(if indeed ye have heard of the administration of the grace of God which has been given to me towards you,
Chapter 2 has set out the doctrine. Now Paul names himself as the man God trusted with a service for the Gentiles, and he breaks off mid-sentence to explain that trust — what it is, how he got it, and why it reached them.
The verse opens a long detour. Paul starts a thought in verse 1 and only picks it up again in chapter 4. The gap holds the service God gave him.
Compare Ephesians 3:1 with Ephesians 4:1 and you can clearly see that Ephesians 3 is a parenthesis. Ephesians 2 presents the doctrine, and Ephesians 4 the practice that matches the doctrine. Between the doctrine and the practice comes this important digression, where the Holy Spirit presents the special administration, or service, entrusted to the Apostle. In the second verse he calls this service "the dispensation of the grace of God", and in verse 9 "the fellowship of the mystery". In both verses the word is the same in the original language. The best translation is "administration", an administration being a particular service.
The opening words have puzzled readers. They sound as if Paul is unsure whether people he knew well had heard of his commission.
This verse has caused a difficulty for some, because it seems to contradict the idea that this letter went first to the saints at Ephesus. The objection sounds better than it is. As far as the difficulty comes from the Apostle's actual wording, it is only imaginary. He could properly have used such language even when writing to people he already knew and had begun to teach in the way of the Lord.
Older translations call it a "dispensation" where the ESV says "stewardship". Both render one word, and it names a job placed in one man's hands.
The apostle Paul speaks in our chapter, verse 2, of "the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me for you." This word, "dispensation," is elsewhere translated "stewardship" (see Luke 16:2-4). God entrusted this distinctive stewardship to Paul. It was to make known to the Gentiles, above all, the truth of the mystery, which he received by revelation along with the other apostles. The Lord was pleased to reveal by the Holy Spirit the great secret of God, which He had kept hidden during past ages. Yet God committed the ministry, or stewardship, of it to Paul alone. So we find the teaching of it in the letters of the Apostle Paul only.
Another arrangement of God's still lies in the future. What makes this present one a stewardship of grace is who was on the receiving end.
That dispensation is future. In Eph. 3:2 we have a present dispensation, far more limited in its scope, though far more intimate in its character. The apostle speaks of it as "given to me for you" — he was the steward of it as far as the Gentiles, such as the Ephesians, were concerned. Remember how completely lost and hopeless the Gentiles had been, as Eph. 2:12 states. Then it is easy to see that this is indeed a dispensation of the grace of God. The coming age will be the dispensation of His glory instead.
The phrase "for you" points the arrangement at the readers, not at Paul. He received it so he could hand it on.
Paul's words call us to listen to what God, in His goodness and wisdom, made known to Paul for us: the revelation of the mystery. Paul tells us in a few words what it is. The Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel. Nothing that God had given to His saints from among the Jews would now be missing from those who had been Gentiles.
Grace was not only the subject Paul carried. It was also what had happened to the carrier.
God had entrusted an administration of grace to Paul for the saints of this dispensation. Everything tied to Paul's Gospel, and to the truth of the mystery, shows the wonderful grace of God. Nothing God has given us in Christ comes because we deserve it. It all comes in rich, sovereign grace. The apostle is the vessel of this grace. He not only has the truth about it to minister; God has also worked on him with power.
- Trust. The word translated "dispensation" means a stewardship, or administration — one particular service, placed in Paul's hands.
- Grace. It is a stewardship of grace because it reached people who were lost and hopeless. The coming age will display His glory instead.
- Single hands. Paul received the revelation along with the other apostles, but the stewardship of it was his alone. That is why the teaching appears only in his letters.
- Direction. God gave it to him for you: he received it to pass it on, so nothing given to believing Jews would be missing from Gentiles.
- Vessel. The same grace that filled the message shaped the man, so God worked on the messenger as much as He gave him the truth.
that by revelation the mystery has been made known to me, (according as I have written before briefly,
Paul stops mid-sentence in verse 1 to say where his message came from. It was not study or tradition, but a secret God opened to him.
When Paul preached the gospel, he could send his hearers back to their own Scriptures. With this subject he could not.
The Apostle wants us to receive the great truth of the church on divine authority. So he is careful to explain how he got his knowledge of "the mystery" of the church. It did not come through messages from men. It came by direct revelation from God, as he says: the mystery "was made known to me by revelation." ... But once the Apostle taught the truth of the church, he could no longer appeal to the Old Testament to confirm it. It would be useless for his hearers to search the Scriptures to see if these things were so.
The word does not mean a puzzle or something too deep to grasp. It means a secret God kept back, and then chose to tell.
These secret counsels of God are called in Scripture mysteries. We mean by a mystery something we cannot explain, something beyond our understanding. In the language of the New Testament, however, a mystery is simply a secret revealed only to those let in on it... God, then, had kept back a secret to tell us. He had not made it known even to the most favoured person who received His thoughts in past ages. How sweet to see this! It is the privilege of the children to know the secrets of the family.
Because God has told it, it is no longer out of reach for any believer.
Again, the mystery is no longer "hid in God"; it is made public. You must always keep this in mind when you read about the mystery, that it is now revealed and nothing is left in the dark. The secret is set forth in the light of God, and the simplest Christian is expected to receive it.
So what is the secret? It is about two groups becoming one.
What was the mystery? It was the revelation of this wonderful new structure that he calls "Christ and the church" (Eph. 5:32). Jew and Gentile were to be completely one. The Holy Spirit would unite them to Christ in glory, and to one another with equal privilege. Both would belong to Him, and be His Body here upon earth. You cannot find this in Old Testament Scripture.
Commentators differ on the moment. Some trace it to the words Christ spoke to Saul, heard by his travelling companions but not understood by them.
Christ first revealed the existence of His body on earth to Paul (Eph. 3:3). Paul was with his fellow-travellers at the time, but they did not understand the words... "Why do you persecute Me?"
Another writer will not fix a date, and gives the revelation its full name.
The truth so revealed is specifically "the mystery of Christ," an expression found only in the writings of this Apostle. As to the occasion when this revelation was given, it is hard to speak with confidence, because Scripture is not explicit on the point. It is not likely that it was the same as the heavenly vision that taught him his first lesson of obedience to the faith of Jesus (Acts 26:19).
Paul points back to something he had already written.
Only three passages give us the details of this secret: Ephesians 2:9-22; Eph. 3:6; and Colossians 1:27. Eph. 3:3-4 proves that the first of these unfolds the mystery, for there the apostle appeals to what he wrote earlier as showing his knowledge of the subject. Notice, by the way, that he calls this earlier passage "a few words." Yet it is the longest and fullest passage of the three. This shows us that it is a condensed summary of the matter, and we may expect to find in it great fulness and depth.
This revelation completed the great lines of truth God had to give.
God had revealed all the great lines of truth when He made known the special revelation He gave to Paul (Eph. 3:3)... We look, then, for no more. Claimed additions to revealed truth are not the fruit of the Holy Spirit's teaching now. Additions to the Christian faith, not found in the Word, are not of divine origin.
- Secret, not puzzle. A mystery in Scripture is a secret God held back, then told — not something too deep to understand.
- Told to one man. Paul received it by direct revelation, not from men. His first hearers could not check it in the Old Testament, because it is not there.
- Told about one Body. The secret is Christ and the church. Jew and Gentile are made completely one, joined to Christ in glory and to each other.
- Told to the family. Children get to know the family secrets. The simplest Christian is expected to receive this one.
- Told in full. This was the last great line of truth. Claimed additions to it are not of divine origin.
by which, in reading it, ye can understand my intelligence in the mystery of the Christ,)
Paul points his readers back to what he has already written. Read it, he says, and you will see into the mystery of Christ as he does. That raises two questions. What is this mystery? And how does anyone come to understand it?
The word "mystery" invites the wrong idea. Commentators begin by clearing that idea away.
When the Apostle uses the word "mystery" he does not mean anything mysterious. That is the human use of the word. In Scripture a mystery is something that was kept secret until now. Revelation is the only way it could be known, and once revealed only faith can grasp it.
This mystery is not about Christ alone. It joins Christ and the church, and one writer warns that whoever misses it loses the key to the rest of Scripture.
If all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in "the mystery", so that the administration of it, given to Paul, fills up and completes the word of God... then one thing is plain. Where "the mystery" is not understood, the key to the Word is not in the hand... Christ is the centre of the truth and ways of God. But the Christ of God's counsels is not simply the man Christ Jesus. Instead, "as the body is one, and has many members, so also is the Christ." It is "Christ and the Church" — the mystery. He is the last Adam, not alone, but with His Eve.
One writer answers those who shrink the mystery down to the body alone:
"The mystery is the body simply." But the apostle took pains to lay down the opposite, and to lay it down strongly: the mystery concerns Christ and it concerns the church. How sad to leave out Him on Whom all depends! The assembly is only His complement.
Paul says he wrote briefly. One writer explains why so few words were enough.
He wrote in few words, no doubt. But he wrote with divine perfection, and clearly enough for those whom God's grace has made able to understand, however few the words. Many wonder why such truths were not given at greater length. But deep truths are for those who have spiritual understanding, and they do not need many words to grasp them. When people are only learning the basics of truth, God's grace gives precept upon precept, line upon line, to those who need it. If He is showing needy souls how they may be forgiven by God, He displays it in a thousand forms... But it is not so with the revelation of the mystery.
What Paul had by direct revelation, his readers were to gain by reading. An alternative rendering brings out that Paul offers them his own inward grasp of it:
According as I have written before briefly, by which in reading it, you can understand my intelligence in the mystery of the Christ.
Yet the printed page alone does not produce the understanding, which is why the chapter turns into prayer:
He has said all that he can say about it in words, and in very simple words too, but in the things of God the letter is not everything. When the letter has been learned, only the Spirit can give these things living power in our souls. They belong to "the depths of God." So the Apostle is down on his knees, appealing to the Father... Natural ability, even in someone born of God, is no help in understanding the things that belong to God's counsel.
Under the law God kept some things back. One writer traces the change from Moses to Paul.
Moses said, "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever"... But God has now revealed the very things that were then His secrets — the resources of grace, when all was ruin under the law... The Holy Spirit had brought out what had been a secret thing in the days of old. The mystery is revealed... God has, as it were, no secrets now.
- Secret — in Scripture a mystery is not something baffling. It is something God hid, and we know it only because He chose to tell it.
- Revealed — the secret things Moses spoke of are now out in the open. God keeps no secrets now.
- Written — Paul used few words, and those few words are complete. Short does not mean shallow.
- Read — Paul received this by revelation. We receive it by reading what he wrote.
- Understood — the words alone are not enough, so Paul kneels. Only the Spirit gives living power to hold Christ and His church together, and with them the key to all of Scripture.
which in other generations has not been made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in [the power of the] Spirit,
Paul has just said that God revealed a secret to him. Here he tells us when: not in earlier generations, but now — by the Spirit, to a chosen circle of men.
The word does not point to something puzzling. It points to a secret God kept until He chose to speak.
By the word "mystery" the Apostle does not mean anything mysterious — that is only the way people use the word. In Scripture a mystery is something kept secret until now. It could not be known in any other way than by revelation. Once it is revealed, faith alone can grasp it.
Commentators press that the negative in this verse is absolute. It is not that earlier generations saw a little and we now see more.
"Which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations." Here you have a plain statement that the secret was not revealed in other ages. The point is not that it was vaguely hinted at, or that people understood it badly. It was not revealed at all.
The words "sons of men" leave no one out. They cover the best-known believers of the past.
This description takes in the Jewish prophets, and earlier witnesses of the truth of God as well. As he adds a little later, it was "hidden in God," and so it was not among the secrets God shared even with Abraham His friend.
There was a reason for the long silence. It lay in Israel's standing as a separate people.
Scripture states this clearly and repeatedly. While the Jews were a separate people, and were bound to be so, the mystery of the church could not exist — and it was not revealed. To reveal that there was no difference between the Jew and the Greek would have overturned the whole structure at its base.
There is a second reason for the timing: the thing itself did not yet exist.
The unfolding of the Church came when the Holy Spirit was given in a new way... At Pentecost, for the first time, we have an assembly that is called the Church of God: a body where God intended to have Jew and Gentile without distinction. That state of things never existed before the day of Pentecost.
The word "prophets" usually points back to the Old Testament. Two things in the verse point the other way: the word order, and the "now."
The prophets in this verse are not Old Testament prophets. They are the ones spoken of in Ephesians 2:20. In both cases the order is "apostles and prophets". If he meant prophets of the Old Testament, you would expect "prophets and apostles". Also, the Apostle is speaking of what is "now" revealed, in contrast with what was revealed before.
The picture of the foundation in the previous chapter points the same way.
What prophets? Of the New Testament only. God was not taking up an old foundation. He was laying a new one, and He begins this new one in Christ dead and risen... The Greek phrase "the apostles and prophets" means that both groups were united in this joint work.
"By the Spirit" tells us how the truth arrived. It reached a small circle first.
These Spirit-given revelations reached, not the world, and not even all saints, but the apostles and prophets. Once they had received them, they passed them on to others.
Within that circle, Paul had a particular job.
This does not mean it was hidden from the other apostles — Paul tells us it was revealed to them too. But God gave Paul the special service of ministering this truth to the saints. So only in Paul's letters do we find the mystery unfolded.
This truth has a date. That date matters for us.
This mystery, we are told, was "hidden in God" Himself before (Ephesians 3:9). So the revelation of it cannot be found in Old Testament times, or before the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit. That it is now made known in our day should profoundly affect us.
- Hidden. In Scripture a mystery is a kept secret, not a riddle. Study cannot reach it. Revelation gives it, and faith holds it.
- Hidden from all. "Sons of men" covers everyone before — the prophets of old, and Abraham himself. It was hidden in God, not buried somewhere in the older Scriptures.
- Hidden for a reason. Israel stood as a separate people. The news that Jew and Greek are on one level would have overturned that whole order. And the church itself did not exist until the Spirit came.
- Now revealed. The "now" fixes the timing. The order "apostles and prophets" fixes the people. God laid a new foundation in Christ dead and risen; He did not reuse an old one.
- Now passed on. The Spirit gave it to that first circle, not to the world. They carried it outward, and God charged Paul to unfold it. That is why you find it in his letters — and why it should move us today.
that [they who are of] the nations should be joint heirs, and a joint body, and joint partakers of [his] promise in Christ Jesus by the glad tidings;
Ephesians 3 pauses so Paul can explain the secret God made known to him. This verse states that secret plainly. Gentiles share the same heirship, the same body and the same promise as believing Jews. But what was new here? The prophets had already spoken of blessing reaching the nations.
One writer points to a translation that keeps the repeated word in those three terms visible in English, even though the result reads awkwardly.
Ephesians 3:6 gives an even shorter summary of the mystery. Again it stresses the wonderful place given to Gentiles. Someone has translated the three words in that verse as "Joint-heirs, a joint-body and joint-partakers." This may be clumsy English. But it has the merit of making us see the main thought of the Spirit of God in the verse.
Blessing for the nations was no secret. The Old Testament said plenty about it. So the new thing must lie somewhere else.
Nothing could be more obvious, even to a quick reader of God's word, than this. The Old Testament is full of predictions of blessing to the Gentiles under the Messiah's reign… It was no hidden mystery that both Jews and Gentiles would be blessed under Him and by Him when the Seed came — the One to whom the promises were made. But something else had been hidden in God from all past ages and generations. The Gentiles would be fellow heirs and of the same body. Believing Jews and believing Gentiles would be joined into one, in perfect equality with each other, both alike becoming the body of Christ.
Another writer weighs the words. "Fellow heirs" on its own could have left a ranking in place.
Here again we are told that the Gentiles were not only "fellow heirs" — a term that might still leave class distinctions in place — but of the "same body." So the "unity of the Spirit" is completely unique. No one knew of it or prophesied about it before.
The heirship here is not the earthly inheritance promised through Abraham. It is the inheritance Christ Himself holds.
The inheritance spoken of here is not the one promised to Abraham. In that earthly inheritance Israel will hold the first place, and the Gentiles will come into blessing on that ground… Here we have the great inheritance that Christ is the heir of. By the grace of God we are joint heirs with Him in it… To share God's inheritance with God's own Son certainly goes beyond the highest thought any person could reach.
Jew and Gentile are not joined to each other first. Every link between them runs through Christ.
They were made "fellow heirs" with each other by being made fellow heirs with Christ. In the same way, they were made "of the same body" with each other by being made members of the body of Christ. That is how the Gentiles became "partakers of God's promise in Christ by the gospel."
Some read the verse as Gentiles being let into Israel's privileges. One writer rejects that, and rejects the reverse too.
The Gentile is not raised to the Jewish level on earth. Nor is the Jew brought down to the Gentile level. Both are taken off their old standing and raised to a level immeasurably higher. They are united to one another on completely new ground — heavenly ground in Christ. The gospel brings all this about, and it speaks to both on one common level of guilt and utter ruin.
This levelling had a practical edge. Gentile believers did not receive their place from Jewish teachers.
The Gentiles did not come into this under Jewish control or by Jewish teaching. They stand in an equal status with them — not, of course, in Judaism, but in Christianity. That is why chapter two speaks of the dividing wall being broken down and both being reconciled in one body. All that the Jews were as a nation has gone in the cross of Christ.
The long silence before this was no accident. One writer shows why it had to be that way.
So we have the clear and repeated statement about the mystery of the church. It could not exist while the Jews were a separate people, and had to stay that way. It was not even revealed. To announce that there was no difference between the Jew and the Greek would have overturned the whole structure at its base.
- Joint. One word runs through all three terms — joint-heirs, a joint-body, joint-partakers. That repetition carries the whole verse.
- Hidden. The secret had to stay hidden while Israel stood apart. Announcing "no difference" would have pulled that whole order down.
- New. Blessing for the nations was already prophesied. Being in the same body was not. That is the part no one had heard.
- Higher. Neither side moves onto the other's ground. The gospel lifts both off their old standing onto heavenly ground in Christ.
- Through Christ. Believers are fellow heirs and one body with each other only because they belong to Christ first.