dhere only; διὰ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ, τὴν 3 ἄφεσιν τῶν " παραπτωµάτων, κατὰ τὸ
see Col. i. 14.
ε ch. il. 7, ὃ iii. 8, 16; Phil. iv. 19; Col. ii. 2. 4 Cor. iv. 15, ix. 8; 1 Thess. iii. 12.
1 ro πλοντος
etc., Or., Cyr., Bas., Chrys., Euthal., etc.
fattr., Rom. iv. 17; Col. i. 23; ch. ii. 4, 1ο al. h=ver. 17; Col. i. 9, 28. ἢ
" πλοῦτος | τῆς χάριτος 2 αὐτοῦ, 8. ἵ ἧς ὃ 5 ἐπερίσσευσεν εἰς ἡμᾶς "ἐν
Ε ἴταπ.ν
*ABD*EFGP 31, 47, 59,67; το πληθος 17; τον πλοντον N*D®KL,
2 For χαριτος, χρηστοτητος A τορ, Copt.; text BDG, f, ete.
5 For ης, quae ἃ, e, f, g, Ambrst.
of the goodness of God which bestows favour on those who have no claim or merit in themselves (Rom. iii. 24, v. 17, 20; 1 Cor. xv. 10; Gal. i. 15, etc., etc.), or of that free favour of God as a power which renews men and sustains them in the Christian life, aiding their efforts, keeping them from falling, securing their progress in holiness (2 Cor. iv. 15; vi. 1; 2 Thess. i. 12, etc.). The freeness of this Divine favour in the form of grace, the unmerited nature of the Divine goodness, is what Paul most frequently magnifies with praise and wonder. Here it is the mighty measure of the largesse, the grace in its quality of riches, that is introduced. This magnificent conception of the wealth of the grace that is bestowed on us by God and that which is in Christ for us, is a peculiarly Pauline idea. It meets us, indeed, elsewhere (cf. the plenteous redemption of the Psalmist, Ps, cxxx. 7; the multitude of the Divine mercies, Ps. lxix. 13, 16, and loving kindnesses, Ps. Ixiii. Τ᾽ the fulness of Christ, John i. 16; Col. i. το, etc.) ; but nowhere 8ο frequently or with such in- sistence as with Paul. Cf. the riches of God’s goodness (Rom. ii. 4), His glory (Rom. ix. 23), His wisdom (Rom. xi. 33), His mercy (Eph. ii. 4), the glory of His inheritance (Eph. i. 18), the glory of the mystery (Col. 1. 27); also the exceeding riches of His grace (Eph. ii. 7), his riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Phil. iv. 19), the riches of the pre-incarnate Christ (2 Cor. viii. 9), the riches of Christ the Lord (Rom. x. 12), the unsearchable riches of Christ (Eph. iii. 8). That our redemption cost so great a price, the blood of Christ, is the supreme evidence of the riches of the Divine grace. And the measure of what God does for us is nothing less than the limitless wealth of His loving favour.
Ver. 8, ἧς ἐπερίσσευσεν εἰς ἡμᾶς: which he made to abound towards us. Both in profane and Biblical Greek περισσεύειν is usually intrans. It is so used in the vast majority of cases in the Pauline Epistles (Rom. v. 15; 1 Cor. xiv. 11η. 2 Cor. ἃ 5, ας. 12%
Phil. i. 26, etc.). In later Greek, how- ever, it has also, though not frequently, the trans. sense, and there are some instances of this also in the NT (Luke xv. 17, according to the better reacing; 2 Cor. iv. 15, ix. 8; 1 Thess. iii. = Here, therefore, two interpretations are possible, viz., ‘‘ wherewith he abounded” (as in Syr., Vulg., Arm., AV, RV πιατρ., etc.), or ‘which he made to abound” (as in Goth., Eth., RV, etc.). The latter sense, that of furnishing richly so that there is not only enough but much more, is on the whole in better harmony with the context. It is also supported by grammar, inasmuch as it is un whether the NT presents any instance of attraction where the genitive of the rela- tive represents the dative. Such attrac- tion is possible in classical Greek (cf. G. Kriiger, Untersuch., p. 274; Jelf, Gram., 822; Winer-Moult., Gram., p. 204); but the instances referred to in the NT (Rom. iv. 7; 1 Tim. iv. 6) may admit of another explanation. It is also possible, indeed, to take the ἧς, not as a case of attraction, but as under the immediate regimen ot ἐπερίσσενσεν. For there are at least some instances of περισσεύειν τινος in the sense of abounding im something; cf. Wa... παντὸς χαρίσματος περισ- σεύῃς in Ignat., Pol., 2, and περισσεύου- ow ἄρτων in Luke xv. 17 (the reading of the TR with QDQR, etc.; περισσεύονται, however, being accepted by TrWHRV with BAP, etc.). The transitive sense, however, is further favoured by the force of the following yvwploas, as Winer points out. The els ἡμᾶς, expressing the objects to whom the “abounding” is directed, is like the εἰς τοὺς πολλούς of Rom. v. 15, the εἰς ἡμᾶς of 2 Cor. i. 5, the εἰς ὑμᾶς of 2 Cor. ix. 8. In the last-named passage, indeed, περ'σσεύειν occurs both in the sense of mc king to abound and in that of abounding, and in both cases, though with different shades of meaning, it is followed by els.—év π. σοφίᾳ καὶ φρονήσει: in all wisdom prudence. The clause expresses the par- ticular forms in which God made His