God's Hope in His Children.
The Apostle speaks of the hope of God in His children as of the hope of a Father; and what such a hope may include let us now proceed to inquire.
I. Foremost of all is the hope that the children will walk in fellowship with Himself, reciprocating His love, receiving and retaining His teaching, and drinking in His spirit. He hopes that we will never leave Him again, that we will always wait upon Him, that we will always respond to His will, and that we will always be aiming to be perfect as He is perfect.
II. Very closely connected with such feelings is the hope that the child will grow in every grace and in every power for good. He would not have us continue to be babes. He sets before us the example of the First-begotten, who grew in wisdom, and in stature, and in favour with God and man.
III. Once more, is it not a father's hope that his child may be in the family a brother to the rest, and in the world a man of usefulness? And so is the Divine hope in our calling. We are adopted as sons, that together we may form one large, loving, and united family, to bear each other's burdens and help each other to conquer the world and win eternal life.
IV. God's hope in calling us to be sons is that we should be witnesses for the truth, teachers of others, soldiers of Jesus Christ, followers of the Lamb through evil report and good report.
V. God hopes to have His children in His house with Him for ever. Two thoughts arise here: (1) the better we know God as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father of glory, the better shall we understand His hope in making us sons and heirs; and (2) we shall always try to fulfil the hope He has in us.
J. P. Gledstone, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvi., p. 138.
God's Inheritance in the Saints.
I. God's inheritance in the saints is possession of the highest kind. Beings are better than things.
II. God's inheritance in the saints is His own original possession.
III. God has a second or double title to the possession of His inheritance. He has purchased it.
IV. Considered from the human and earthly side, the possession is very poor. God estimates His inheritance by His own standard. If God has a rich and glorious inheritance in the saints, then (1) He will claim it; (2) He will take care of it; (3) He will make use of it; (4) He must take pleasure in it; (5) He will not forsake it.
S. Martin, Rain upon the Mown Grass,p. 109.
Ephesians 1:18 ; Ephesians 2:7
Christ's Resurrection and Glory in Relation to the Hope of the Church.
I. The descent of the Son of God from His eternal majesty to the infirmities and sorrows and temptations of this mortal condition is so transcendent a revelation both of the love of God and the possible greatness and blessedness of man that we need not be surprised that to many profound Christian thinkers the Incarnation has seemed to constitute the whole of the Christian Gospel, but even the Atonement did not end the succession of wonders which began with the Incarnation. The Incarnation was wonderful; that it should have been possible for the Eternal Word, who was in the beginning with God, to descend from the eternal splendours of Divine supremacy and to become man, is an infinite mystery. But that, having become man and retaining His humanity, it should have been possible for Him to reascend to those heights of authority and glory, is also an infinite mystery. This is the explanation of the emphasis and energy with which Paul dwells on the greatness of the Divine power as illustrated in the resurrection, ascension, and glorification of Christ. During His earthly life He was unequal to the great tasks of supreme authority, just as He was unequal during His childhood to the tasks of His public ministry. In His resurrection and ascension into heaven there came an extension, an expansion, an exaltation, of the powers of Christ's human nature, which corresponded with His transition from humiliation to the glory of the Father. "The working of the strength of" (God's) "might" rendered Him capable of a knowledge so immense, enriched Him with a wisdom so Divine, inspired Him with a force so wonderful, that Christ, the very Christ that was born at Bethlehem and was crucified on Calvary, became the real and effective Ruler of heaven and earth.
II. God will confer on us a greatness and a blessedness corresponding to the greatness and blessedness which He has conferred on Christ. No promises of glory, honour, and immortality can adequately represent the wonderful future of those who are to dwell for ever with God; but in the ascent of Christ from His earthly humiliation to supreme sovereignty, in the corresponding development of the intellectual and moral energies of His human nature, we see how immense is the augmentation of power and of joy to which we are destined.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians,p. 144.
Reference: Ephesians 1:19; Ephesians 1:20. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 254.