Ephesians 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul, writing from prison, explains the assignment God gave him: to announce to non-Jews the plan God kept hidden for ages and has now revealed. That plan is that non-Jews share the inheritance, the body, and the promise along with Jews, through the good news about Christ. He tells his readers not to lose heart over his sufferings for them, and then prays that they would be strengthened inside, know the love of Christ, and be filled with all the fullness of God. The chapter closes with praise to God for his power at work in his people.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • Paul says it is for this cause that he acts.
   • Paul names himself.
   • Paul is the prisoner of Jesus Christ.
   • Paul is a prisoner on behalf of the Gentiles he addresses.
2. 3:2
   • Paul supposes his readers have heard of the stewardship of God's grace.
   • The grace of God was given to Paul.
   • The grace given to Paul was given for the benefit of those he addresses.
3. 3:3
   • The mystery was made known to Paul by revelation.
   • Paul wrote about this previously in few words.
4. 3:4
   • When the readers read what Paul wrote, they can understand Paul's insight.
   • Paul's insight is in the mystery of Christ.
5. 3:5
   • The mystery was not made known to the sons of men in other generations.
   • The mystery is now revealed to God's holy apostles and prophets.
   • The revelation is by the Spirit.
6. 3:6
   • The Gentiles are fellow heirs.
   • The Gentiles are members of the same body.
   • The Gentiles are partakers of the promise.
   • This is in Christ Jesus.
   • This comes about by the gospel.
7. 3:7
   • Paul was made a minister of the gospel.
   • Paul was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace.
   • That gift of grace was given to Paul.
   • The gift was given according to the working of God's power.
8. 3:8
   • Paul says he is less than the least of all saints.
   • This grace was given to Paul.
   • The grace was given so that Paul should preach among the Gentiles.
   • The riches of Christ are unsearchable.
9. 3:9
   • Paul was given grace to make all men see what is the stewardship of the mystery.
   • The mystery has been hidden in God from the ages past.
   • God created all things.
   • The King James says God created all things by Jesus Christ.
10. 3:10
    • The purpose is that the manifold wisdom of God be made known now.
    • It is made known to the principalities and powers in heavenly places.
    • It is made known through the church.
    • The wisdom of God is manifold.
11. 3:11
    • This accords with an eternal purpose.
    • God carried out that purpose in Christ Jesus.
    • Christ Jesus is our Lord.
12. 3:12
    • In Christ we have boldness.
    • In Christ we have access with confidence.
    • This boldness and access come by faith in him.
13. 3:13
    • Paul asks that his readers not faint at his tribulations.
    • Paul's tribulations are on their behalf.
    • Paul's tribulations are their glory.
14. 3:14
    • For this cause Paul bows his knees to the Father.
    • The King James says the Father is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
15. 3:15
    • Every family in heaven and on earth is named from the Father.
16. 3:16
    • Paul prays that God would grant something to his readers.
    • The grant is according to the riches of God's glory.
    • The readers are to be strengthened with might.
    • The strengthening is by God's Spirit.
    • The strengthening is in the inner man.
17. 3:17
    • Paul prays that Christ may dwell in their hearts.
    • Christ dwells there by faith.
    • The readers are rooted in love.
    • The readers are grounded in love.
18. 3:18
    • Paul prays they may be able to comprehend.
    • They comprehend together with all the saints.
    • What is comprehended is the breadth, length, depth, and height.
19. 3:19
    • Paul prays they may know the love of Christ.
    • The love of Christ surpasses knowledge.
    • The purpose is that they be filled with all the fullness of God.
20. 3:20
    • God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.
    • This is according to the power that works in us.
21. 3:21
    • Glory belongs to God.
    • The glory is in the church.
    • The glory is by Christ Jesus.
    • The glory is throughout all generations, forever and ever.
    • Amen.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

3:1

The King James sentence beginning "For this cause I Paul" never reaches its main verb. Paul breaks off into a long digression about his commission and picks up the same words again in verse 14, "For this cause I bow my knees." Verses 2 to 13 are the interruption. "The prisoner of Jesus Christ" does not mean Christ is holding him; it means he is in Roman custody because of his work for Christ.

3:2

"Dispensation" here does not mean a period of history. It translates a Greek word for the work of a household manager, the trusted servant who ran an owner's estate and distributed its stores. Paul means a job entrusted to him, not an era. "Grace" throughout this chapter means a gift handed over freely to someone with no claim on it. "To you-ward" is 1611 English for "toward you."

3:3

"Mystery" in the King James does not mean a puzzle or something inherently baffling. It translates a word for a secret that was kept hidden and has now been announced out loud. Once told, it is no longer obscure. "As I wrote afore in few words" means "as I wrote briefly earlier," pointing back to chapters 1 and 2.

3:5

"The sons of men" is a Hebrew-style idiom for human beings in general, not for males specifically. "Apostles" means those sent out as authorized representatives; "prophets" here means people in the early congregations who spoke messages from God, not only the prophets of Israel's past.

3:6

The Greek piles up three compound words that all begin with the same prefix meaning "together with": joint-heirs, joint-body, joint-sharers. The King James keeps the effect once, in "fellowheirs." Heir language matters because the promises in question were made to Abraham and his descendants, so the claim is that non-Jews inherit alongside Jews rather than at second hand.

3:7

"The effectual working of his power" translates a word meaning power actually in operation and producing results, as opposed to power merely possessed. The English word "energy" comes from it.

3:8

"Saints" in the King James does not mean a small class of exceptionally holy people or officially recognized ones. It means every member of God's people, all of them together. "Less than the least" renders a word Paul appears to have coined by building a comparative on top of a superlative, something like "leaster than the least." "Unsearchable" comes from a word meaning "untrackable," leaving no footprints that can be followed to the end.

3:9

Two manuscript differences sit in this verse. The King James "fellowship of the mystery" follows copies reading a word for sharing; most early copies read the same household-management word translated "dispensation" in verse 2, which is why modern versions say something like "how this secret is administered." And "by Jesus Christ" at the end is missing from the oldest manuscripts, which read simply "who created all things."

3:10

"Principalities and powers" are rank titles, roughly "rulers and authorities." Set "in heavenly places," they refer to powers in the unseen realm rather than to magistrates in Ephesus, though the same two words are used of human officials elsewhere in the New Testament. "Manifold" translates a word used of things of many colors, such as embroidered cloth or a flowering meadow; the point is variety and intricacy, not merely quantity.

3:11

"The eternal purpose" is literally "the purpose of the ages," a plan spanning all the long stretches of time. The verb in "which he purposed" can mean either "formed" or "carried out," and translators split on which sense is meant.

3:12

"Boldness" translates a word from public life meaning the right of a free citizen to speak openly in the assembly without fear of consequence. "Access" translates a word for being ushered into the presence of a king or a god by someone with the standing to bring you. "The faith of him" is a Greek possessive that can be read two ways: our faith in Christ, or Christ's own faithfulness. The grammar does not settle it.

3:13

"Faint not" means do not lose heart, not do not collapse physically. "Tribulations" translates a word whose root sense is pressure or crushing weight. "Which is your glory" is ambiguous in the Greek about what "which" refers back to: most likely Paul's sufferings, possibly the readers' not losing heart.

3:14

Standing was the ordinary posture for prayer in Jewish practice, so kneeling signals unusual intensity or urgency rather than routine devotion. The words "of our Lord Jesus Christ" after "the Father" are absent from the earliest manuscripts, which read simply "the Father," and their absence is what makes the wordplay in the next verse visible.

3:15

This is a pun that cannot survive translation. The Greek word for "Father" is pater, and the word translated "family" is patria, a group descended from a common ancestor: a clan or a line of descent. Every fatherhood, human or angelic, is named after the one Father. The Greek also lacks the article here, so it can mean either "the whole family" as the King James has it or "every family," as most modern versions read it.

3:16

"The inner man" means the inward self, the person considered from the inside, as opposed to the outward body that other people see and that wears out.

3:17

Two pictures are stacked here. "Rooted" is what a plant does in soil, and "grounded" is what a builder does when laying a foundation. Love is both the soil and the foundation.

3:18

The Greek does not say what is being measured. It simply lists the four dimensions with nothing attached, and readers have to supply the object from the next verse, where the love of Christ appears. Manuscripts also vary in the order of the four words. "Comprehend" here means to grasp or seize hold of, closer to catching something than to intellectually following an argument.

3:19

"Passeth knowledge" means goes beyond knowledge, surpasses it; it does not mean the love fades away. There is a deliberate tension in saying that readers should know a love that outruns knowing. "Fulness" translates a word meaning the full measure of what fills a thing up to its brim.

3:20

"Exceeding abundantly above" is the King James translators stacking three English words to carry one stacked Greek word, a compound built out of "beyond" plus "out of" plus "more than." The awkwardness of the English matches a deliberate awkwardness in the Greek.

3:21

"Throughout all ages, world without end" is literally "to all the generations of the age of the ages," a piled-up Hebrew-style way of saying time without any stopping point. "World" here means an age or epoch of time, not the planet. "Amen" is a Hebrew word meaning "so be it" or "it is true," said aloud by a gathering to make a spoken prayer their own.