Charles Ellicott Commentary Ephesians 6:10

"Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might." — Ephesians 6:10 (ASV)

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord.—The address “my brethren” appears to be an interpolation . Frequent as it is from St. Paul, it is not found either in this or in the Colossian Epistle.

Be strong.—Properly, be strengthened in the inner man; go on from strength to strength (2 Timothy 2:1). So in Philippians 4:13 we have the cognate expression, Christ that strengtheneth me, in whom I can do all things.

The conception is nearly that of Ephesians 3:16; except that there the idea is rather of passive strength and firmness, here of active power to fight in the power of God’s might, working in us, because it works in our Master. (Compare to Ephesians 1:19-20.) It differs also from that which follows. “Christ in us” is here our life and indwelling strength; in the next verses the likeness of Christ, as manifested in various graces, is the armour “put on” for the battle.

On verses 10-17

In Ephesians 6:10-17. St. Paul sums up his practical exhortation in that magnificent description which has ever since captured Christian imagination, both in metaphor and in allegory. He paints the Christian life as a battle against spiritual powers of evil, waged in the strength of the Lord, and in the panoply of God.

We trace the germ of this great passage first in St. Paul’s earliest Epistle (1 Thessalonians 5:8–9), and then in the later Epistle to the Romans (Romans 13:12). In both these cases the image is of soldiers starting from sleep at daybreak to arm for the fight in the morning light. But it is characteristic of the more elaborate and thoughtful style of this Epistle, and of the circumstances under which it was written (in the watchful presence of the full-armed Roman “soldiers that kept” St. Paul), that the image there briefly touched is here worked out in full beauty of detail.