Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Mystery Made Known
Ephesians 3:1-6
1 For this cause I, Paul, am the prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles, · WEB
Paul breaks off a sentence to explain his imprisonment, and the mystery he defines turns out to be a matter of who is included.
For this cause I, Paul, am the prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles. The genitive is striking — not Rome's prisoner but Christ's, and the chains are described as held on behalf of the readers rather than as a misfortune that befell him.
He begins a sentence here and abandons it. Verse 1 has no main verb; the thought is interrupted by thirteen verses of explanation and only resumed at verse 14, where for this cause starts over. The letter is happy to leave the seam showing.
Verse 3 states how he knows what he knows: by revelation the mystery was made known to me. The claim is the same one made at length elsewhere Galatians 1:12, stated here in a clause.
And verse 5 defines the word precisely, which matters because mystery in ordinary use means something obscure. Here it means something not made known in other generations that has now been revealed. The content is not mysterious; the timing was.
Then verse 6 gives the content, and it is worth noticing how ordinary it now sounds and how unthinkable it once was. The gentiles are fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of his promise. Three compounds, each built on the same prefix, hammering one point.
That is the mystery. Not a hidden doctrine or an inner teaching — an arrangement in which the outsiders are not admitted as guests but included as equals. And it is the first instalment of the summing up announced in chapter 1 Ephesians 1:10.
settled What this mark means