Recently I was touched by a simple fact regarding the Greek word anakephalaioō (Strong’s #346). As Vincent notes in his Word Studies in the New Testament, this word, which means “to sum up (again), to repeat summarily and so to condense into a summary” (Thayer’s), is only used twice in the New Testament.

And both uses of it are quite significant.

One place it is found is at the beginning of Ephesians. There Paul tells us that God has made known to us,

…the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He set forth in Himself, with a view to the administration of the fullness of the times: to gather together again all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in Him.
— Ephesians 1:10

Ephesians is a book of such high revelations; more than any other book of the Bible, it shows us most clearly what was God’s purpose, His will, in creating all things (Rev. 4:11); it is the only book that uses the phrase “the purpose of the ages,” or as some translations have it, God’s “eternal purpose” (Eph. 3:11). In brief, Ephesians shows us that His purpose is to head up all things in Christ, through the church (Eph. 3:10); or we may say, as in the verse above, “to gather together again all things in Christ.”

How different that will be from the world’s present situation! Today this world is such a mess, with so much corruption, violence, and suffering, because it is not yet properly headed up in Christ. But, hopefully very soon, He will return, and then all things will be restored to their proper order in His kingdom.

But, thank the Lord, as the believers in Christ, we don’t have to wait for that time to be brought into a proper relationship with Christ ourselves, and to experience His heading up.

That brings us to the other place where this Greek word is used in the New Testament, namely, in the section of Romans where Paul is sharing with the saints regarding how to live in the practical church life. He tells them,

For this:
You shall not commit adultery,
You shall not murder,
You shall not steal,
You shall not covet,
and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up again in this word, namely,

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

— Romans 13:9; cf. Exodus 20:13-17, Deuteronomy 5:17-21

Paul is saying here that whatever commandments of God there may be, they are “summed up again,” or “gathered together again,” when we love our neighbor as ourself. Thus, we can experience being “gathered together again” even today in Christ, so that we have a foretaste of His heading up of all things in the church, very practically, by loving our neighbor as ourself.

And because Paul shares this when he is speaking of the practical church life, we may say that it is especially when we love the brothers and sisters in the church as ourself and care for them in Christ that we have this experience.

That is to look at what Paul says in Romans in the light of what he says in Ephesians, but we may also look at it the other direction, from his sharing in Romans to that in Ephesians. That is, when we care for the saints even in a small way, such as in the practical serving or by visiting them, we should have a sense that we are touching something that is on God’s heart, because by loving the saints in this way we are being connected to “the purpose of the ages.”

On the one hand, we need the high revelation in Ephesians to see what God’s ultimate purpose is; but on the other, we also need the apostle’s practical word of exhortation in Romans, so we can connect our lives to that purpose even today, in a very practical way, through our love of the brothers and sisters and caring for them in the church life.

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—  19 August 2026 —