Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ephesians · About this commentary
The Very Least of All Saints
Ephesians 3:7-9
7 of which I was made a servant according to the gift of that grace of God which was given me according to the working of his power. · WEB
The man entrusted with the mystery describes himself with a comparative that has no proper form, and the riches he preaches are called unsearchable.
Verse 7 keeps the emphasis where the chapter has put it throughout. He was made a servant, according to the gift of grace, according to the working of God's power. Three prepositional phrases, and none of them credits him.
Then verse 8, and the self-description is grammatically odd in Greek: he coins a comparative from a word already superlative — something like leaster than all saints. The construction does not properly exist, and he uses it anyway.
It is worth reading against the letter's confidence elsewhere. This is the man who has just claimed direct revelation Ephesians 3:3 and who commands with authority throughout chapters 4 to 6. The two are not in tension in his own mind, and the letter offers no explanation for holding both.
What was given to him is stated as a task rather than a status: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. The adjective means untrackable — riches that cannot be followed to their end, so nobody preaching them will run out.
And verse 9 gives a second commission alongside the first: to make all men see what the arrangement is. The verb is about bringing something into the light so it can be looked at, which is the same movement as the revealing of verse 5.
The last clause widens the frame in a way that is easy to pass over. The mystery has for ages been hidden in God, who created all things — the plan is placed with the maker of everything, which prepares the sentence that follows about who is watching Ephesians 3:10.
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