but allows His servants to be bound also,—“for you Gentiles.” It is full of emphasis; not only do we no longer loathe you, but we are even bound, saith he, for your sakes and of this ex- ceeding grace am I partaker. Ver. 2. “If so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of that grace of God, which was given me to you-ward.” He alludes to the prediction addressed to Ananias concerning him at Damascus, when the Lord said, “Go thy way, for he is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles and Kings.” (Acts ix. 15.) By “dispensation of grace,” he means the revelation made to him. As much as to say, “I learned it not from man. (Gal. i. 12.) He vouchsafed to reveal it even to me, though but an individual for your sakes. For Himself said unto me, saith he, “Depart, for I will send thee forth far hence unto the Gentiles.” (Acts xxii. 21.) “If so be that ye have heard” for a dispens- ation it was, a mighty one; to call one, uninfluenced from any other quarter, immediately from above, and to say, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” and to strike him blind with that ineffable light! “if so be that ye have heard,”241 saith he, “of the dispensation of that grace of God which was given me to you-ward.” Ver. 3. “How that by revelation was made known unto me the mystery, as I wrote afore in few words.” Perhaps he had informed them of it by some persons, or had not long before been writing to them.242 Here he is pointing out that the whole is of God, that we have contributed nothing. For what? I ask, was not Paul himself, the wonderful, he that was so versed in the law, he that was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel according to the most perfect manner, was not he saved by grace? With good reason too does he call this a mystery, for a mystery it is, to raise the Gentiles in a moment to a higher rank than the Jews. “As I wrote afore,” saith he, “in few words,” i.e., briefly, Ver. 4. “Whereby, when ye read, ye can perceive.” Amazing! So then he wrote not the whole, nor so much as he should have written. But here the nature of the subject prevented it. Elsewhere, as in the case of the Hebrews (Heb. v. 11.) and the Corinthians, (1 Cor. iii. 2.) the incapacity of the hearers. “Whereby, when ye read, ye can perceive,” saith he, “my understanding in the mystery of Christ,” i.e., how I knew, how I understood either such things as God hath spoken, or else, that Christ sitteth at the right hand of God; and then too the dignity, in that God “hath not dealt so with any 241 [“Gentle appeal, expressed in a hypothetical form and conveying the hope that his words had not been forgotten.”—Ellicott.—G.A.] 242 [“This parenthetical remark of the Apostle refers not to a lost letter but to the section last treated of con- cerning the Gentiles attaining salvation.”—Meyer.—G.A.] 146 Ephesians 2:17-22