Note 549 — ΠΡΟΣ ΚΟΛΑΣΣΑΕΙΣ. (continued 5)

The Apostle in this passage (Ephes. iv. 13) is evidently contemplating the collective body, and not the individual believers. He writes οἱ πάντες, not πάντες, and ἄνδρα τέλειον, not ἄνδρας τελέιους. As he has said before ἑνὶ ἑκάστῳ ἡμῶν ἐδόθη [ἡ] χάρις κατὰ τὸ μέτρον τῆς δωρεᾶς τοῦ Χριστοῦ, so now he describes the result of these various partial graces bestowed on individuals to be the unity and mature growth of the whole, ‘the building up of the body’, μεχρὶ καταντήσωμεν οἱ πάντες εἰς τὴν ἑνότητα ... εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον, εἰς μέτρον ἡλικίας τοῦ πληρώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ. This corporate being must grow up into the one colossal Man, the standard of whose spiritual and moral stature is nothing less than the pleroma of Christ Himself.