It is not easy to account for the sudden switch in the Greek of verse 7 to “But to each of us was given….” Having exhorted the readers to a life of peace and unity (verses 1-3), the writer now shows that the variety and multiplicity of gifts in the church is Christ’s doing, and all such endowments have their part to play in the growth of the whole body. Many translations will show this switch simply by starting a new paragraph, but others will find some transition word. See, for example, Phillips “Naturally there are different gifts….”

Has received translates the Greek passive “was given”; the implied agent is Christ, who is the subject in the following verses. So it may be better to translate “Christ has given each of us a special gift, our own part of his abundant supply.”

Here again the Greek word for “grace” has the concrete sense of special gift (see 3.2, 7, 8). The clause “according to the measure of the gift of Christ” is similar to “according to the gift of the grace of God” in 3.7. For “giving, gift” see 3.7. The Greek noun “measure, standard, degree” is also used in verses 13, 16. The meaning of the verse is that the gift that each Christian has is determined by Christ’s generosity. See New English Bible “his due portion of Christ’s bounty”; Translator’s New Testament “And yet, of his bounty, Christ has given to each one of us a due portion, a special gift” (and see Translational Note, page 499).

There is a real difficulty involved in the rendering of verse 7 in view of the fact that a special gift is likely to be interpreted in a concrete and physical sense. This special gift is for the spirit of the believers, and it is not a physical object which people can grasp and handle. On the other hand, one does not wish to avoid completely the meaning of gift. It may, therefore, be useful to translate the first part of verse 7 as “each one of us has received a special gift for our spirit.”

The difficult part of verse 7 is the expression in proportion to what Christ has given. The expression of proportion is extremely complex in some languages, particularly when one is dealing with an attribute such as generosity and not a fixed proportion between countable objects. In some instances it may be possible to translate in proportion to what Christ has given as “the great size of this gift shows how generous Christ has been” or “how great this gift is tells us how good Christ is in giving.”

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 .