an Apostle” had been wrought abundantly.

The dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward. — The descriptive clause, “which is given me to you-ward,” is seen in the original to belong to the word “grace,” not (as our version might suggest) to “dispensation.” The grace of God is spoken of as given to St. Paul, not so much for his own sake, as for ministration to them of the dispensation described in the next verse. We find there that the revelation of salvation to the Gentiles was the “dispensation,” that is (much as in Ephesians 1:10), the peculiar office in the ministration of the grace of God to the world, assigned to St. Paul by His wisdom. (Comp. 1 Corinthians 1:17, “God sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel... We preach Christ crucified... unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”)

(2) Ephesians 3:14 contain a prayer, addressed with special emphasis to the Father of all, that by the strengthening grace of the Spirit and the indwelling of Christ, accepted in faith and deepened by love, they may, first, know the mystery already described in all its greatness; and, next, learn by experience the unsearchable love of Christ, as dwelling in them, and so filling them up to “the fulness of God.”