10 … In Him 11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, 12 to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.
The Ephesian church was noted for their wealth of biblical teaching as we have pointed out before, so Paul’s writing takes on a deep theological tone. In this opening salvo from verses 3 to 14, we are taken on a whirlwind of truth concerning our relationship with God. In our passage for today, what we have “in Him” includes an inheritance. Since we have been “blessed with every spiritual blessing … in Christ” (vs. 3), chosen “in Him” (vs. 4), adopted as sons “through Jesus Christ” (vs. 5), grace “has been freely bestowed on us in the Beloved” (vs. 6)—since all this is true, it follows that “in Him” we have “an inheritance.” Everything that belongs to Christ now belongs to us by inheritance as sons of God.
Christ has led the way, provided the way, is the way to our coming to the full experience of God’s purpose for creating us (see John 10:10, 14:6). His plan was to bring us into full sonship with all its rights and privileges, as it were. I remember as a young Christian walking down a street and passing a majestic tree, enjoying the truth of this inheritance. My thought at the time was that the tree belonged to me, because it was my heavenly Father’s tree. Jesus had said, “The meek will inherit the earth.” It was mine, waiting for full possession when Christ returns.
Paul relishes the fact that his generation of Christians was “the first to hope in Christ.” These, in particular, would be the Jewish believers. We conclude this because the phrase should literally be rendered “first to hope in the Christ,” which has a distinctly Messianic flavor that Gentiles would not have been accustomed to hearing. He does include his readers, which means you and me, as well as the believers at Ephesus, in the next verse. The desired result is that our hope in Christ will bring “the praise of His glory.”
Our being redeemed to the place of sonship comes by the grace of God and is designed to show how great our heavenly Father is. Adam, in the pre-fall condition, did not know God in this way. But once sin entered the world, the stage was set for God’s glory to be made known through grace by the substitutionary death of Christ for us, to bring us into a place, not just as God’s creation made in His image, but now as adopted sons and co-heirs with Christ!
Lord, You see me as Your prize possession. Keep reminding me of the great inheritance that is mine, because of my position of being “in Christ.”
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