Paul’s Prayer for a Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation (Ephesians 1:15–18)

The Apostle had in view here to impress upon the minds of the Ephesians the whole greatness of the economy of our salvation in the Lord, so that, having recognized the greatness of God’s beneficence toward them in calling them to participation in this salvation, they might remember it, and for it give thanks and praise to God. In guiding them toward this, he:

I. prays that God may give them the Spirit of wisdom to behold the greatness of the economy in the greatness of the blessings given and promised to them—(Eph. 1:15–19);

II. points to it in the exaltation of the Accomplisher of our salvation—(Eph. 1:20–23);

III. and in the exaltation together with Him and in Him of all who believe in Him—(Eph. 2:1–10);

IV. for the Ephesians and in their person for all the faithful from among the Gentiles, especially in the fact that it made those who were far off into those who are near—(Eph. 2:11–22).

V. This particular point the Apostle reinforces by presenting it as a hidden mystery only now revealed, of which he is a minister—(Eph. 3:1–13).

VI. And he concludes again with a prayer that the Ephesians may abide as partakers of the blessings of salvation, and thereby rise still higher in understanding the greatness of the mysteries of salvation—(Eph. 3:14–21).

It is not difficult to notice that these points proceed in correspondence with the content of the preceding survey of the economy of salvation.

I. The Apostle prays that God may give them the spirit of wisdom to behold the greatness of the economy in the greatness of the blessings given and promised to them (Eph. 1:15–19)

Eph. 1:15–16. For this reason, having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease giving thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers.

Having surveyed the greatness of the blessings in Christ Jesus our Lord, having briefly depicted the whole economy of salvation, St. Paul, with his heart rapt in contemplation of this, desires to bring the Ephesians into it as well. Although he does not say “enter into it,” but rather prays to God that He Himself might enlighten their minds with the knowledge of all this, this is self-evident, for there is one law for the receiving of spiritual blessings, pronounced by the Lord Himself: “seek, and you will find” (Matt. 7:7). He says to them as it were: ascend in your minds to reflection on this and remain in the remembrance of it; as for me, I pray that the Lord may enlighten and continue to enlighten you. A solid beginning has already been laid: you have already become partakers of these blessings through your faith and your life according to faith, expressed in love toward all the saints, for which I give thanks to the Lord.

“For this reason.” For what reason? If we take into account only what immediately precedes, then—for the reason that they were sealed with the Holy Spirit and in Him received the earnest of hope. But since this last point in the Apostle stands in inseparable connection with what came before, as the crown of all the blessings in the Lord, one may say that it is also for the sake of all that the all-generous God was pleased to do for our salvation. St. Chrysostom also says: “For this reason”—that is, for the sake of the future blessings that await those who believe rightly and live piously. Moreover, one should equally give thanks to God for all that He has done for the human race before this and for what He will do afterward—one should therefore give thanks also for the faith of those who believe.

St. Paul gives thanks not for these blessings in general, but for the fact that the Ephesians have been deemed worthy of them. Since they were deemed worthy of this through faith working by love, it is precisely the filling of the Ephesians with these that he places here as the occasion of his thankful feelings toward them. “Having heard,” he says, “of your faith and love… I do not cease giving thanks to God.” “For having believed, you were sealed with the Spirit, and in Him received the earnest of future blessings and of perfect redemption, and you are to obtain what is laid up for those who believe rightly and live rightly” (Theophylact).

“Having heard of your faith and love…” “Everywhere St. Paul joins and combines faith and love as a certain wondrous pair” (St. Chrysostom).

If he had only heard of faith, he might perhaps not have hastened to give thanks, for although faith brings one to God, yet having united with Him in heart, it goes forth from Him no longer alone but mingled with love. A faith that is truly one—without love—never exists, nor does love without faith. Faith is one leg, love is the other. As one cannot walk on one leg, so one cannot live the Christian life or be deemed worthy of Christian blessings without both faith and love. Love “toward all the saints,” that is, toward all Christians, and not only toward the Ephesians or those nearby. The love that is poured into the hearts of Christians by the Spirit loves all people; but it loves Christians as members of one body, with a family bond, feeling a living connection with them in Christ. But however natural it is in Christians, it can nonetheless be weakened and extinguished by self-seeking impulses. Hence its presence alongside faith is a sign both of the sound ordering of believers and of special divine grace, for all comes from it. Hence too St. Paul writes: “in Christ Jesus,” which must be referred both to faith and to love. The Lord Jesus Christ is the inexhaustible source of both faith and love for all who cleave to Him. Faith here is the feeling of the heart that reposes in Christ, certain of every help and protection from Him—faith that rests in the bosom of Christ.

He heard of faith and love; but he gives thanks not for faith and love, but for what is given on account of faith and love: “for the fact that, on account of these, they are evidently numbered among those being saved, and will undoubtedly be deemed worthy of the blessings appointed for those who believe and love” (Oecumenius).

The Apostle says: “I also” give thanks, thereby placing himself among the number of others who give thanks. Who are these others? The Ephesians and other Christians. Having true faith and love, the Ephesians tasted in their hearts all the blessings in the Lord—heartfelt joy and the sweet burning of the spirit from God’s grace, kindled by assurance of God’s goodwill and of adoption by Him. Such an inward disposition could not fail to manifest itself in the luminous condition of their outward deeds and life. Seeing this, other Christians could not but rejoice and give thanks to God. To their song of thanksgiving the Apostle also adds his own voice, thereby showing humility in not placing himself as the primary one who gives thanks and who stirs others to thanksgiving.

The Apostle knew of the faith and good character of the Ephesians from having lived with them so long; but in saying “having heard,” he indicates that since the time he departed from them, they have not only remained unchanged but are keeping what was sown in them and advancing in it, building their salvation upon it as upon a firm foundation. Blessed Theodoret writes: “From this (from the fact that he said ‘having heard’) some have concluded that the Apostle wrote this epistle without having yet seen the Ephesians. But one must know that he also wrote an epistle to the Corinthians, having heard something unpleasant about them. For he says: ‘it has been reported… to me about you, my brothers… by those of Chloe, that there are contentions among you’ (1 Cor. 1:11). Therefore, as there, having learned something unpleasant, he writes with grief, so here, having heard something joyful about the Ephesians, he composes praise for them.”

Hearing of the good condition of the Ephesians and foreseeing what they will be deemed worthy of in return, the Apostle rejoices with them and, counting their good as his own, gives thanks to God. This is his apostolic response; he was moved to it by his apostolic heart, caring for his converts with fatherly solicitude. “There was nothing comparable to the apostolic compassion,” says St. Chrysostom, “nothing like the sharing and the tender love with which blessed Paul was filled, as in all his prayers he made mention of entire cities and peoples. ‘I give thanks to God for you, making mention of you in my prayers.’ He was accustomed to write thus to all. Consider then how many he had in his thought. It was even difficult to remember them all, so many were the people for whom he prayed, giving thanks to God for all of them, as though those greatest benefactions which they received he himself had received.”

So too must all give thanks to God for others, seeing their progress in faith and love. For their spiritual perfection one should give thanks to God, and not envy it, seeing in their perfection the glory of the Church. For the diminishing of such persons one should grieve and sorrow, and pray to God that they may not decrease in the Church but multiply, that those who believe strongly, know the faith deeply, and act abundantly according to faith may always predominate in it.

“Making mention of you in my prayers.” Every time I pray, I remember you; and every time I remember you, I give thanks to God for you, that He gave you to believe and live according to faith, so as to be partakers here of all the blessings in the Lord, and in the life to come. But for one thing the Apostle gives thanks, and for another he asks. What exactly he asks is set forth in the following verses—that God might lead them more deeply into the contemplation of the mysteries of salvation in the Lord. But even the thanksgiving itself is already a petition. One who gives thanks values the gift; one who values the gift will make proper use of it; and one who knows how to make use of gifts disposes the Giver to pour out still more mercies upon him. One may limit all prayer to thanksgiving, in the faith that both what is given and what is not given are alike according to God’s goodwill toward us. He alone knows that one thing is good to give, while it is better not to give another. Such a person stands reverently before the Bountiful Giver in ever-thankful feelings, for there is no moment in which we do not benefit from His mercies, and he does not dare to ask for more, not venturing into the mysteries of God’s goodwill toward us.

So it is with regard to oneself. To express goodwill toward others and to pray to the Lord for them is not out of place even in such a disposition of soul. This is the fruit of love and inflames God’s own love, and therefore it is quickly heard and fruitful. But let it also be known that one who intercedes for others does not become the cause of the gift, but only its co-worker. The gift is still entirely from God’s goodwill and is conditioned upon the proper disposition of those who receive. When the latter have no receptacle, all of heaven cannot obtain anything for them. There is nothing in which to place what is asked for. God already wishes all good things for all without any asking, and if not all possess those things, this is not from Him.

Eph. 1:17. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.

What does the Apostle pray for on behalf of the Ephesians, thankfully remembering them in his prayers to God? He prays that God would grant them an ever deeper knowledge of God and of the mysteries of the economy of salvation. They already possessed knowledge, having received the Apostle’s preaching and believed; yet Christian knowledge has no end—not because its subjects are complex, but because those same subjects, whose knowledge is received by faith at the first fruits of salvation, have inexhaustibly many dimensions. In expressing his desire for growth in Christian knowledge, the Apostle points to the productive forces of this knowledge—the grace of the Spirit and the heart (Eph. 1:17, 18)—and to its objects, which may be summed up thus: what is the significance and what is the power of Christianity (Eph. 1:18, 19). Although the productive forces of knowledge already point to the objects of that knowledge, the holy Apostle also designates those objects separately. It is not enough to say in praise of a person that he knows much and is a man of great mind; one must define the subjects of his knowledge and the direction of his mind.

“That the God of our Lord”. The Saviour Himself said to Mary Magdalene after the resurrection: “I ascend to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God” (Jn. 20:17); so likewise holy Paul calls God the Father the God of our Lord, having in view His human nature. Although the Person in the Saviour is one—the Person of the incarnate God the Son—yet lest His humanity be absorbed in our thoughts by the radiance of His Divinity, He Himself was pleased to speak of Himself not infrequently as a man, and the Holy Spirit prompted the Apostles to do the same. “This is said in a dividing sense,” writes Theodoret, “of the undivided God-man, Who after the incarnation could not but recognize Himself as a man, being at the same time God.” “The God of our Lord—that is, as a man like us according to the flesh,” Theophylact explains. Or: “the God of the assumed man,” as blessed Jerome expresses it.

Proceeding from this thought, some interpreters apply also the following words—“the Father of glory”—without departing in thought from the Lord, understanding that God the Father is here so named as the Father of our Lord according to the Divinity, since our Lord as God the Son is “the radiance of glory and the express image of His substance” (Heb. 1:3). Thus blessed Theodoret: “The Apostle called one and the same Person both the God and the Father of Jesus Christ—His God as man, and His Father as God; for he named the divine nature ‘glory.’ So also in the Epistle to the Hebrews he said: ‘Who being the radiance of glory’ (Heb. 1:3), that is, of the divine nature.” Blessed Jerome and Oecumenius understand it in agreement with this. Theophylact cites the opinion of St. Gregory the Theologian: “Gregory the Theologian understands by ‘glory’ the Divinity of the Only-begotten, so that one and the same Christ has one and the same God and Father: of Christ as man He is God, and of His glory—that is, His Divinity—He is Father.”

Others, at the word “the Father of glory”, turn their thought away from the Lord Jesus Christ and fix their attention on the glory of the Godhead in general. “Father of glory” is an Eastern expression, meaning “most glorious,” glory itself—which, taken together with what precedes, yields: the God of our Lord—the most glorious, the supremely great, infinite and ineffable in perfections; for the glory of God is the fullness of the divine majesty, of God’s infinite perfections. In other places God is called the God of glory (Acts 7:2) or the King of glory (Ps. 23:7), as the God of all things, replete with glory and majesty. But since we know God chiefly through His works, we ascend to the comprehension of His glory from the knowledge of His glorious deeds. The Father of glory in this regard is the source of all that is most glorious which we perceive in the works of God—God, who always does only what is most glorious, most perfect, and most excellent, and who in the future purposes the same most glorious things alone. God is the Father of glory as the One who has revealed and continues to reveal His glory to rational creatures through His most glorious works: creation, providence, redemption, the ordering of the gracious Kingdom, and the preparation of eternal glory for believers.

“St. Chrysostom says: ‘The Father of glory’, that is, the Father who has granted us great blessings. He always calls Him the God of glory on account of the blessings that proceed from Him—for example, when he says: ‘the Father of mercies and God of all comfort’ (2 Cor. 1:3), and as the Prophet also said: ‘The Lord is my strength’ ‘and my refuge’ (Ps. 17:3)! ‘The Father of glory’—the Apostle finds no conjunction by which he could fully depict the blessings prepared by God, and everywhere calls them glory, as a word denoting for us every kind of greatness.‘Oecumenius similarly:’Depending on the subjects under discussion, the Apostle names God differently: now the God of mercies, now the God of peace, now the God of powers. Here he names Him the Father of glory—on account of the fact that He has bestowed the greatest glory and honor upon the human race (and spiritual blessings of every kind), which by a common name he calls glory. He calls Him the Father of this glory, as it were its Creator and Ordainer.”

Thus, since the Apostle is here praying for the gift of the knowledge of God—wondrous and most glorious both in Himself and in His works—who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, and who therefore cannot be known as He ought to be, except by those to whom He wills to reveal Himself—for this reason the Apostle has called Him the Father of glory.

“That He… may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation”. The first productive force of Christian wisdom is the Spirit—the gift of wisdom and revelation from the Holy Spirit, infused into the pure hearts of believers. Wisdom may be understood as the comprehension of the Christian truths that the Apostle has outlined above, while revelation may be the penetrating insight into the mysteries of the faith. Or revelation denotes the manner in which Christian knowledge or wisdom is given: a light dawns within, and all becomes clear, whereas before, no matter how one wracked one’s mind, little fruit was gained. The Spirit of wisdom is the source, the teaching power, while revelation is the mode of communication, of instruction from the Spirit. There are moments when it pleases God to open the eyes of the mind to this or that mystery of the faith; though it may have been known beforehand in word and in rational concept, it was not yet received into the heart’s understanding nor fused with the mind.

“In the knowledge of Him”—either of God, or of the Lord Jesus Christ; but since they are inseparable, of Both—that is, of God in Himself and in His works, and most of all in the work of salvation, which has just been discussed. But did the Ephesians not already know? They did, yet knowledge has different degrees, and spiritual subjects have different dimensions. Some dimensions are closer to us and more manifest, while others are more remote and hidden. The former are grasped upon first hearing the Gospel; the latter are revealed gradually, as one advances in the Christian life and the heart is purified. Even now the beginnings of knowledge can be read from the Gospel and the Apostolic writings, but true Christian knowledge still has only one source—the gracious Spirit of wisdom. No one can seize by his own effort what is given only by this Spirit.

St. Chrysostom says: “That He may give you” (the Spirit of wisdom)—that is, may lift up and wing your mind, because otherwise one cannot know these things. For “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him” (1 Cor. 2:14). It follows that to understand spiritual things and to see what is hidden, spiritual wisdom is needed. The Spirit reveals all things, clarifies even the mysteries of God. Knowledge of the mysteries of God belongs to the Spirit alone, who “searches even the deep things of God” (1 Cor. 2:10); and neither Angel nor Archangel, nor any other created power, can supply—that is, furnish you with—this gift. If this is a fruit of revelation, then all speculation is superfluous. For one who has plunged into the contemplation of God and come to know Him will doubt nothing, will not say: this is possible but that is impossible; he will not reason as to how one thing or another could have occurred. If we too had come to know God as we ought, if we too had been taught this by the Holy Spirit, from whom alone it ought to be learned, then we would doubt nothing further. One taught the knowledge of God by the Holy Spirit will neither doubt the promises nor show unbelief in what has already come to pass. This is why the Apostle prays for the gift of the Spirit of wisdom and revelation for them.

Eph. 1:18. The eyes of your heart being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance among the saints Eph. 1:19 “and what is the exceeding greatness…”

The second productive force in the work of Christian knowledge is the pure heart, in which, through the action of the gracious gift of wisdom and revelation, the eyes are opened to see. Whoever is deemed worthy of this receives enlightened eyes of the heart. Holy Paul prays that God may grant these to the Ephesians.

The Spirit of wisdom and revelation and the purified heart are distinct: the former comes from above, from God; the latter depends on us. Yet in the act of forming Christian knowledge they are joined inseparably and only together yield true knowledge. The heart, however much one purifies it (if one could do so without grace), will not give wisdom; and the Spirit of wisdom will not come if a pure heart has not been prepared as a dwelling for it.

Heart is not used here in the ordinary sense, but in the sense of the inner man. There is within us an inner man, in the words of the Apostle Paul, or a hidden man of the heart, in the words of the Apostle Peter. This is the God-like spirit breathed into the first-created man. It remains unshattered even after the Fall. Its functions are the fear of God—at the foundation of which lies the conviction of God’s existence together with the consciousness of utter dependence upon Him—conscience, and dissatisfaction with anything creaturely. These manifestations of the spirit are visible in people at every level of their development and throughout the whole earth. The calling of the spirit, as its functions suggest, is to hold a person in relation to God and the divine order of things, apart from everything that surrounds and flows around him. To fulfil such a calling as it ought to be fulfilled, the spirit must naturally possess knowledge of God and the divine order, and of that better mode of being whose intuition is witnessed by its dissatisfaction with everything creaturely. We may 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 one sees with sound eyes an object before him. But with the Fall the eyes of the spirit closed, and it no longer sees what it was natural for it to see. The spirit itself remained, and the eyes are within it—but they are closed. It is in the same condition as one whose eyelids have grown together. The eye is intact, it thirsts for light, it seeks somehow to see the light, sensing that it exists; but the fused eyelids prevent it from opening and entering directly into communion with the light. That the spirit is in such a condition in the fallen man is palpably evident. Man sought to replace the vision of the spirit with rational speculation, the most abstract constructions of the mind, with idealism—but nothing ever came of it. The testimony to this is the whole of philosophical metaphysics. Surveying them all, one obtains only the assurance that there is something higher, better, and more perfect than what the eye sees and what can be reached by the operations of reason, but what exactly this is remains beyond the reach of the mind. On that point we have only conjecture, which does not present spiritual and divine things as they are in themselves. The spirit exists in all, but in all it is closed and buried to varying degrees, depending on the predominance over it of bodily and soul-directed impulses and habits, and upon their guidance and allure. Divine grace, which calls to salvation in the Lord, acts directly upon the spirit. And the spirit, strengthened by the action of grace, is set in motion, rises above the soul-bodily nature, draws it after itself, and causes a man with his whole being to resolve to be with the Lord and to walk according to His will. Grace reaches the spirit through the word of the Gospel. Afterwards, when within a man has been accomplished what must be accomplished by his spirit awakened by grace, then by God’s institution on earth for our salvation he is deemed worthy of the sacraments—of baptism or of repentance—and the grace of God takes up its dwelling in him, blending with his spirit and joining with it into one.

From the moment of grace’s first action upon the spirit, its eyes begin to open; and upon the reception of grace in the sacraments, they become fully opened. Observe how vivid is the newly baptized or newly repentant person’s relation to God; how sensitive is his conscience, how truly he appraises everything present and, passing beyond it, beholds with hope only the invisible future. The spirit has begun to see what is spiritual and divine, as one whose eyelids have been surgically separated and whose eyes are opened begins to see his surroundings. Yet bodily sight itself has degrees; how much more so spiritual sight. The exercise of sight enables one to see more and more, to survey ever more broadly, further and further. So too with the spirit: the first outline of the spiritual, received in the initial proclamation of the faith in broad strokes, is ever more clearly discerned; details become visible; objects are noticed that were concealed by others in the first glance. When will the spirit reach the point of beholding all things and walking in this vision, as in paradise?!

Everything that our spirit can behold, under the utmost exertion of its powers and under the most abundant action of grace, is all disclosed to us in the Apostolic and Prophetic writings. It is disclosed: yet not everything is visible to everyone the moment they open the Bible. The beholding of one thing or another, even in words often read and pondered, is produced by the grace that guides the one being saved. But if our spirit, under the action of grace, were to behold everything it is possible to behold in our present state, all of this would be, compared with what and how things shall be seen in the future, only a vision resembling a view through a dim mirror. “It has not yet been revealed what we shall be” (1 Jn. 3:2).

We have deliberately set forth this whole history of spiritual vision, so that what holy Paul desires for the Ephesians when he prays that God might give them enlightened eyes of the heart may be more precisely defined. He desires that they be raised to a clear vision of the spiritual and divine order of things—the economy of salvation—to the extent possible for us on earth; for he desires that what he himself beholds, they too may behold—but there was and will be no vision higher than the Apostolic vision.

Three subjects does holy Paul desire the Ephesians to behold with enlightened eyes of the heart: 1) what is given to Christians immediately upon their responding to the voice of the calling, and in general here on earth; 2) what glorious and rich inheritance awaits them in the future; 3) how great a measure of power God expended on ordering salvation by faith and forming believers. Thus blessed Theodoret: “I pray that the sight of your mind (spirit) may be illumined by the intelligible light, and that you may be able both to know to what we are called (1), and to have a foretaste of the greatness of the promised blessings (2). But, speaking in carnal language and being unable to glorify the Master as he would wish and to show the greatness of the gifts, the divine Apostle gathers together many names, striving as best he can to express this. Therefore he joins together the phrases: ‘the hope of the calling, the riches of the glory of the inheritance,’ the good pleasure‘of His will’ and other like expressions. He also said: ‘the exceeding greatness of power,’ having before his mind the dishonour of the cross and pondering what was accomplished by it. For this is what he added: ‘according to the working of the strength of His might’—and so forth.” (3).

“All these are subjects that no one can know and hold with benefit to the soul except those in whom the grace of God makes the eyes of the heart (the inner man) enlightened. Blessed Theophylact writes: ‘The eyes being enlightened… that you may know…’ — that is, may He grant them the gift of being enlightened through the Spirit. For if the Spirit does not open the hidden mysteries, it is impossible to learn them by any other means. For He alone—and no other, neither Angel nor Archangel—‘searches all things, even the deep things 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 opened to us by the Spirit, we enter into the state of the knowledge of God, our eyes are enlightened, and we are no longer shaken by doubts, but see all things as they are.” That is, it is then that the apostolic wish is fulfilled over us: “that you may know.”

“What is the hope of the calling” and “what the riches of glory” can be referred to one and the same thing, namely the future glorious state of believers. But they can also be distinguished, referring “the hope of the calling” to what is immediately promised to those called by the preaching of the Gospel—and immediately given upon their believing and receiving the sacraments of baptism and chrismation—and referring the riches of glory to the future glorification of believers. What is promised to those who are called, if they respond to the calling? The forgiveness of sins, the grace of the Holy Spirit for the attainment of holiness, and adoption as sons—as a pre-election to eternal blessedness. All of this is given immediately as soon as one responds to the calling, and may rightly be called the hope of the “calling” in distinction from the hope of glory, signified here as the riches of the glory of the inheritance among the saints. Here the same thing happens as with a master who calls workers and gives them something even before the work begins, as soon as they agree to work for him, assuring them that full payment will be made at the end of the work. So too the Lord calls to Himself for work—to live according to His will—and immediately grants forgiveness of sins, grace, and adoption. One who labours as he should receives in the next life full payment, or full reward, which will be not according to the labour but according to the breadth of God’s mercy, which will use the labour merely as an occasion for enriching those who have worked with inexhaustible blessings.

These inexhaustible blessings the Apostle calls “the riches of glory” of the inheritance, or the rich glory of the heritage, or, as St. Chrysostom expresses it, “…glory ineffable. Indeed, whose words could represent the glory with which the saints will one day be made worthy? — No one’s, certainly. To understand this, the human mind truly needs grace—it needs to receive even a small ray (of spiritual light).”

It is called an inheritance insofar as it has been prepared for those who have been adopted as sons (Theophylact). By which at the same time the certainty of receiving it is also confirmed, for a son, as long as he is a son, is without doubt an heir and will receive the inheritance as an undisputed possession. One need only preserve within oneself, or for oneself, the quality of sonship to God. This is why the Apostle added: “among the saints.” Those who are called, if they remain holy and blameless and thereby maintain the dignity of sons of God by grace, will without doubt inherit the rich and ineffable glory in eternity.