Ephesians 3:3

Ephesians 3:3. That by (lit., ‘according to') revelation the mystery was made known to me. The best authorities support the passive form. This verse explains the substance of what they heard, hence of the ‘dispensation,' etc. The mode by which the mystery was made known to him is put first, for emphasis: ‘by revelation;' comp. Ephesians 3:5. That evidently it was God who made known to him ‘the mystery.' This term has two meanings: ‘(1.) Such matters of fact, as are inaccessible to reason, and can only be known through revelation; (2.) Such matters as are patent facts, but the process of which cannot be entirely taken in by the reason' (Tholuck). In the latter sense the calling of the Gentiles was a mystery, and many commentators restrict the reference here to that matter, finding a wider application in Ephesians 3:4; Ephesians 3:9. But this requires us to accept the parenthetical construction, which cannot be defended. Moreover it seems unlikely that the sense of the term would vary frequently in so brief a passage. It seems better to maintain that the ‘mystery' is the same throughout; but in view of the universalism of the Epistle and the current of thought in this section, it here appears as complex, precisely as the notions of ‘enmity' and ‘peace' in the preceding section: the mystery of redemption, whose centre is the Person of Christ, whose object and purport is Christ, taking that term as including the Body of which He is the Head, which He has redeemed, and in which the Gentiles are ‘fellow-members' (Ephesians 3:6); the latter thought being the special reference throughout, though never to the exclusion of the wider thought, since Ephesians 3:6, with its compound terms, compels us to think, even in that most special definition of the ‘mystery', of the one inheritance, the one body, and the one promise presented in the gospel. With this thought as the ruling one, the special reference to the union of Jews and Gentiles comes in naturally and without disturbing the more general one.

As I have written before. The parentheses are unnecessary; the construction flows on, as usual in Paul's writings. The English perfect is not a literal reading, but brings out the force of the thought expressed in the Greek. What he has written in this Epistle (comp. chaps. Ephesians 1:9-17; Ephesians 2:4-11, etc.) confirms the statement that this mystery had been made known to him.

In few words. ‘In comparison with the wealth of the truth revealed, its fulness, its wide-reaching, deep-moving efficiency, what he writes is to him always little and brief' (Braune).