Biblion Bible Commentary
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An Ambassador in Chains
Ephesians 6:19-24
19 Pray for me, that utterance may be given to me in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the Good News, · WEB
The one thing the prisoner asks prayer for is speech, and the letter closes on a phrase that pairs two words that do not belong together.
Pray for me — and what he asks for is not release. It is utterance, that he may open his mouth and make the mystery known with boldness. The word for boldness is the frank speech of a free man, and it has already been used of the readers' access to the Father Ephesians 3:12.
Then verse 20 gives the letter's sharpest phrase about his situation: for which I am an ambassador in chains.
The two halves contradict each other. An ambassador is inviolable by the oldest convention of diplomacy. A man in chains has no standing at all. Paul sets them together without remark, and the sentence does the work of a paragraph: the office is real, the humiliation is real, and neither cancels the other. It is the letter's third mention of his imprisonment Ephesians 3:1 Ephesians 4:1, and the third time he treats it as a position rather than a misfortune.
And what he wants boldness for is stated twice in two verses: to speak. A man whose mouth is the only thing not chained asks for help using it.
Verses 21 and 22 name Tychicus — the only person named in the whole letter besides Paul — and his errand is domestic: to tell them how Paul is doing, and to comfort your hearts. The prisoner sends someone to reassure the free.
The benediction is general, as the whole letter has been: peace to the brothers, and love with faith. And the last words describe the readers as those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love — the letter's final adjective, applied to the thing it has asked for since chapter 4.
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