Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ephesians · About this commentary
Exceedingly Abundantly
Ephesians 3:20-21
20 Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, · WEB
The doxology piles up words for excess and then locates the power in the readers themselves rather than above them.
The two verses close the letter's first half, and everything before chapter 4 has been announcement rather than instruction.
The description of God is built by accumulation: able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. The Greek stacks a preposition on an adverb to make a word for beyond-all-measure, and then sets it against two human limits in ascending order — what we ask, and then what we think. Requests are bounded by what occurs to us; imagination is wider; and the sentence puts God past the wider of the two.
Then the clause that keeps the doxology from being merely large: according to the power that works in us.
The measure is not God's power in the abstract but the power already operating in the readers. That is the same move the letter made in chapter 1, where the greatness of God's power toward us who believe was measured by the resurrection Ephesians 1:19–20 — and the same power is now said to be at work inside a congregation of former gentiles.
Verse 21 gives the glory two locations, and the pairing is the letter's argument in miniature: in the assembly, and in Christ Jesus. The congregation is named alongside Christ as a place where God's glory appears — which is exactly what verse 10 claimed about the powers watching.
The span is to all generations, forever and ever. And with the Amen, the letter stops describing and begins asking.
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