Ephesians 1:12Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

See Eph 1:6. Elsewhere he says, "to His glory," because God regards our salvation as His glory, and likewise as His wealth, though He Himself is the treasure of good things and needs no one in order to be rich.

He says that we should be His glory: we who have set our hope on Christ, that is, who have believed in Christ and, before the coming age, hope for the good things to come for us. For the glory and praise of God's goodness consists in saving those who were so estranged.

That we, more than all former generations, might be to the praise of His glory, we who first hoped in Christ.

Paul says that God first appointed to preaching those among the Jews who believed in Christ. Therefore no one from the Gentiles was called to be an apostle. It was just that preachers should be chosen from those who had already hoped beforehand in the salvation promised to them in Christ.

For all, looking upon us who have believed in the Lord, hymn Christ, the cause of these good things.

It is first necessary to hope in Christ, that is, to follow Christ and believe that all He promised will be fulfilled. Then we shall be able to serve to the praise of God's glory.

Third, this concerns the persons chosen (Eph 1:11-14). Having become heirs of Christ's Kingdom (Eph 1:11), all of them must serve "to the praise" or exaltation "of His glory" (Eph 1:12). This includes both those who earlier hoped in Christ, that is, Jews who became Christians, and the Gentiles who had only just believed in Him. All were "sealed with the promised Holy Spirit" in baptism (Eph 1:13), as a pledge of the certainty of our inheritance (Eph 1:14).

The Hebrews were called into the kingdom of salvation in Christ before the other nations. Through Abraham, David, and the other righteous ones, they had received many promises concerning Christ.

By faith, they were heirs of these glorious promises. They were also heralds of God the Savior, the Messiah. Yet all this depended not on any special qualities of theirs, but wholly on the good pleasure of God.

St. John Chrysostom says: “Notice how the Apostle everywhere strives to explain that all things were ordered because they had been predestined from of old in precisely this way.

They were accomplished by Him, the Lord, in accordance with this predestination. Therefore He called the Gentiles not at all because the Jews disobeyed Him. He was not brought or compelled to this.”

From depicting the all-embracing significance of Christ’s redemptive work, the Apostle passes to depicting its particular effects in the Ephesian Church.

As the representative of Christians from the Jews, he says on their behalf that they had first been called to receive the blessed inheritance in Christ.

This was because Christ had already been proclaimed to them beforehand, and they therefore awaited Him with longing.

At the same time, to humble the pride of the Jews, the Apostle notes that God had resolved to grant them the possibility of entering the promised inheritance first.

He did this not because of any qualities distinguishing their nation, but only according to the good pleasure, or more precisely, the decision of His will.

“The praise of glory” means the praise of the glorious work accomplished by Jesus Christ. They were the first heralds of Him.

One may say that even to this day unbelieving Jews are to the praise of the glory of Jesus Christ, for they possess the prophetic books that proclaim Christ.

The first glorified Christ by faith. These glorify Him by unbelief, without noticing it and against their will. They fulfill God’s purpose against their own will.

Concerning the glory of God in general from the work of salvation accomplished by the Lord, this was said above in verse 6.

Here it is shown more particularly how the Jews served, and were meant to serve, this glory by glorifying Christ the Lord through their faith.