This marks the period during which the summing up of all things is to be accomplished - the period of the dispensation of grace.

I. THE TERM SUGGESTS THE IDEA OF A PLAN OR SYSTEM, NOT CONSISTING OF MERE FRAGMENTARY AND UNRELATED PARTS, BUT A THOROUGHLY COMPACT AND ORGANIZED SYSTEM, IN WHICH THE INDIVIDUAL PARTS HAVE THEIR DUE PLACES IN THE WORKING OUT OF A DESTINED RESULT. Just as in creation there is a unity of plan with certain typical ideas and regulative numbers lying at its basis, so there is in God's dispensation a certain succession of times and seasons working out the purposes of his will. "God is the Steward of all time." The God who has made of one blood all nations of men "hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation" (Acts 17:26). Christianity marks a new era in history, dividing it into two unequal parts, the appearance of Christ marking the turning-point between them.

II. THIS DISPENSATION DATES FROM THE FULLNESS OF TIMES, THAT IS, FROM THE PERIOD WHEN ALL THE TIMES DESTINED TO PRECEDE IT HAD RUN OUT. The pre-Christian ages have seen their end in Christ's advent, which' becomes thenceforth "the fullness of times." It was a chronological as well as a moral fullness. The epoch in question is the best time in the Divine calendar; for it is God's time, and he is the Lord of all time. The age that saw the advent of the Savior was ripe for the event. It was "the time appointed by the Father" (Galatians 4:2). The Roman power had opened highways for the gospel in every land by its immense conquests and its large toleration, while Greece gave the world the richest of languages to become the vehicle for New Testament inspiration. Meanwhile religion had outlived itself, and skepticism mocked at the decaying superstitions of the people. "The world by wisdom knew not God." All Gentile experiments in living had been tried, but with the unvarying result of disappointment. Meanwhile there was at the heart of heathenism a mysterious longing for some change in the world's destinies, and the eyes of men turned instinctively to the East. Whether this tendency sprang up among the dispersion of the Jews over the East and the West, or from some instinctive longing, it was God's will that the Gentiles should, with a conscious need of redemption, feel after him for themselves, "if haply they might find him" (Acts 17:27). Among the Jews, likewise, there was a significant "waiting for the consolation of Israel;" idolatry had totally disappeared; new and more liberal ideas prevailed, in spite of the bigotry of the sects; and many hearts were prepared to welcome the" Desire of all nations." "The full age had come," when the heir would enter on his inheritance. Thus the advent was in every sense "the fullness of times." It was "the due time" when Christ died for the ungodly. The world had waited long for it. The purpose of God had only to receive its fulfillment by the coming of Christ. Equally so still is there a longing in the heart of men for a Savior. Men may try experiments in life; they may taste of its pleasures; they may try to extract from it all the wisdom the world can give; but there is still a void which nothing can fill till he comes whose right it is to possess and subdue and save the soul for himself. - T.C.

Heaven and earth are to be restored to each other as well as to Him. The knowledge of God and the sanctity which have come to us in this world of conflict and sin are to flow into the great stream of pure angelic life; and the joy, the strength, the wisdom, and the security, alike of angels and of men, will be indefinitely augmented. As yet, we and they are like countries so remote or so estranged from each other that there has been no exchange of material or intellectual treasures. What the poverty of England would be if we had been always isolated from the rest of the human race we can hardly tell. It is by the free intercourse of trade, and the still freer intercourse of literature, that nations become rich and wise. Sunnier skies and more luxuriant soils give us more than half our material wealth, and we send in exchange the products of our mines and the works of our industry and skill. From sages who speculated on the universe and human life in the very morning of civilization, from poets whose genius was developed in the ancient commonwealths of Greece, our intellectual energy has received its most vigorous inspiration; and our religious faith is refreshed by streams which had their springs in the life of ancient Jewish saints and prophets, and of Christian apostles who lived eighteen centuries ago. What we hope for in the endless future is a still more complete participation in whatever knowledge and love of God, whatever righteousness, whatever joy, may exist in any province of the created universe. Race is no longer to be isolated from race, or world from world. A power, a wisdom, a holiness, a rapture, of which a solitary, soul, a solitary world, would be incapable, are to be ours through the gathering together of all things in Christ. We, for our part, shall contribute to the fulness of the universal life. To the principalities of heaven we shall be able to speak of God's infinite mercy to a race which had revolted against His throne; of the kinship between the eternal Son of God and ourselves; of the mystery of His death and the power of His resurrection; of the consolation which came to us in sorrows which the happy angels never knew; of the tenderness of the Divine pity which was shown to us in pain and weariness and disappointment; of the strength of the Divine support which made inconstancy resolute in well doing, and changed weakness and fear into victorious heroism. And they will tell us of the ancient days when no sin had cast its shadow on the universe, and of all that they have learnt in the millenniums of blessedness and purity during which they have seen the face of God. The sanctity which is the fruit of penitence will have its own pathetic loveliness for righteous races that have never sinned; and we shall be thrilled with a new rapture by the vision of a perfect glory which has never suffered even temporary eclipse. Their joy in their own security will be heightened by their generous delight in our rescue from sin and eternal death, and our gratitude for our deliverance will deepen in intensity as we discover that our honour and blessedness are not inferior to theirs who have never broken the eternal law of righteousness. Our final glory will consist, not in the restoration of the solitary soul to solitary communion with God, but in the fellowship of all the blessed with the blessedness of the universe as well as with the blessedness of God.

(R. W. Dale, LL. D.)

I. GOD HAS SET SEASONS IN WHICH HE WILL ACCOMPLISH ALL HIS WILL (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 17). As He brings things natural, spring, summer, autumn, winter, everything in season, so all the works He will do about His children, whether it be the punishing of wickedness for their sake, the delivering of His children from evil, the giving them benefits, He will bring them all forth in the fit appointed seasons.

1. To design times is His prerogative: as a master of a fatally has the right to fix the particular time at which this or that shall be done.

2. He only knows the fittest seasons for the accomplishment of His plans.(1) Let this reprove our weakness in thinking God sometimes delays too long.(2) Let us learn to wait on God. We would not in winter have midsummer weather, for it would not be seasonable; so in the winter of any trial with which we are visited we should not wish the sunshine of this or that blessing before God sees it may be seasonably bestowed, remembering that the man who believes does not make undue haste.

II. GOD, BY OPENING THE GOSPEL, BRINGS US HIS CHRIST.

1. By nature we are severed(1) from God: prodigal sons;(2) from Christ, like sheep in the valleys of death, running after the wolf, and leaving the Shepherd of our souls;(3) from one another, a man being by nature a wolf to his brother-man, his feet swift to shed blood.

2. The order in which we are gathered.(1) The opening of the gospel gathers us into one faith.(2) By faith, as a spiritual sinew or nerve, it unites us to Christ, making us one person with Him, as in law man and wife are one.(3) It unites us with God, inasmuch as we are one with His Son.(4) By being gathered to Christ, we are gathered to the whole Body of Christ, to all who exist under Him. What a wonderful power of union is there in the gospel!

III. ALL WHO SHALL BE GATHERED TO CHRIST ARE BROUGHT TO HIM BY THE GOSPEL. Only one gospel, and that gospel is for all.

II. Observe — WHO IT IS IN WHOM WE ARE GATHERED. In Christ, who —

1. Has abolished the enmity between God and us, and so removed that which divided us; and —

2. He calls us, and effectually draws us home in His time.(1) Let us then, to preserve our union, walk with Christ, and keep by Him. Even as it is in drawing a circle with compass and lines from the circumference to the centre, so it is with us: the nearer they come to the centre, the more they unite, till they come to the same point; the further they go from the centre in which they are united, the more they run out one from the other. So when we keep to Christ, the nearer we come to Him, the more we unite; but when we run forth into our own lusts and private faction, then we are disjoined from the other.(2) Since in Christ, our Head, we are joined as members of one and the same body, we mug act as members. The members of one and the same body have no mutual jealousies; they communicate with each other; the mouth takes meat, the stomach digests, the liver makes blood, the eye sees, the hand handles; they wilt not revenge themselves one against another, but mutually bear each others' burdens, so that their affection each to other is not diminished. God, who is love itself, teaches us these things.

(Paul Bayne.)

Jesus Christ is the fulness of

(1)knowledge;

(2)time;

(3)law;

(4)nature;

(5)grace;

(6)man;

(7)God.

(A. F. Muir, M. A.)

This is a disclosure of the magnificent and sublime design contemplated by God through means of the gospel. It is the "mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself." Our own individual salvation constitutes but a fragment of a vast and glorious scheme, which in due course shall be fully achieved. The influence of that atonement to which we owe our redemption is here seen extending itself far and wide in the universe of God, and forming the grand harmonizing and uniting bond among all the objects, however various, of His goodness, mercy, and love. Nay, we are perhaps here taught that its power is to be exerted and displayed in the final subjugation of all things without exception, including the reduction of sin and evil to their own place, as well as the ingathering of all that is good — under the universal sovereignty of God.

I. There is A GENERAL PLAN OR SCHEME, PROMOTED BY THE GOSPEL, and here called "the dispensation" or economy "of the fulness of times." It is, with reference to a plan, or dispensation, or economy, which God has in view, that He has made known to us the mystery of redemption. Every intelligent householder has some plan, according to which he directs all his energies and Jays out all his arrangements. His house, his farm, his estate, are managed and controlled for some definite object, and all his operations are conformed to some view or idea which he has formed for his own guidance. Different seasons of the year and various times come round upon him, but he keeps intelligently and firmly to his ruling purpose, and is not satisfied until the result of his plan has been fully realized. So God Himself, in the government of His whole household — the universal Father and the Lord of all — is represented as having a certain plan or economy, in accordance with which He is pleased to work through successive times, until the result He contemplates be finally attained.

II. WHAT, THEN, IS THIS GRAND RESULT CONTEMPLATED BY THE DISPENSATION OF THE FULNESS OF TIMES? It is "to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth even in Him." But what are we to understand by this? What is the import of "to gather together in one"? And what maybe the full scope of "all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth"? The word rendered "to gather together in one" occurs once again in Romans 13:9, where it is rendered "briefly comprehended." "If there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." There its import is plain; for all the commandments are summed up, "briefly comprehended," "reduced to a head," "gathered together in one" in those two great commandments, love to God and love to man, of the last of which the apostle was giving instances. These two commandments are heads on which all the rest depend, from which they hang, in which they are summed up. This idea of summation, representation, headship, seems to belong essentially to the import of the word, and must not be lost sight of in the passage before us, where we read of the gathering up in one of all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. But as it is plain that "all things" do not naturally belong to Christ, but on account of sin the things on earth at least are in a state of alienation, separation, revulsion, we must here necessarily suppose that the word implies the idea of "bringing back" from that state and gathering up into the opposite state of union, harmony, love.

1. The angels may be included in this gathering together in one. Although the unfallen angels do not stand in need of redemption from sin or misery, yet they need to be preserved from the risk of falling, and may well be supposed to owe their security and infallibility in some way to Christ.

2. There is no question concerning the including, or gathering up in one, all the redeemed of mankind. Separated though they may have been in life — according to the times in which they have existed, the countries they have dwelt in, the names and outward distinctions they have borne — their union to Christ, and to each other, has been real. It will, at length, become visible.

3. But it seems intended in this passage, as it is in keeping with the representations of Scripture elsewhere, that the material creation is to share in the glorious ingathering of "all things in Christ."

III. THIS GATHERING UP OF "ALL THINGS" IS "IS CHRIST," EVEN "IN HIM."

1. Consider the wondrous person of Christ as the God-man, joining mysteriously the Creator and the creation — the Maker and His work in one — by an indissoluble and eternal union.

2. But consider, secondly, that Christ, thus completely fitted to represent the creation of God, by the assumption of the human nature, has been actually constituted head of all things, with all-sufficient power to accomplish the whole plan of God.

(W. Alves, M. A.)

He will yet gather together again, in one, all things in Christ, filling them from His own fulness laid up in Him; gladdening them with His own joy; quickening them with His own life; beautifying them with His own glory; and sustaining them with His own power and resources. Great indeed must be our Lord, in whom and through whom such purposes are to be fulfilled! And divinely inspired must be the record in which they are revealed! Towards the fulfilment and manifestation in us of that purpose, all God's past dispensations of grace have tended. Note their order.

1. By the Holy Ghost given us and through the gospel, He gathers His people into one faith and one baptism.

2. By faith, as by a spiritual nerve or sinew, He unites us with Christ, making us to become one flesh with Him, as it is written (Ephesians 5:29, "No man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth it and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church").

3. He doth so unite us with Christ as to make us sons-in-law and daughters-in-law; nay, He makes us so much nearer to Himself, by how much God and Christ are more nearly united, than any natural father and son can be. As it is written: "I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one."

4. By our being thus gathered together in Christ, we are gathered into the whole body of Christ, and to all that exists under Him, and His angels become our "ministering spirits"; nay, more, we are gathered to all, who in God's predestination belong to Christ, and all things are ours.Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and goodness of our God! There is a climax in our text.

1. His grace in creating us, as Adam in innocency and angels before they fell.

2. His upholding grace, in preventing the fall of elect angels; and His long-suffering grace towards fallen sinners.

3. But beyond all, was that manifestation of the exceeding riches and glory of His redeeming grace, in the gift of His Son, and His revealed purpose to regather us again to Himself in Him, the purchase of His blood, and the partakers of His Divine nature. Creating grace has been surpassed by preventing grace; and preventing grace again by restoring and adopting grace; and thus God has made known unto us the mystery of His will, and "His thoughts which are to usward."

(M. Rainsford, B. A.)

The mediation of Christ is represented in Scripture as bringing the whole creation into union with the Church or people of God. In the dispensation of the fulness of times it is said that God would "gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in Him." Again, "it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell; and (having made peace through the blood of His cross) by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether things in earth, or things in heaven." The language here used supposes that the introduction of sin has effected a disunion between men and the other parts of God's creation. It is natural to suppose it should be so. If a province of a great empire rise up in rebellion against the lawful government, all communication between the inhabitants of such a province and the faithful adherents to order and obedience must be at an end. A line of separation would be immediately drawn by the sovereign, and all intercourse between the one and the other prohibited. Nor would it less accord with the inclination than with the duty of all the friends of righteousness, to withdraw their connection from those who were in rebellion against the supreme authority and the general good. It must have been thus with regard to the holy angels, on man's apostasy. Those who at the creation of our world had sung together, and even shouted for joy, would now retire in disgust and holy indignation. But, through the mediation of Christ, a reunion is effected. By the blood of the cross we have peace with God; and being reconciled to Him, are united to all who love Him throughout the whole extent of creation. If Paul could address the Corinthians, concerning one of their excluded members, who had been brought to repentance, "To whom ye forgive anything, I also"; much more would the friends of righteousness say, in their addresses to the Great Supreme, concerning an excluded member from the moral system, "To whom thou forgivest anything, we also!" Hence angels acknowledge Christians as brethren, and become ministering spirits to them while inhabitants of the present world.

(A. Fuller.)

Ephesians, PaulEphesusAdministration, Bring, Cherished, Christ, Collect, Complete, Creation, Dispensation, Fulfillment, Fullness, Fulness, Gather, Government, Heaven, Heavens, Mind, Ordering, Plan, Purpose, Reached, Regard, Restoring, Ripe, Suitable, Sum, Summing, Unite, View, Yes1. After Paul's salutation,
3. and thanksgiving for the Ephesians,
4. he treats of our election,
6. and adoption by grace;
11. which is the true and proper fountain of man's salvation.
13. And because the height of this mystery cannot be easily attained unto,
16. he prays that they may come to the full knowledge and possession thereof in Christ.

Ephesians 1:10

     2212   Christ, head of church
     4028   world, redeemed
     4287   universe
     4903   time
     5157   head
     5396   lordship, of Christ
     5598   victory, over spiritual forces

Ephesians 1:3-11

     9122   eternity, and God

Ephesians 1:3-14

     1513   Trinity, mission of
     5110   Paul, teaching of
     6639   election, to salvation
     6708   predestination
     6756   union with Christ, significance
     8412   decisions

Ephesians 1:4-11

     6745   sanctification, nature and basis

Ephesians 1:4-13

     7125   elect, the

Ephesians 1:5-10

     6512   salvation, necessity and basis

Ephesians 1:7-10

     6717   reconciliation, world to God

Ephesians 1:9-10

     1444   revelation, NT
     5441   philosophy
     6694   mystery

Ephesians 1:9-11

     1175   God, will of
     4945   history

Ephesians 1:9-12

     1115   God, purpose of
     1355   providence

Ephesians 1:10-12

     7027   church, purpose

The True Christian Life
TEXT: "My beloved is mine, and I am his."--Sol. Song 2:16. "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine."--Sol. Song 6:3. "I am my beloved's and his desire is toward me."--Sol. Song 7:10. These three texts should be read together, and the significant change found in each text as the thought unfolds should be studied carefully. They remind one of three mountain peaks one rising higher than the other until the third is lifted into the very heavens. Indeed, if one should live in the spirit of this …
J. Wilbur Chapman—And Judas Iscariot

Saints and Faithful
'The saints which are at Ephesus and the faithful in Christ Jesus.'--Eph. i. 1. That is Paul's way of describing a church. There were plenty of very imperfect Christians in the community at Ephesus and in the other Asiatic churches to which this letter went. As we know, there were heretics amongst them, and many others to whom the designation of 'holy' seemed inapplicable. But Paul classes them all under one category, and describes the whole body of believing people by these two words, which must …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

The Earnest and the Inheritance
'The earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession.'--Eph. i. 14. I have dealt with a portion of this verse in conjunction with the fragment of another in this chapter. I tried to show you how much the idea of the mutual possession of God by the believing soul, and of the believing soul by God, was present to the Apostle's thoughts in this context. These two ideas are brought into close juxtaposition in the verse before us, for, as you will see if you use the Revised …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

The Hope of the Calling
'That ye may know what is the hope of His calling.'--Eph. i. 18. A man's prayers for others are a very fair thermometer of his own religious condition. What he asks for them will largely indicate what he thinks best for himself; and how he asks it will show the firmness of his own faith and the fervour of his own feeling. There is nothing colder than the intercession of a cold Christian; and, on the other hand, in no part of the fervid Apostle Paul's writings do his words come more winged and fast, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

God's Inheritance in the Saints
'That ye may know what is the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.'--Eph. i. 18. The misery of Hope is that it so often owes its materials to the strength of our desires or to the activity of our imagination. But when mere wishes or fancies spin the thread, Hope cannot weave a lasting fabric. And so one of the old prophets, in speaking of the delusive hopes of man, says that they are like 'spiders' webs,' and 'shall not become garments.' Paul, then, having been asking for these …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

'All Spiritual Blessings'
'Blessed be God ... who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.'--Eph. i. 3. It is very characteristic of Paul's impetuous fervour and exuberant faith that he begins this letter with a doxology, and plunges at once into the very heart of his theme. Colder natures reach such heights by slow degrees. He gains them at a bound, or rather, he dwells there always. Put a pen into his hand, and it is like tapping a blast furnace; and out rushes a fiery stream at white …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

'According To' --II.
'According to the riches of His grace.'--Eph. i. 7. We have seen, in a previous sermon, that a characteristic note of this letter is the frequent occurrence of that phrase 'according to.' I also then pointed out that it was employed in two different directions. One class of passages, with which I then tried to deal, used it to compare the divine purpose in our salvation with the historical process of the salvation. The type of that class of reference is found in a verse just before my text, 'according …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

God's Inheritance and Ours
'In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, ... the earnest of our inheritance.'--Eph. i. 11, 14. A dewdrop twinkles into green and gold as the sunlight falls on it. A diamond flashes many colours as its facets catch the light. So, in this context, the Apostle seems to be haunted with that thought of 'inheriting' and 'inheritance,' and he recurs to it several times, but sets it at different angles, and it flashes back different beauties of radiance. For the words, which I have wrenched from their …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

The Measure of Immeasurable Power
That ye may know ... what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ.'--Eph. i. 19, 20. 'The riches of the glory of the inheritance' will sometimes quench rather than stimulate hope. He can have little depth of religion who has not often felt that the transcendent glory of that promised future sharpens the doubt--'and can I ever hope to reach it?' Our paths are strewn with battlefields where we were defeated; …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

'According To' --I.
'According to the good pleasure of His will, ... According to the riches of His grace.'--Eph. i. 5, 7. That phrase, 'according to,' is one of the key-words of this profound epistle, which occurs over and over again, like a refrain. I reckon twelve instances of it in three chapters of the letter, and they all introduce one or other of the two thoughts which appear in the two fragments that I have taken for my text. They either point out how the great blessings of Christ's mission have underlying …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

Twenty-Fifth Day. Holy and Blameless.
Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe.--The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, to the end He may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His holy ones.'--1 Thess. ii. 10, iii. 12, 13. 'He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before Him …
Andrew Murray—Holy in Christ

A Sight of the Crowned Christ
(Revelation, Chapter i.) "Since mine eyes were fixed on Jesus, I've lost sight of all beside, So enchained my spirit's vision, Looking at the Crucified." "The Lord Christ passed my humble cot: I knew him, yet I knew him not; But as I oft had done before, I hurried through my narrow door To touch His garment's hem. "He drew me to a place apart From curious crowd and noisy mart; And as I sat there at His feet I caught the thrill of His heart-beat Beyond His garment's hem. "Rare was the bread He broke …
by S. D. Gordon—Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation

Redemption through Blood, the Gracious Forgiveness of Sins
READ THE CHAPTER, and carefully note how the apostle goes to the back of everything, and commences with those primeval blessings which were ours before time began. He dwells on the divine love of old, and the predestination which came out of it; and all that blessed purpose of making us holy and without blame before him in love, which was comprehended in the covenant of grace. It does us good to get back to these antiquities--to these eternal things. You shake off something of the dust of time, as …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 37: 1891

Blessing for Blessing
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ: according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love."--Ephesians 1:3, 4. God blesses us; let us bless him. I pray that every heart here may take its own part in this service of praise. "O thou, my soul, bless God the Lord, And all that in me is, Be stirred up his holy name To magnify …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 38: 1892

The Treasure of Grace
There are no ministers who contend so fully and so unflinchingly for free, sovereign, unconditional grace, as those who before their conversion have revelled in gross and outrageous sin. Your gentleman preachers who have been piously brought up, and sent from their cradle to school, from school to college, and from college to the pulpit, without encountering much temptation, or being rescued from the haunts of profanity--they know comparatively little, and speak with little emphasis of free grace. …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 6: 1860

Wisdom and Revelation.
"Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him: the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness …
W. H. Griffith Thomas—The Prayers of St. Paul

Of Predestination
Rom. ix. 22.--"What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction." Eph. i. 11.--"In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." We are now upon a high subject; high indeed for an eminent apostle, much more above our reach. The very consideration of God's infinite wisdom might alone suffice to restrain …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

The Instruction Given Us, However, is not that Every Individual in Particular is to Call...
The instruction given us, however, is not that every individual in particular is to call him Father, but rather that we are all in common to call him Our Father. By this we are reminded how strong the feeling of brotherly love between us ought to be, since we are all alike, by the same mercy and free kindness, the children of such a Father. For if He from whom we all obtain whatever is good is our common Father (Matth. 23:9), everything which has been distributed to us we should be prepared to communicate …
John Calvin—Of Prayer--A Perpetual Exercise of Faith

The Work of God in Our Work.
"And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ."--1 Thess. v. 23. The difference between sanctification and good works should be well understood. Many confound the two, and believe that sanctification means to lead an honorable and virtuous life; and, since this is equal to good works, sanctification, without which no man shall see God, is made to consist in the earnest and diligent …
Abraham Kuyper—The Work of the Holy Spirit

Concerning God's Purpose
1. God's purpose is the cause of salvation. THE third and last thing in the text, which I shall but briefly glance at, is the ground and origin of our effectual calling, in these words, "according to his purpose" (Eph. i. 11). Anselm renders it, According to his good will. Peter Martyr reads it, According to His decree. This purpose, or decree of God, is the fountainhead of our spiritual blessings. It is the impulsive cause of our vocation, justification, glorification. It is the highest link in …
Thomas Watson—A Divine Cordial

Brought Nigh
"Riches of His grace."--Eph. i. 7. "Riches of His glory."--Eph. iii. 16. W. R. tr., Emma Frances Bevan, 1899 Rich, our God, art Thou in mercy, Dead in sins were we, When Thy great love rested on us, Sinners, dear to Thee. Blessed path of grace that led us From the depths of death To the fair eternal mansions Quickened by Thy breath. Riches of Thy grace have brought us There, in Christ, to Thee; Riches of Thy glory make us Thy delight to be. Not alone the stream that cleansed us Flowed from Jesus …
Frances Bevan—Hymns of Ter Steegen and Others (Second Series)

Prolegomena. Section i. --The Life.
S. Gregory Nazianzen, called by the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus "The Great," and universally known as "The Theologian" or "The Divine," a title which he shares with S. John the Evangelist alone among the Fathers of the Church, was, like the great Basil of Cæsarea and his brother Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, by birth a Cappadocian. He was born at Arianzus, a country estate belonging to his father, in the neighbourhood of Nazianzus. This latter, sometimes called Nazianzum, is a place quite unknown …
St. Cyril of Jerusalem—Lectures of S. Cyril of Jerusalem

Introductory Notice.
[From Vol. VII., p. 515 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.] The first certain reference which is made by any early writer to this so-called Epistle of Clement is found in these words of Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., iii. 38): "We must know that there is also a second Epistle of Clement. But we do not regard it as being equally notable with the former, since we know of none of the ancients that have made use of it." Several critics in modern times have endeavoured to vindicate the authenticity of this epistle. …
Rev. John Keith, D.D.—The Epistles of Clement

Conclusion.
"From Heaven He came and sought her To be His Holy Bride, With His own Blood He bought her, And for her life He died." "The Kingdom of Heaven," what is it? It is the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ. It is that Kingdom which was prophetically set forth by our Lord in His parables; that Kingdom, the subjects of which were described in His teaching, and redeemed by His Blood to be His own "purchased possession" (Eph. i. 14); that Kingdom which was founded through the coming of the Holy …
Edward Burbidge—The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it?

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