The Prisoner Explains a Purpose Larger Than His Prison

The sentence has no main verb. Paul begins a prayer, breaks off to explain himself for twelve verses, and picks up the same words, “For this cause”, at verse 14. “The prisoner” has the article, as though he were the one prisoner everyone knew of, and he credits the chains to Christ rather than to Rome.

“If ye have heard” can carry the sense “since surely ye have heard”, but read plainly it is an odd thing to say to a church Paul founded, the same puzzle raised by 1:15. “Dispensation” is oikonomia again, as in 1:10, now for the stewardship entrusted to Paul himself.

“As I wrote afore in few words” most likely points back within this letter, to 1:9–10 and 2:11–22, rather than to some lost earlier one. “By revelation” is Paul’s word for how he received the gospel in Galatians 1:12: not taught by men.

“When ye read” is anaginosko, which normally meant reading aloud to a gathered congregation; Colossians 4:16 asks for letters to be read that way and passed on. “Knowledge” is synesis, insight or understanding, the ability to put things together.

“In other ages” is literally in other generations. “Sons of men” is the Hebrew idiom for human beings. Some find “holy apostles” an awkward phrase for Paul to use of a group including himself, but “holy” here is hagios, set apart, the same word as “saints” throughout the letter.

The three terms all begin with the Greek prefix for “together”: synkleronoma, syssoma, symmetocha, fellow-heirs, fellow-bodied, fellow-sharers. The middle word, syssomos, is not found in any Greek writing before this letter and may be Paul’s own coinage.

“Minister” is diakonos, a servant, the word used for someone who waits at table, from which deacon comes. “Effectual working” is energeia, the same power-word used in 1:19 of the resurrection: the energy that raised Christ is the energy behind Paul’s appointment.

“Less than the least” is elachistoteros, a comparative built on a superlative, as if to say leaster, a form Greek grammar does not allow. Paul’s Latin name, Paulus, means small. “Unsearchable” is anexichniastos, untraceable, whose tracks cannot be followed, the word of Romans 11:33, “his ways past finding out”.

“Fellowship” follows the Received Text, which reads koinonia; the older manuscripts read oikonomia, administration or plan, a word that looks similar written in capitals. “Make all men see” is photizo, to bring to light, the verb of 1:18. “By Jesus Christ” is absent from the oldest copies.

“Manifold” is polupoikilos, many-coloured or intricately varied, a word used of embroidered cloth and of flowers. The simpler poikilos is what the Greek Old Testament calls Joseph’s coat in Genesis 37:3. The “now” is pointed: this display belongs to the church age, not to some later one.

“Eternal purpose” is literally the purpose of the ages. “Which he purposed” translates epoiesen, made or carried out, so the phrase can mean the plan God formed in Christ or the plan God accomplished in him; the second is the more natural sense of the verb.

“Boldness” is parresia, the freedom of speech a citizen had in the assembly of a Greek city, the right to say everything. “By the faith of him” can mean the believer’s faith in Christ or Christ’s own faithfulness; the Greek genitive allows either, and the question has been argued at length.

“Faint” is enkakeo, to lose heart. The Greek does not name who might lose heart, so some read the request as Paul praying that he himself not flag. “Which is your glory” turns his sufferings into their honour: a prisoner for the Gentiles means the Gentiles are worth a prison.

The resumed “For this cause” reconnects with verse 1. Jews ordinarily prayed standing, as in Mark 11:25 and Luke 18:11–13; kneeling marked unusual earnestness, as with Solomon at the dedication (1 Kings 8:54), Daniel in Babylon (Daniel 6:10) and Jesus in Gethsemane (Luke 22:41).

The wordplay is lost in English: pater, father, and patria, family or clan, a group descended from one father. The Greek has no article, so “every family” is closer than “the whole family”. Human and angelic households alike take their name from this Father.

“The inner man” is a phrase Paul uses in Romans 7:22 and in 2 Corinthians 4:16, where “the inward man is renewed day by day” while the outward perishes. “Strengthened with might” doubles the idea, power upon power, drawn from the same “riches of his glory” named in 1:18.

“Dwell” is katoikeo, to settle as a permanent resident, the opposite of the paroikoi, the resident aliens of 2:19. “Rooted” is a gardener’s word and “grounded” a builder’s, from the themelios, foundation, of 2:20; both are perfect participles, describing a condition already established.

“Comprehend” is katalambano, to seize or lay hold of, the verb of John 1:5, “the darkness comprehended it not”. The four dimensions have no object in the Greek; Paul never says breadth and length of what. Love, the temple, the mystery and God’s wisdom have all been proposed.

“Passeth” is hyperballo once more, the love that overshoots knowledge. “Filled with all the fulness” is literally filled unto it, toward a measure not yet reached. Later Gnostic teachers used pleroma for the realm of divine beings, which may be why the letter’s own use of the word drew close attention from early readers.

“Exceeding abundantly above” is one word in Greek, hyperekperissou, a triple compound, super-out-beyond-abundantly. Paul uses it again in 1 Thessalonians 3:10 for praying “night and day... exceedingly”. The measure of the power is not in heaven only but “in us”.

“World without end” is the King James rendering of a stack of time-words, literally “unto all the generations of the age of the ages”; the phrase entered English worship through the Book of Common Prayer. The best manuscripts read glory “in the church and in Christ Jesus”, setting the two side by side.