here to point out, how all this was the work of wisdom, and how He had made us wise. And therefore he repeats again the words, “According to His good pleasure186 which He purposed in Him.”187 54 That is to say, this He desired, this He travailed for, as one might say, that He might be able to reveal to us the mystery. What mystery? That He would have man seated up on high. And this hath come to pass. Ver. 10. “Unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth, even in Him.” Heavenly things, he means to say, had been severed from earthly. They had no longer one Head. So far indeed as the system of the creation went, there was over all One God, but so far as management of one household went, this, amid the wide spread of Gentile error, was not the case, but they had been severed from His obedience. “Unto a dispensation,” saith he, “of the fulness of the times.” The fulness of the times, he calls it. Observe with what nicety he speaks. And whereas he points out the origination, the purpose, the will, the first intention, as proceeding from the Father, and the fulfillment and execution as effected by the agency of the Son, yet no where does he apply to him the term minister.188 “He chose us,” saith he, “in Him, having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself;” and, “to the praise of the glory of His grace, in whom we have re- demption through His blood,—which He purposed in Him, unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ;” and no where hath he called Him minister. If however the word “in” and the word “by” implies a mere minister, look what the matter comes to. Just in the very beginning of the Epistle, he used the expression “through the will of the Father.” The Father, he means, willed, the Son wrought. But neither does it follow, that because the Father willed, the Son is excluded from the willing; nor because the Son 186 [“‘According to His good pleasure’ belongs to γνωρίσας, stating that God has accomplished the making known in pursuance of His free self-determination, cf. ver. 5.”—Meyer.—G.A.] 187 [“‘Which He purposed in Him,’ in itself redundant, serves for the attaching of that which follows.”—Meyer. G.A.] 188 E.G. of the Angels by way of contrast, “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister,” εἰς διακονίαν. Hebr. i. 14. However S. Irenæus says, “Ministral ei ad omnia sua progenies et figuratio sua, id est Filius et Spiritus Sanctus.” Hær. iv. 17. And St. Justin Martyr applies to our Lord the word ὑπηρετεῖν. Tryph. 61, as scripture does the word Angel or Messenger. The distinction is obvious; our Lord may be named the Minister or Instrument of the Father in the sense in which our reason may be called the instrument of our mind, as being one with it and in it. In this sense St. Hilary calls the Son obedientem dictis Dei Deum. de Trin. v. vid. Petav. De Trin. ii. 7. §. 7. 104 Ephesians 1:1--2