Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
Commenting on the above passage, Dr. Jim Hamilton writes,
God is the initiator here: God chose, God loved, God predestined, God adopted, and God did all of this according to the pleasure of his will (1:3-4). God did not do this for the Jews or the Gentiles because either group had earned it, because either group had sought it, or because either group would respond rightly to it. God did this "for himself, according to the pleasure of his will" (1:5). He did it because he wanted to, and Paul gives the ultimate reason why he did it in Ephesians 1:6: "for the praise of the glory of his grace, with which he graced us in the beloved." God wanted his grace to be praised, so he stunned cognizant beings in the heavens and on earth (3:10, 20-21) by including the Gentiles in Christ. The Gentiles did not earn this. God graced them in his beloved Son (1:6). (Hamilton, James M. God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010. Print. 480)
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