sen·tence
n. 1. A grammatical unit that is syntactically independent and has a subject that is expressed or, as in imperative sentences, understood and a predicate that contains at least one finite verb.

A couple of months ago I was teasing a friend about his frequent usage of very l-o-n-g sentences. The particular object of my chastisement was the following 114 word … er, ‘grammatical unit,’ expounding on Ephesians 3.

Since, by our place in Christ by the abounding grace and mercy of God our Father, we have been delivered from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his Son’s marvelous light, being carried with him, as it were, through our baptism into him, through death and into the glorious light of his resurrection, Paul prays that we would be strengthened to comprehend with all the saints the breadth, length, height, and depth of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge so that we may be increasingly filled with the fullness of God’s goodness and grace and righteousness, filled with the knowledge of his will according to the wisdom and understanding of his Spirit.

About a month passed before my friend forwarded along the following quote (with vindicated glee I might add). After penning a sentence of 103 words (or 83 if you count the three multi-hyphenated words as one each …), N.T. Wright interrupts himself:

(The reader may be thankful that this is in English. In German, that entire last phrase [a hyphenated "word" of 13 words in length] might become a single word. As it is, I make no apology for the length of the sentence thereby concluded. All these things need to be held together – a task extremely easy in the first century for someone like Paul, and apparently next to impossible for those whose soteriology never had an Israel-dimension and who don’t want to start thinking about one now.) — N.T. Wright, Justification, p 96.

So the next time someone in the church accuses you of being long winded or verbose, rest assured that you are in good company. Smile and then appeal to Paul’s own wordiness demonstrated in Ephesians 1 — there was a reason he did not chop it up like the NIV does!