The Mystery Made Known

Scripture: Ephesians 3:1–21

Read Ephesians 3:1–21 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

…so that, because you have been rooted and grounded in love, you will be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and thus to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you will be filled up to all the fullness of God.
(Ephesians 3:17–19)

An Interrupted Prayer

The third chapter of Ephesians is built on a strange structure. Paul begins to pray. He interrupts himself. He takes a long detour. He comes back to his prayer.

Verse 1 starts with what reads like the opening of a prayer. Paul names himself “the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles,” and then the sentence breaks off; the NET marks the break with a dash. Paul does not finish it. Twelve verses go by. Then in verse 14 he begins again. “For this reason I kneel before the Father,” and the prayer that had been suspended in verse 1 finally proceeds.

What happened in between? Paul cannot mention his chains without explaining them, and he cannot explain them without telling the gospel. The mention of his imprisonment in verse 1 sets him off on a discourse about the mystery he is in chains for. Twelve verses of mystery, of stewardship, of cosmic display, of pleas not to lose heart. Then the prayer resumes.

This is not poor writing. This is Paul. The detour is itself the point. The apostle cannot speak about himself for long without speaking about Christ. The prayer he was about to pray is shaped by the gospel he interrupts himself to recount, and the gospel he recounts is shaped by the prayer he is about to pray. The two halves of the chapter belong together. We will treat them together.

We turn first to the prison.

A Prisoner for the Gentiles

Paul opens chapter three by naming himself a prisoner, and then naming two things about that imprisonment that change everything.

First, he is a prisoner of Christ Jesus. The genitive matters. Paul does not say he is a prisoner of Rome, though Rome is the immediate jailer. He does not say he is a prisoner of Caesar, though Caesar is the one to whom he has appealed. He does not say he is a prisoner of his Jewish accusers, though they are the ones who handed him over. He says he is a prisoner of Christ. The chains belong to Christ. The imprisonment is in Christ’s service. Whatever Rome thinks it is doing with this man, what is actually happening is that Christ is doing something through him.

Second, his imprisonment is for the sake of you Gentiles, directly because of his ministry to them. Paul had been arrested in Jerusalem because his preaching of a Gentile-inclusive gospel had enraged his Jewish opponents. He had carried the gospel to the Gentiles, refused to require Gentile converts to keep the Mosaic law, declared that Gentile believers had equal standing in Christ. The chains followed. He suffers because of the very mystery he is about to describe.

Paul does not lament this. He does not present his sufferings as an injustice he is bearing under protest. He presents his sufferings as a gift he has been given for the sake of the saints to whom he writes. The Gentile believers in Ephesus have a place in the body of Christ in part because Paul is in chains for it. His imprisonment is their gain.

This passage belongs with what the Lutheran tradition has taught about the cross and suffering. Christians suffer for the gospel, and their suffering is not a sign that God has abandoned them. It is, often, a sign that they are precisely where God has placed them. Luther himself knew this, outlawed by the emperor, excommunicated by the pope, hidden for a time in the Wartburg castle, accused from every side in his day. Paul’s chains are not a problem to be explained away. They are a part of the gospel’s advance.

And there is one more thing to notice. Paul puts his own name in the sentence. The man writing these words is named, I, Paul, and the name is given alongside the chains. This is not anonymous theology. This is a particular man, with a particular vocation, in a particular jail, writing to particular people he loves. The first person of the Christian gospel is not vague.

Having mentioned his chains, Paul now mentions what he is in chains for: the mystery.

We have met this word before. In 1:9, Paul named God’s eternal plan “to head up all things in Christ” as “the mystery of his will.” Now in chapter 3 he uses the word again, more concretely. The mystery is what was “hidden for ages in God” and has now been “revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Ephesians 3:5, 9). And what the mystery turns out to be, when Paul names it, is this: “that through the gospel the Gentiles are fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 3:6).

Notice the three fellow words. Paul piles them up. The Greek prefix syn- (with, alongside) is repeated three times, hammering the same point. The Gentiles are not second-class additions to the people of God. They are not visiting members. They are not allowed entry on terms different from the Jewish believers. They are fellow: equal, alongside, on the same standing. Whatever the Jewish believers have, the Gentile believers have. Same Spirit. Same promise. Same body. Same heirship.

This is the mystery. It is not a secret about future events. It is not hidden knowledge for the spiritual elite. It is the announcement that the boundary that had defined the people of God for two thousand years has been moved. The covenant family has expanded to include the nations. The far have been brought near (2:13), the middle wall of partition has been destroyed (2:14), and the saints from every corner of the earth now stand on the same ground in Christ.

The Lutheran tradition has read this with sensitivity to a related point: the mystery announces something the apostles received as gift, not something they invented or improvised. Paul does not say he came up with Gentile inclusion. He says it was revealed to the apostles and prophets by the Spirit. The Church does not author her own message. She receives it. What she preaches is what she has been given.

A Stewardship of Grace

In verses 7–13, Paul moves from the mystery itself to his own commission to preach it.

He calls his ministry “the stewardship of God’s grace” (Ephesians 3:2), a gift of grace given to him for the sake of others. The same grace that saves him personally has also entrusted him with a particular office: “to proclaim to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8). Paul does not boast about this. In fact, he names himself, in one of the most striking phrases in the New Testament, “less than the least of all the saints.” The Greek is a comparative built on a superlative, as though Paul had to invent a word lower than the lowest. This is not false humility. Paul is keenly aware that he had been a persecutor of the Church before he was an apostle of it. The man who once stood guarding the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen is now writing this letter from a Roman prison about the mystery he had once tried to stamp out. Grace is the only word that explains it. He knows.

The purpose of his commission is then named in two stages. First, the immediate purpose: to bring the gospel to the Gentiles, that they may know the riches of Christ and the eternal plan that has produced their inclusion. Second, the cosmic purpose, in verse 10, which is one of the most striking sentences in the New Testament: “that through the church the multifaceted wisdom of God should now be disclosed to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly realms.”

This is breathtaking. The Church is not just the recipient of God’s plan. The Church is the display of God’s plan to spiritual powers that watch from beyond ordinary sight. The angels, and the demonic powers Paul will name again in chapter six, are watching. They are seeing in the Church what they had not seen anywhere else: the multifaceted wisdom of God, displayed in the gathering of Jew and Gentile into one body. The Church’s existence is a sermon preached to the heavenly powers. Every Sunday morning, every Word and Sacrament gathering, every act of forgiveness and reconciliation between believers, is a public exhibit of God’s wisdom to the unseen world.

Paul ends this section, in verse 13, with a pastoral plea: he asks the Ephesians “not to lose heart” because of what he is suffering for them, “which is your glory.” The chains are not the end of the gospel. The chains are part of the gospel’s coming to them. They are not to grieve over Paul’s suffering as if it diminished what God is doing. The suffering is for them, and it serves their good.

This is the Lutheran theology of the cross at work in apostolic vocation. The gospel goes forward through suffering, not in spite of it. The Church grows by faithful ministers who are willing to be in chains for it. The saints who receive the gospel are recipients of suffering not their own. Christ alone suffered to redeem them; Paul suffered to bring them the news. They have not suffered for it; someone has suffered for them, and that suffering is part of how the gospel reached them.

Now Paul returns to his prayer.

The Second Prayer

In verse 14 Paul finally completes the sentence he started in verse 1. “I kneel before the Father.”

Paul’s Greek is literally “I bend my knees.” The common posture for prayer in Paul’s world was standing. Kneeling was a posture of special reverence, of submission, of supplication. Luke records that Paul knelt to pray with the elders of this very church when he said goodbye to them at Miletus (Acts 20:36). Paul is praying to the Father with everything he has.

He addresses God as the Father “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3:15). The Greek word for family is patria, related to the word for Father (patēr). The wordplay is hard to miss. The Father is the source from which every family takes its identity: every family on earth, every family in heaven (meaning, perhaps, the angelic ranks). All fatherhood, all naming, all family belonging derives from Him. This is not a particular God for a particular people. This is the Father whose paternity organizes everything that exists. And He is the One before whom Paul kneels.

Then comes the petition. It has four movements, building on one another.

First, that the saints would be “strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person” (Ephesians 3:16). The inner person is not the body. It is the inner self, the part of the person that lives coram Deo, before God. Paul prays that the Spirit would strengthen the saints there. The strength he asks for is not superficial: not stamina, not willpower, not coping. It is power through his Spirit, in the inmost place.

Second, “that Christ will dwell in your hearts through faith” (Ephesians 3:17). Paul has just spoken of the Spirit’s strengthening; he now speaks of Christ’s dwelling. The two are not separate. Where the Spirit works, Christ comes; where Christ comes, the Spirit is. Christ does not just visit the believer; He dwells. The verb speaks of settled residence. He moves in to stay. And the means by which He dwells is faith. Faith does not produce the indwelling; faith, worked by the Spirit through the Word, receives it. The believer’s heart is a home that Christ has entered through the door of faith and is making His own.

Third, that because they have been rooted and grounded in love, the saints will be able to comprehend the dimensions Paul names, and to know the love that surpasses knowledge. Paul piles up dimensions: breadth, length, height, depth. He does not specify what they measure. The breadth and length and height and depth of what? Some readers have said the dimensions of the cross. Others, the dimensions of the gospel. Many read them as the dimensions of Christ’s love, a love so vast that no single dimension can capture it. Paul wants the saints to comprehend this, and immediately confesses that the love is beyond comprehension. Surpasses knowledge. The Christian’s knowing of Christ’s love does not mean she has wrapped her mind around it. It means she has been wrapped by it. She knows what surpasses her knowing.

Fourth, that the saints “will be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). The petition reaches its highest point. Paul asks that the saints be filled, not partially, not conditionally, but completely, with the fullness of God Himself. The Greek word plērōma, which we met in 1:23 (the church as “the fullness of him who fills all in all”), reappears here. The Church which is the fullness of Christ is now prayed for, that she might be filled with the fullness of God. This is not pantheism. This is not the saint becoming God. It is the saint dwelt in by God to capacity, alive with His presence, taken up into the fullness of His life through Christ.

These four petitions are nested, each leading to the next. The Spirit strengthens the inner self; Christ dwells in the heart; the saints comprehend the love that surpasses knowing; they are filled with God’s fullness. This is the Christian life as Paul prays for it. There is nothing modest in his asking.

More Than We Can Ask or Think

Paul ends with a doxology in verses 20 and 21. It is one of the great doxologies of the New Testament, and it deserves to stand on its own.

He addresses God as the One “who by the power that is working within us is able to do far beyond all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). Paul has just asked an enormous list. He has asked for strengthened inner persons, indwelling Christ, comprehended love, filled fullness. And his doxology says: God can do far beyond even this. The petition was not a ceiling. It was a starting point. God’s capacity to give exceeds the saint’s capacity to ask, and exceeds the saint’s capacity even to imagine.

The means by which God does this is named: the power that is already at work within the saints. The power Paul has just been praying about, the power that strengthens the inner person, the power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him in the heavenly realms, is the power already at work in the believer. The doxology does not point the saint to a remote God. It tells her that the God who is able is already at work in her by His Word and Spirit, whether she can feel it or not. The God who is able is the God who is already working. The fullness that is to come is continuous with the firstfruits already given.

And the destination of all of this is the praise of God’s glory in the Church: “to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:21). The Church is the place where God’s glory is praised. Christ is the One in whom the glory is given. And the duration is endless. The Church’s praise of God in Christ is not a temporary arrangement. It is the eternal vocation of the saints.

The chapter ends. The first half of the letter ends. The doctrinal portion is complete. From the eternal counsel of God in chapter one, through the great salvation of chapter two, to the cosmic display and the prayer of chapter three, Paul has traced what God has done in Christ. The gospel has been heard.

Beginning in chapter four, Paul will turn to the saint’s life in the gospel. The walk follows the doctrine. The next half of the letter will describe what it looks like to live, day by day, as those who are in Christ.

But before we move on, Paul has bowed the knee. So should we.

For Discussion

Paul calls himself a prisoner of Christ, not of Rome, not of Caesar. He suffers because of his apostolic vocation, and he reads his suffering as Christ’s work through him. Where in your own life have you suffered because of obedience to Christ? Where have you been tempted to read your suffering as God’s absence rather than as part of His work?
Paul’s mention of his chains takes him on a long detour into the gospel. He cannot speak about himself without speaking about Christ. What does this teach you about the order of Christian self-talk? When you tell your own story, where does Christ enter the telling?
The mystery is announced as Gentile inclusion: Gentiles as fellow heirs, fellow members, fellow partakers with the Jewish believers. Christians have often applied this principle to other dividing lines the gospel addresses. Where in your congregation is this principle most clearly seen? Where is it most needed?
Paul says the Church displays God’s multifaceted wisdom to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. What is happening in your congregation on a Sunday morning that is being watched by an unseen audience? How does that change what you bring to the gathering?
Paul prays that Christ would dwell in the saints’ hearts through faith. Not visit. Not pass through. Dwell. What does it look like in your own life when Christ is dwelling, rather than visiting? What gets in the way?
The doxology says God can do far beyond all that we ask or think. What have you not asked for because you could not imagine it? What might your prayers look like if your imagination were larger?

Closing Prayer

Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, we kneel before You. According to the wealth of Your glory, strengthen us with power through Your Spirit in the inner person. Let Christ dwell in our hearts through faith. Root us and ground us in love. Give us to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, and fill us up to all the fullness of God. We do not know how to ask for this rightly. We trust You to give it anyway. You are able to do far beyond all that we ask or think, by the power that is working within us. To You be the glory, in the Church and in Christ Jesus, to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Looking Ahead

Next session we cross from the doctrinal half of the letter to the practical half. Paul has given us three chapters about what God has done. He now gives us three chapters about what it looks like to live as those for whom God has done it. Ephesians 4:1–16 is the opening of this second half: the call “to live worthily of the calling with which you have been called” (Ephesians 4:1). Paul’s verb here is peripateō, “walk”; the NET renders it “live.” The verb walk will become a refrain. Paul returns to it in five places in the chapters ahead (4:1, 4:17, 5:2, 5:8, 5:15). To walk worthy is to walk in unity, in humility, in patience, in love. And the unity Paul has in mind is named in seven ones: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father. The unity of the Church is rooted in the unity of God Himself.

But the saints are not all the same. They have different gifts, given to them by the ascended Christ for the building up of the body. Paul will name those gifts and explain their purpose: “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, that is, to build up the body of Christ,” until we all attain to “a mature person, attaining to the measure of Christ’s full stature” (Ephesians 4:12–13). The unity of chapter 4 is not uniformity. It is a unity of diverse gifts gathered around one Lord.

Before next session, read Ephesians 4:1–16 at least twice. Read it once for sense. Read it a second time noticing the seven ones in verses 4–6, and the gifts named in verse 11. We will sit with both at length.