I. The election of God is that ocean of love which surrounds our earthly Christian life as an island, and which we can never lose out of sight for any length of time. Is it not our ultimate refuge in our weakness, our afflictions, our trials? Thus we ascend to the eternal counsel of God, whether we consider the character of the Gospel dispensation in its relation to the law, or the Divine righteousness and life through faith in the crucified Saviour, or the work of grace in conversion, or the spiritual experience of the believer. Infinite love from all eternity purposed to clothe us with Divine and perfect righteousness, to endow us with an incorruptible inheritance, and this through the gift and the self-devotedness of the Son.
II. Of the eternal counsel of God, Jesus crucified is the centre and the manifestation. He came to offer unto God that which sacrifice and burnt-offering could only shadow forth. In the sin-offering, death, due to the offerer, was transferred to the sacrifice; in the burnt-offering one already accepted professed his will to offer himself wholly unto the will of God. How perfectly and above all finite conception was this twofold sacrifice fulfilled in Christ!
III. From all eternity God, according to His good pleasure, which He had purposed in Himself, chose us in Christ that we should be to the praise of His glory. Notice the expression "good pleasure." It is God's eternal delight, this purpose of self-manifestation in grace; His counsel and election centre in the Son of His love, in the Only-begotten. It is according to this same good pleasure, to this same eternal, free, infinite delight, that God calls and converts souls through the foolishness of preaching; that He gives unto us the adoption of children, and the forgiveness of sins; it is the Father's good pleasure to keep the little flock, and afterwards to give them the kingdom and the glory, together to Jesus.
A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews,vol. ii., p. 186.