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"By the will of God" (1: 1);
"By Jesus Christ" (1: 5; 3: 9);
"Through His blood" (1: 7);
"Through faith" (2: 8);
"By the cross" (2: 16);
"Through Him" (2: 18);
"By the gospel" (3: 6);
"By the church" (3: 10);
"By the faith" (3: 12);
"By His Spirit" (3: 16);
"By faith" (3: 17);
"Through all" (4: 6);
"By that" (4: 16);
"With all prayer" (6: 18).
The present series is not intended to take the place of exposition, but rather to provide
an opportunity of noting and explaining much that otherwise has to be taken for granted.
We shall therefore limit each article to the consideration of one particular point.
#6.
Thelematos, "Will" (Eph. 1: 1).
pp. 36, 37
Paul, the Apostle of Christ Jesus, became so "through" the instrumentality of the
"will of God". In translation, to give smooth reading, the English demands the insertion
of the article "the", but in passing we note that in the original the article is omitted and
read dia thelematos Theou. Until one meets us in the course of this series, we defer
comment on the article, and devote our attention to the word translated "will". In the
nominative case this word is written thelema, but in the genitive it changes to thelematos.
Its derivation is from the verb thelo, to will or to wish, and the ending ma, indicates that
the verb has been changed to a "thing". For example, phileo is the verb "I love",
"a kiss" is philema "a love things".
Thelema, "will", occurs seven times in Ephesians: "By the will of God" (1: 1); "The
good pleasure of His will" (1: 5); "The mystery of His will" (1: 9); "The counsel of His
Own will" (1: 11); "Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind" (2: 3); "What the
will of the Lord is" (5: 17); "doing the will of God from the heart" (6: 6). It will be
observed that one of these occurrences (2: 3) deals with man, and is translated in the A.V.
"desires".
"Thelema", says Cremer, is "an Hellenistic word foreign to profane Greek. It stands
for the Hebrew words chaphets (Prov. 21: 1); and ratson (Psa. 40: 8), and therefore does
not denote will as demand but as an expression of inclination or pleasure toward that
which is liked, that which pleases and creates joy. When it denotes God's will, it
signifies His gracious disposition toward something, Mal. 1: 10; Jer. 9: 24; Isa. 62: 4;
Psa. 30: 7; and it is also used to designate what God does of His own good pleasure,
Psa. 103: 7 . . . . . so that it does not signify a command, but the expression of His good