Ephesians 1:18Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

This is clear from what follows: “that you may know,” he says, “what is the hope of His calling.” This hope is still unknown, he says, but not to the faithful.

“And what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” This too is still unknown.

What, then, is known? That we believe that He raised Christ “by His power.” To awaken faith in souls is far more wondrous than to raise the dead.

How so? I shall try to make this clear. Listen: Christ said to the dead man, “Lazarus, come forth!” (Jn 11:43), and he immediately obeyed.

Peter said to Tabitha, “Tabitha, arise!” (Acts 9:40), and she did not contradict him.

The Lord will speak on the last day, and all will rise. This will happen with such speed that those still alive will not precede the dead.

All this will be accomplished and completed in the briefest moment, in the twinkling of an eye. But it is not so in the work of conversion to faith.

“Riches of glory” means ineffable glory. Indeed, whose word can set forth the glory of which the saints will one day be deemed worthy?

Certainly no one’s. To understand this, grace is truly needed. One must receive at least a small ray of spiritual light.

It concerns the precise blessings that the saints will inherit. For they are great. Therefore he calls them the riches of the glory of the inheritance.

That is, an ineffable glory surpassing understanding. He calls it an inheritance because it will still be given to sons.

“That you may know what is the hope of His calling, and what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.

And what is the exceeding greatness of His power, which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead” (Eph 1:18-19).

The man to whom, according to the Apostle, the Spirit of wisdom and revelation will be given, so that he may look with the opened eyes of the heart, will know what is appointed for the called.

He will know what must be expected for God’s saints, and what He will abundantly and generously give to those who hold His inheritance.

For this knowledge, in those who are called believers after the likeness of Paul, the greatness of God’s power is necessary.

Through this power He worked in Christ Jesus, Whom He also raised from the dead.

Inheritance must be understood in two ways. Either the Firstborn of all creation is the inheritance of the soul of our Lord Jesus Christ and of that man who is composed of body and soul.

Then, together with the inheritance of the soul, we inherit God the Word. Or else our inheritance in Christ is the one Divinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

He also says “the good pleasure of the will” and other such expressions. He said “the surpassing greatness of the power” while considering the dishonor of the Cross and reflecting on what was accomplished by it.

For this he also added:

By choosing and establishing such a reading for all such occasions, Christ’s Church, our universal nurturer and teacher, wishes to express the following thought.

The highest and final goal of every form of learning must be the knowledge of the Lord God, drawing near to Him, and the striving of the human spirit toward that unearthly realm.

There, a truly rational and blessed life awaits man in communion with the source of all knowledge, the Lord God, glorified in the Trinity.

All other goals are lower and subordinate. The Church does not bless any science or instruction that forgets this highest goal of its own.

Nor does she in any way take it under her protection.

Concerning the naming of the Father as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, Blessed Theodoret observes: “The Apostle called one and the same One both God and Father of Jesus Christ.

He is His God as man, and His Father as God. After the Incarnation, the God-man could not fail to know Himself as man, while being God at the same time.”

Concerning the naming of God as the Father of glory, Bishop Theophan says that this Eastern expression means “most glorious, glory itself.”

Taken together with what precedes, it will mean: “the God of our Lord, most glorious, exceedingly great, unbounded, and ineffable in His perfections.

For the glory of God is the fullness of divine majesty” (cf. Acts 7:2; Ps 23:7).

According to John Chrysostom, “The Apostle cannot find a word that could fully depict the blessings prepared by God.

Everywhere he calls them glory, as a word that signifies for us every kind of greatness.”

Explaining why the Apostle prayed for the gift of the Spirit of wisdom and revelation to the Ephesians, the same father says: “To understand spiritual things and see hidden things, spiritual wisdom is needed.

The Spirit reveals all things and explains the very mysteries of God. The vision of the mysteries of God belongs to the Spirit alone, Who searches even the depths of God (1 Cor 2:10).

Neither angel, nor archangel, nor any other created power will bestow this gift.”

“Whose word, for example, can set forth the glory of which the saints will one day be deemed worthy?

To understand this, the human mind truly needs grace. It needs to receive at least a ray of spiritual light.”

“In the work of conversion to faith, divine power is also needed. To awaken faith in souls is much harder than to raise the dead.

The reason is that God desires us to become good voluntarily. Thus the Apostle rightly sees the surpassing greatness of God’s power in us who believe.

When the prophets accomplished nothing, and when angels and archangels proved unable to help mankind’s salvation, then God Himself was well pleased to appear.

By this He showed that divine power is needed in the work of conversion to faith.”

Here “heart” is not used in its ordinary sense, but in the sense of the inner man.

There is within us an inner man, according to the Apostle Paul, or “the hidden man of the heart,” according to the Apostle Peter.

This is the Godlike spirit breathed into the first-created man. It remains unbroken even after the fall.

Its functions are the fear of God, at whose foundation lies certainty of God’s being, together with the consciousness of complete dependence on Him.

They are also conscience, and dissatisfaction with anything created.

These manifestations of the spirit are visible among people at every level of their education and throughout the whole earth.

The purpose of the spirit, as its functions let us understand, is to keep man in relation with God and with the divine order of things.

It does this beyond everything that surrounds him and flows around him.

To fulfill such a purpose as it should, the spirit must naturally possess knowledge of God and of the divine order.

It must also possess knowledge of that better being, whose perception is witnessed by dissatisfaction with everything created.

One must suppose that this knowledge existed in the first-created man before the fall.

His spirit clearly beheld God and all that is divine, as clearly as someone with healthy eyes sees an object before him.

But with the fall the eyes of the spirit were closed. It no longer sees what it was natural for it to see.

The spirit itself remained, and there are eyes in it, but they are closed. It is in the condition of one whose eyelids have grown together.

The eye is intact. It thirsts for light and seeks how to see it, sensing that it exists.

But the fused eyelids prevent it from being opened and entering directly into communion with the light.

That the spirit in fallen man is in this condition is evident almost to the touch.

Man wanted to replace the vision of the spirit with speculation, with the most abstract constructions of the mind, and with idealizing.

But nothing ever came of this. All philosophical metaphysics bears witness to it.

After reviewing them all, we receive only the assurance that there is something higher, better, and more perfect than what the eye sees.

It is also higher than what can be reached by operations of reason. But what it is remains unattainable to the mind.

Concerning it we have only guesses. These do not present spiritual and divine things as they are in themselves.

Everyone has the spirit, but in everyone it is closed and stifled, though in differing degrees.

This depends on how bodily and psychic strivings and habits prevail over it, and on how much it follows and is carried away by them.

Divine grace, which calls to salvation in the Lord, acts directly upon the spirit.

Strengthened by the action of grace, the spirit is set in motion. It rises above the psychic and bodily life, draws them after itself, and causes man to decide with his whole being to be with the Lord.

It causes him to walk according to His will.

Grace passes through the word of the Gospel to the spirit. Then, when what must be done by man’s spirit, awakened by grace, has been accomplished in him, he is deemed worthy of the Mysteries.

According to God’s institution on earth for our salvation, he is deemed worthy of Baptism or repentance.

Then the grace of God takes up its dwelling in him. It is united with his spirit and joined to it as one.

From the moment grace first acts upon the spirit, its eyes begin to open. After grace is received in the Mysteries, they become fully opened.

Look how lively the newly baptized, or the one just brought to repentance, is in relation to God.

See how sensitive his conscience is, how truly he evaluates everything present. Passing beyond it, he beholds by expectation only the invisible future.

The spirit has begun to see spiritual and divine things, as one whose eyelids have been separated by surgery, and whose eyes have been opened, begins to see what surrounds him.

But bodily sight also has degrees, and spiritual sight has them still more. The exercise of sight enables one to see more and more.

It lets one survey ever more broadly and farther away. So also in the spirit.

The first outline of spiritual things, received in instruction in a general sketch, becomes clearer and clearer.

Details are seen. Objects that at first sight were hidden by others are noticed.

When will he reach the point of seeing everything and walking in this vision as in paradise?

Everything that our spirit can see, with its utmost effort and with the most abundant action of grace, has been opened to us in the apostolic and prophetic writings.

It has been opened. Yet not everyone sees it at once as soon as he opens the Bible.

The seeing of this or that, even in words often read and pondered, is produced by grace, which guides the one being saved.

But even if our spirit, under the action of grace, were to see everything possible to see in our present state, all this would still be only a vision as through dim glass.

It would be such in comparison with what and how things will be seen in the future. “It has not yet appeared what we shall be” (1 Jn 3:2).

We have deliberately set forth this whole history of spiritual vision in order to determine more precisely what Saint Paul desires for the Ephesians.

He prays that God would give them enlightened eyes of the heart.

He desires that they be raised to a clear vision of the spiritual and divine order of things, the economy of salvation, so far as this is possible for us on earth.

For he desires that they also see what he himself sees. But there has not been, and will not be, a vision higher than the apostolic vision.

Saint Paul desires that the Ephesians see three things with the enlightened eyes of the heart.

First, what is given to Christians immediately after they follow the voice of the calling, and in general while still here on earth.

Second, what glorious and rich possession awaits them in the future.

Third, how much power God has expended on arranging salvation by faith and on forming believers.

Thus blessed Theodoret says: “I implore that the vision of your mind, or spirit, be illumined with noetic light.

Then you will be able both to know to what we have been called, and to foreknow the greatness of the promised blessings.

But speaking in fleshly language, and unable as he would wish to glorify the Master and show the greatness of the gifts, the divine Apostle gathers many names together.

He strives, as far as possible, to express this. Therefore he combines the expressions, ‘the hope of the calling,’ ‘the riches of the glory of the inheritance,’ ‘the good pleasure of the will,’ and others like them.

He said ‘the surpassing greatness of the power’ because he had in mind the dishonor of the Cross and considered what was accomplished by it.

For he also added this: ‘according to the working of the dominion of His might,’ and so forth.”

All these are subjects which no one can know and hold in a soul-saving way except those in whom the grace of God makes the eyes of the heart, that is, of the inner man, enlightened.

Blessed Theophylact writes: “‘The eyes enlightened, that you may know,’ means: may He give them the gift of being enlightened through the Spirit.

For if the Spirit does not reveal the hidden mysteries, it is impossible to learn them in any other way.

He alone, and no one else, neither angel nor archangel, searches all things, even the depths of God (1 Cor 2:10).

‘The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God’ (1 Cor 2:14).

Therefore, when the mysteries are revealed to us by the Spirit, we enter the state of the knowledge of God.

Our eyes are enlightened, and we are no longer shaken by doubts, but see everything as it is.”

That is, then the apostolic good desire is fulfilled in us: “that you may know.”

“What is the hope of the calling,” and “what are the riches of the glory,” can be referred to one and the same thing, namely, the future glorious state of believers.

But they can also be distinguished.

The hope of the calling may refer to what is immediately promised to those called by the preaching of the Gospel.

It also refers to what is immediately given after faith and the reception of the Mysteries of Baptism and Chrismation.

The riches of glory may refer to the future glorification of believers.

What is promised to those called, if they follow the calling? Forgiveness of sins, the grace of the Holy Spirit for acquiring holiness, and adoption as sons.

This adoption is a pre-election to eternal blessedness.

All this is also given immediately, as soon as someone follows the calling. It may rightly be called the hope of the calling.

This distinguishes it from the hope of glory, which is here signified by “the riches of the glory of the inheritance among the saints.”

The same thing happens as with a master who summons laborers and gives them something even before the work begins, as soon as they agree to work for him.

By this he assures them that the full settlement will come at the end of the work.

So the Lord calls people to His work, to live according to His will. Immediately He gives forgiveness of sins, grace, and adoption.

Whoever labors as he should receives the full settlement, or full reward, in the other life.

Yet this reward will not be according to the labor, but according to the breadth of God’s mercy.

This mercy uses the labor only as an occasion to enrich those who worked with unending blessings.

The Apostle calls these unending blessings “the riches of the glory of the inheritance,” or the rich glory of the inheritance.

As Chrysostom expresses it, this is “ineffable glory. Indeed, whose word is able to present that glory of which the saints will one day be deemed worthy?

Certainly no one’s. To understand this, the human mind truly needs grace. It needs to receive at least a small ray of spiritual light.”

It is called an inheritance because it has been prepared for those who have been adopted as sons, says Theophylact.

At the same time this confirms the certainty of receiving it. For a son, so long as he is a son, is undoubtedly an heir.

He will receive the inheritance as something that belongs to him indisputably.

One need only preserve in oneself, or for oneself, the quality of sonship to God. For this reason the Apostle added, “among the saints.”

Those who are called, if they remain holy and blameless and thereby retain the dignity of sons of God by grace, will undoubtedly inherit rich and ineffable glory in eternity.