Ephesians 3:14

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

I bow my knees ... Paul had begun to finish this prayer back in Ephesians 3:1, but he interrupted it for the magnificent digression regarding the great mystery in Christ; now he repeated the words, "For this cause," and completed the marvelous prayer.

The Jews often stood to pray (Matthew 6:5; Luke 18:11-13); but kneeling for prayer is often indicated in the New Testament, although it was not unknown at all in the Old Testament. Solomon knelt in the prayer of dedication for the temple (1 Kings 8:54). Stephen at his martyrdom (Acts 7:60), Peter when he raised Dorcas (Acts 9:40), Paul on farewell occasions (Acts 20:36; 21:5), and our Lord himself in Gethsemane (Luke 22:41) knelt in prayer. However, other acceptable attitudes or postures are also indicated, such as "lifting up the hands" (1 Timothy 2:8), "falling on the face" (Luke 5:12), etc.

Unto the Father ... Paul here prayed to God, not as the Father of mankind, generally, but in the spiritual sense of being the spiritual Father of his children in Christ. "In the spiritual, or redemptive sense, God is definitely not the Father of all men."[30] This is an important distinction. It is not the brotherhood of all mankind (in the sense of having the same Creator) that blesses human relationships. It is the brotherhood of man "in Christ" that brings peace and amity. "The brotherhood of man," apart from the qualifier of their being brothers "in Christ Jesus," is a sadistic joke. The Jewish-Arab conflict is a prime example of the brotherhood of man apart from Jesus Christ.

Of whom every family in heaven and on earth ... The English Revised Version (1885) has changed this from the KJV renditions, "the whole family in heaven and on earth," upon textual grounds which many scholars recognize as valid. However, Blaikie, in Pulpit Commentary, dogmatically declared that there are no constraining reasons for the change. "The context requires the sense of `whole family'."[31] He also cited examples of instances in Matthew 2:3; Luke 4:13; Acts 2:36,7:22, and Ephesians 2:21 where the absence of the article (as here) denoted the totality of a thing. As Hendriksen said, the trouble with the "every family" rendition is that there is hardly any way to know what may be meant by it. "How many families? ... are the Jews a family? ... the Gentiles? ... do the angels form a family? ... several families? etc., etc."[32] John Wesley's unique thought on this is quite interesting. Using the KJV rendition, he nevertheless came up with a number of different families, all one, in the sense of being God's children. He wrote:

The whole family of angels in heaven, saints in Paradise, and believers on earth is named (of the Father), being "the children of God," a more honorable title than children of Abraham, and depending on him as the Father of the family.[33]

Wesley's interpretation has the advantage of explaining the passage no matter which way it is translated, and this would seem to commend it as the most probable meaning of it.

[30] William Hendriksen, op. cit., p. 167.

[31] W. G. Blaikie, op. cit., p. 107.

[32] William Hendriksen, op. cit., p. 167.

[33] John Wesley, One Volume New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1972), in loco.