Ephesians 1:15

Διὰ τοῦτο κἀγώ : For this cause I too. διὰ τοῦτο might cover the contents of the entire preceding paragraph, pointing back to Ephesians 1:3 and indicating that in his thanksgiving to God, in behalf of these Ephesians, the Apostle had in his mind the whole counsel and eternal choice of God of which he first made mention, and the whole operation of grace in the lives of the Ephesians in the several particulars afterwards instanced. In view, however, of the transition from the more general “us” to the more definite “ye also” in Ephesians 1:13 it is probably more accordant with the tenor of thought to take the διὰ τοῦτο to refer to the signal manifestation of God's grace in the sealing of these believers, who had been taken from the dark pagan world, with the Spirit which was both assurance and foretaste of an inheritance undreamt of in their heathenism. The κἀγώ is best explained by the same καὶ ὑμεῖς. It means simply “I on my side,” and does not imply as some, including, even Meyer, suppose, that the writer was thinking of a co-operation between those addressed and himself in thanksgiving and prayer. ἀκούσας τὴν καθʼ ὑμᾶς πίστιν ἐν τῷ Κυρίῳ Ἰησοῦ : having heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus. It has been wrongly inferred from the ἀκούσας that the writer had no personal acquaintance with those addressed and knew of their conversion only by the report of others. Philemon was well known to Paul, who spake of him indeed as his ἀγαπητός, his συνεργός, and his son in the faith (Ephesians 1:19). Yet Paul uses with reference to him almost the same terms as those used here εὐχαριστῶ … μνείαν σου ποιούμενος … ἀκούων σου τὴν ἀγάπην καὶ τὴν πίστιν κ. τ. λ. (Ephesians 1:4-5). Besides, what the writer speaks of here is not their conversion but their faith and love, and it is only in harmony with all that we know of Paul that he should have used every opportunity of keeping himself in communication with them and watching their progress. Through Tychicus, or some other visitor or messenger, tidings of their Christian walk may have come to him now (cf. Introduction). In any case he finds his first and foremost reason for thanksgiving in the report of the way in which the fundamental Christian requirement was made good among them that of faith, their faith in the Lord Jesus Himself. The phrase here is not the usual τὴν ὑμετέραν πίστιν, or τὴν πίστιν ὑμῶν, but τὴν καθʼ ὑμᾶς πίστιν. The sense, however, is substantially the same. Some good grammarians indeed seek to establish a distinction between the two phrases, and claim a special partitive or distributive sense for the one with κατά. Ellicott, e.g., points to the fact that the form ἡ καθʼ ὑμᾶς πίστις is adopted only once by Paul, while πίστις ὑμῶν occurs some seventeen times in his Epistles, and concludes on the whole that the former may denote “the faith of the community viewed objectively,” “ the faith which is among you,” whereas the latter expresses “the subjective faith of individuals”. Alford, also, gives the former the sense of the “faith which prevails among you” (on the analogy of τῷ κατʼ αὐτοὺς βίῳ in Thuc., vi., 16), and takes it to imply that some in the Ephesian Church may not have had the faith. So the RV gives in its text “the faith … which is among you”; marg., “ in you”. But the analogies referred to (e.g., τῷ νόμῳ τῷ ὑμετέρῳ, John 8:17, as contrasted with νόμου τοῦ καθʼ ὑμᾶς in Acts 18:15; cf. Ell.) scarcely bear this out, and there is much to show that the latter form had become, or was on the way to become, simply a periphrasis for the former. Such phrases as ὡς καί τινες τῶν καθʼ ὑμᾶς ποιητῶν; the above νόμου τοῦ καθʼ ὑμᾶς; and τῶν κατὰ Ἰουδαίους ἐθῶν (Acts 17:28; Acts 18:15; Acts 26:3) may be thus explained; and in later Greek κατά with an acc. is frequently used where the older classical Greek would have had the gen. case, e.g., ἡ κατὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπόθεσις = the resignation of government, Diod., S., i., 65. So, while in the NT κατά may usually retain its distributive force, in cases where it is followed by the acc. of a personal pronoun it may mean nothing more than the poss. adj. or the gen. of the personal pronoun. As Buttmann points out, strictly speaking it is not so much that “the case was periphrased but that the prepositional phrase displaced the simple case”; as it was easy for the Greek language to make prepositional phrases dependent immediately upon substantives, and natural, therefore, for it in its later developments to carry this further and employ “prepositional expressions even where the earlier language still preferred the simple case” (Gram. of N. T. Greek, p. 156; cf. Bernhardy's Syntax, p. 241; Win.-Moult., pp. 199, 241, 499; Blass, Gram. of N. T. Greek, p. 133). καὶ τὴν ἀγάπην τὴν εἰς πάντας τοὺς ἁγίους : and your love toward all the saints. The reading is uncertain. The Received Text inserts τὴν ἀγάπην, which has the support of such authorities as [79] [80] [81] [82] [83], Syr., Boh., Lat., Copt., Goth., Thdrt., etc., and is adopted by Tisch, and Tregelles (the latter bracketing it in margin). It is regarded by WH as a Western and Syrian insertion from Colossians 1:4. The τὴν ἀγάπην is omitted by [84] [85] [86] [87], 17, Orig., Cyr., Jer., etc., and is deleted by Lach., WH and RV. The documentary evidence is on the side of the omission. But the difficulty is to find in that case a suitable sense. Hort thinks that Philemon 1:5 furnishes a parallel, as it might be rendered (with RV marg.) “hearing of thy love and faith which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints”. But the love is expressed there. Dale would render it “having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ which is among you and shown toward all the saints,” as if the point of the latter clause was the reality or manifestation of the faith. But in the Greek there is nothing corresponding to the “shown”. The πίστις, in short, if it belongs to both clauses, must be introduced in two different aspects, as belief in the first clause and as faithfulness in the second. But in the absence of any intimation of a double presentation of πίστις this is awkward exceedingly. The Revisers nevertheless render it “the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and which ye shew toward all the saints”. The insertion in any case is of early date, and the omission may have been due to the eye of some ancient scribe being deceived by the two occurrences of τὴν. The grace in question, whether their love or their faithfulness, was of catholic quality, taking all the saints for its objects.

[79] Codex Sinaiticus (sæc. iv.), now at St. Petersburg, published in facsimile type by its discoverer, Tischendorf, in 1862.

[80] Codex Claromontanus (sæc. vi.), a Græco-Latin MS. at Paris, edited by Tischendorf in 1852.

[81] Codex Boernerianus (sæc. ix.), a Græco-Latin MS., at Dresden, edited by Matthæi in 1791. Written by an Irish scribe, it once formed part of the same volume as Codex Sangallensis (δ) of the Gospels. The Latin text, g, is based on the O.L. translation.

[82] Codex Mosquensis (sæc. ix.), edited by Matthæi in 1782.

[83] Codex Angelicus (sæc. ix.), at Rome, collated by Tischendorf and others.

[84] Codex Sinaiticus (sæc. iv.), now at St. Petersburg, published in facsimile type by its discoverer, Tischendorf, in 1862.

[85] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.

[86] Codex Alexandrinus (sæc. v.), at the British Museum, published in photographic facsimile by Sir E. M. Thompson (1879).

[87] Codex Porphyrianus (sæc. ix.), at St. Petersburg, collated by Tischendorf. Its text is deficient for chap. Ephesians 2:13-16.