Suffering of incarceration
With a heading of sorts, he picks up the first of these two subjects. Dickens told us of Kit’s incarceration, and Paul sets off his next section by raising that of his own.
1For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles–(Ephesians 3:1–ESV)
He wants to branch off from his doctrinal painting and dive into some biographical material. He has a personal take, a vantage point on the role he has along with how it is coupled to his sufferings, most notably his incarceration. Viewing both of these as God assigned and God managed he is not bourne to the ground in discouragement over situations in which he has found himself. The churches, though, do have that tincture and he will wrap up this section with an encouragement to those who have their physical freedom and spiritual freedom. He wants them to take part in his mental freedom which derives from a grasp of God’s purposeful patterns with the world he made, the world he redeemed.
2 assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you,3 how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. (Ephesians 3:2-3–ESV)
Here is an odd construction as Paul intimates that they understood some things of his past. The NIV starts verse two with the word surely, while the NASB says, “if indeed.” These alongside the ESV’s use of the word assuming relate to us that Paul gently supposes the Ephesians are privy to his backstory. He even concludes verse three by saying that he had written briefly of these things before.
It is helpful to bring before our thoughts some pieces of Paul’s stature. With no stretching of the truth it could be said that Paul was the Father of Gentile Christianity. Of course, God really was the manager of it all, but people are God’s agents, his building blocks. With Paul God built out his message from the original, narrow scope of the Jews to the new, broad scope of Jew+Gentile.
As the key individual on earth in this process Paul’s words, writings, travels, and travails would not be hidden features but displayed ones. He would have had many public and private communications with the churches. By the 7th decade after Christ’s birth, those would already have diffused into the Eastern Mediterranean communities.
Paul references their inklings to set the stage for further teachings. He presumes that they have heard of the office God gave him as steward of God’s grace. Also, he assumes that they know how he came by the explanation of the mystery of God in the Jew-Gentile context.
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