Ephesians 3

Chap. III. Ver. 1—21. The mystery of the conversion of the Gentiles opened and explained.—St. Paul recommends himself to the affections of the Ephesians, by informing, or rather reminding them, that he was now a prisoner, on account of his strong attachment to their cause, as Gentiles, and for the exercise of his ministry among them. This divine mystery, namely, that the Gentiles should be admitted to be fellow heirs, and partake on equal terms of all the blessings of Messiah’s kingdom, had been revealed to him immediately by Jesus Christ himself; from whom he had received a special commission to publish it to the heathen world, and in the publication of which he was supported and succeeded by “the effectual working” of God’s Holy Spirit. In the sequel of this chapter the apostle speaks, 1. Of himself, and of the high privilege bestowed upon him, in constituting him the apostle of the Gentiles; and, 2. Of the glory of the dispensation committed to his hands. 1. St. Paul speaks of himself as less than the least of all saints; to express which idea, he coins a word of peculiar modesty, in which there is no doubt but he refers, as in other cases when speaking of himself, to his former persecution of the saints, when he was, as he calls himself, “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and injurious.” ((1 Timothy 1:13).) On this circumstance we may remark, that good men, after their conversion, ought never to forget what they were before.

“How different (says the pious Dr. Watts) is our common behaviour from that of holy Paul! When we think of self, we are ready to raise our thoughts beyond all measure, and aggrandize our ideas to a vast and shameful degree, as though we stood as fair, and as large, and as high in the eyes of our fellow-worms, as we do in our own eyes. Vain imaginations! wretched self-flattery—and foolish pride! We take the least