Chapter 3

With this in mind, I fall on my knees; I, Paul, of whom Jesus Christ has made a prisoner for the love of you Gentiles.

You will have been told how God planned to give me a special grace for preaching to you;

how a revelation taught me the secret I have been setting out briefly here;

briefly, yet so as to let you see how well I have mastered this secret of Christ’s.

It was never made known to any human being in past ages, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets, and it is this:

that through the gospel preaching the Gentiles are to win the same inheritance, to be made part of the same body, to share the same divine promise, in Christ Jesus.

With what grace God gives me (and he gives it in all the effectiveness of his power), I am a minister of that gospel;

on me, least as I am of all the saints, he has bestowed this privilege, of making known to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ,

of publishing to the world the plan of this mystery, kept hidden from the beginning of time in the all-creating mind of God.

The principalities and powers of heaven are to see, now, made manifest in the Church, the subtlety of God’s wisdom;

such is his eternal purpose, centred in Christ Jesus our Lord,

who gives us all our confidence, bids us come forward, emboldened by our faith in him.

Let there be no discouragement, then, over the affliction I undergo on your behalf; it is an honour done to you.

With this in mind, then, I fall on my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

that Father from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth takes its title.

May he, out of the rich treasury of his glory, strengthen you through his Spirit with a power that reaches your innermost being.

May Christ find a dwelling-place, through faith, in your hearts; may your lives be rooted in love, founded on love.

May you and all the saints be enabled to measure, in all its breadth and length and height and depth,

the love of Christ, to know what passes knowledge. May you be filled with all the completion God has to give.

He whose power is at work in us is powerful enough, and more than powerful enough, to carry out his purpose beyond all our hopes and dreams;

may he be glorified in the Church, and in Christ Jesus, to the last generation of eternity. Amen.