The verse begins a sentence which goes to the end of verse 7. It will be well to represent the Greek text formally: see Handbook translation|fig:Table_EPH3-2.jpg.

Verse 2 is in the form of a conditional statement: “if, indeed, you heard.” As Barth and others say, there may be a touch of irony here: “Surely you have heard…?” (see Good News Translation, New English Bible, and others). A good way to portray the tone in English is “I assume you have heard” (compare Barclay “I am sure that I can assume that you have heard,” and see the same construction in 4.21 and Col 1.23). Another possible rendering would be “you surely must have heard.”

The text continues: “(you have heard) of the administration of the grace of God which was given me for you.” This is a complex phrase and is variously understood.

“Administration” translates the Greek noun which appears also in 1.10. This abstract noun represents the task or the responsibility of a manager, an administrator (see Luke 16.2-4). Colossians 1.25 has a close parallel: “according to the administration of God which was given me for you” (Good News Translation God, who gave me this task to perform for your good). But here the “administration” is qualified by the genitive phrase “of the grace of God.” This could mean, as Barth translates it, “I was given God’s grace in order to administer it to you” (similarly Caragounis). But it would seem that here “grace” does not refer primarily and exclusively to God’s attitude of complete love, unmerited favor, but to the expression of that love in a concrete way, a gift, a favor, which in the context is the writer’s commission to proclaim the gospel to the Gentiles. So Barth: the grace is not God’s personal favor toward him, but the ministry he was given (and he alludes to Rom 1.5 where “grace” and “apostleship” are virtually synonymous, or better, where the latter defines concretely the former). Good News Translation has taken “grace” as God’s attitude and as the expression of it in the “administration” he has given the writer: God in his grace has given me this work to do.

This work is Paul’s task of proclaiming the gospel to the Gentiles.

If grace refers to the particular task of being an apostle, then one may translate verse 2 as “you must have heard that God has given to me the task of being an Apostle for your sake” or “… to help you.” If on the other hand grace is to be understood as an expression of God’s special goodness to Paul, one may translate “You surely must have heard how God was so kind as to give to me this work to do on your behalf” or “… in order to help you.”

The relative clause “which was given me” agrees formally in Greek (genitive case) with the preceding “the grace of God,” but it modifies the noun phrase “the administration of the grace of God.” Beare points out that two phrases are combined here: “the grace that was given me” (see Gal 2.9) and “the administration that was given me” (see Col 1.25). He sees the two as being virtually equivalent, with “grace” having the concrete sense of what God has bestowed, that is, the writer’s knowledge of the secret, knowledge given by revelation (verse 3).

The final “for you” means “for your good/benefit” and goes with all that precedes.

So the verse can be rendered: “Surely you have heard of the task of administering God’s gift that he has given me to perform for your good”; or, “Surely you have heard that God, because of his grace, has given me the task/responsibility of administering, for your benefit, the gift that he has given me.”

The interpretation that translators choose for this verse may depend somewhat on how they are able to translate “administration,” since it may be impossible to speak of “administering God’s gracious gift.” Following the interpretation of Good News Translation, translators could use sentences such as “performing the work God gave as a gift” or “accomplishing the task God gave in his love.”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert C. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1982. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .