Verse 16
16. Riches of his glory An affluence too abounding for any one race alone. Strengthened with might For the immense attainments of Ephesians 3:18-19. In Rather, into; implying the inpouring of the might of the divine Father. This favours Meyer’s thought, that Paul’s prayer for their might is antithetic to their faintness, in Ephesians 3:13. Their faintness did, indeed, (as Eadie objects,) take occasion from the mere “personal wrongs” of St. Paul; nevertheless it was a spiritual weakness unmanning their whole Christian might. He might well pray, therefore, for the whole wonderful energizing expressed in the following verses; for spiritual power is in sum total what he asks.
Inner man The spirit, in antithesis to the body, the outer man. And also, perhaps, the spirit, as the ethical Ego, in which all spiritual operations are centered, in distinction from the anima, or soul, in which the animal and secular intellectualities reside. So Romans 7:22: “I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” Yet the Holy Spirit in the inner man sheds his purifying power through body and soul as well as spirit. Note on Matthew 5:8, and 1 Thessalonians 5:23.
The phrase inner man is found in a similar sense in Plato; but there is no reason for supposing it borrowed by Paul directly from Plato. It was probably current among thinkers in Paul’s day, as such terms become in periods when men deeply reflect.
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