Paul frequently declares that he was directly called as an apostle by the will of the Lord, so as to circumvent those who desired this honor with human presumptions. He writes to the saints and the faithful at Ephesus, adding his blessing as with the love of a father.

When Jesus Christ elected Paul and made him an apostle, he elected him through the Spirit by the will of God or the power through whom God works his will. Let us therefore understand, as I often say, that the will of God is the very power, greatness and substance of the whole divine plenitude. Christ—that is, God’s Word which was in Christ—is the will of God. Those who consider this more closely will find that God and his will are inseparable.

In other letters when he writes to a church and its people he does not add to the saints and the faithful. But now, because he desires to keep them loyal to the holy Name, so that being sanctified they will not add anything superficially in excess of the Name, he calls them simply by this name: they are the faithful in Christ.

He writes not only to the faithful but to the saints to show that they are truly faithful insofar as they have been sanctified in Christ. For a good life is worthwhile and is called saintly if it is lived in the name of Jesus. Otherwise it is polluted, because it injures the Creator.

Those whom he has called saintly he also calls faithful, because faith derives from the choice of our own minds, but sanctification we receive meanwhile from the abundance of the Sanctifier, not from our own will. As for his saying faithful in Jesus Christ, this is aimed at drawing a distinction that should be carefully noted. For there are those who have genuine faith but not faith in Jesus Christ. Someone who returns a deposit and does not deny another’s trust shows himself a faithful friend. . . . This person is indeed faithful but not in Christ.

Both grace and peace remove contention. They convey the will of God. Since therefore they were in the grip of error, grace was first sought on their behalf, in order that they should know God and fully obey God and Christ, putting all trust in Christ and nothing else. . . . Then he also adds peace from God. The one who wills ungraciously creates severe discord.

He calls God our Father because all things are created and restored in him. He calls Christ Lord because he redeems us, offering himself on our behalf.

It could be argued that both should be referred to both, that is, both grace and peace apply no less to God the Father than to our Lord Jesus Christ. Or it could be argued that each should be referred to each, so that grace is referred to God the Father and peace to Christ. It is more likely the latter, since the words immediately following are to the praise of the glory of God’s grace. Thus the grace of the Father lies in his willingness to send the Son for our salvation, while the peace of the Son lies in the fact that we are reconciled to the Father through him.

Now the phrase blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is to be read in a double sense. It first means that God is blessed as the maker of all things, this being the main clause. To this is then added who is also the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It means that both God and Father are to be referred in common to our Lord. Blessed is the God of the man who has been assumed^[1] and the father of him who was the Word of God with God in the beginning! Not that the assumed one is other than the Word who assumed him, but that he who is one and the same is spoken of now by sublime and now by humble titles, according to what circumstances demand.

He means not with an earthly but a heavenly blessing, not corruptible but eternal, because Christ’s glory is not in earth but in heaven and in Christ. For every gift of God’s grace is in Christ. If someone who despises Christ imagines that he is blessed by God, he is wrong. Yet God is blessed in one way, humans in another. There is indeed one term blessing, but it should be understood as is proper to the recipient. . . . God is blessed when he is extolled with due praises, but the way in which God blesses human beings is to impart to them the gift of his grace, not according to their merits but according to his mercy.

Now God has blessed us not with this or that blessing but with every blessing. It is not as though we all obtain them all at once, but singly we obtain particular ones in due time or some of the whole number. Thereby we possess their fullness through these singular blessings. He speaks not only of earthly blessings but of spiritual—there are indeed earthly blessings, as when someone has children, affluence in riches, the pleasure of honor and health. . . . But spiritual blessings are in the heavens because the earth is too small to circumscribe a spiritual blessing.

Since God reveals himself to be blessed in spiritual and heavenly things, it is not amid these earthly and corporeal things that one should look for that perfect blessedness of the saints.

He has conferred on us the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He has given us the hope of resurrection, the good news of immortality, the promise of the kingdom of heaven, the dignity of sonship. These he calls the spiritual blessings. And he adds in heavenly places, because these gifts are heavenly.

God, foreknowing all, knew who were going to believe in Christ.^[1] . . . Therefore those whom God is said to call will persevere in faith. These are the ones whom he elected before the world in Christ, so that they might be blameless before God through love—that is, so that the love of God might give them holy lives. For no one can show greater respect toward another than when he obeys in love.

What he means is this: The one through whom he has blessed us is the one through whom he has elected us. . . . Christ chose us to have faith in him before we came into being, indeed even before the world was founded. The word foundation was well chosen, to indicate that it was laid down from some great height. For great and ineffable is the height of God, not in a particular place but rather in his remoteness from nature. So great is the distance between creature and Creator.

Paul, wishing to show that God made all things out of nothing, ascribed to him not the composition, the creation or the making but the katabolē, that is, the inception of the foundation.

One might ask if this is not contradicted by the prophetic saying In your sight shall no living being be justified.^[1] . . . One may answer, taking refuge in the double meanings of prophecy, that . . . no one is in all respects and throughout his whole life justified in God’s sight, since he will of course have sinned at some time. But this would not prevent some from being at times holy and blameless before him if they have become so through correction.

You have been elected, he says, in order to be holy and unblemished before his face. . . . He himself has made us saints, but we are called to remain saints. A saint is one who lives in faith, is unblemished and leads a blameless life.

The sanctified life is not the effect of our labors or achievements but of God’s love. It is not born of love alone or of our own virtue. For if it were from love alone, all ought to be saved. Again, if it were from our virtue his earthly appearing and the whole of his work would be unnecessary. But it is not from love alone or from our virtue but from God through God. . . . Virtue would have saved no one had there been no love. . . . For to become virtuous and to believe and to advance, this too was the work of the One who called us, even though it is something we can share.

Between saintly and unblemished there is this difference, that one who is saintly is ipso facto understood also to be unblemished, but one who is at some point unblemished is not by that fact itself saintly. Infants, after all, are spotless because their bodies are pure and they have committed no sin; and yet they are not saintly, because sanctity is not acquired without will and effort. Moreover, he who has done no sin can be called unblemished, but the saintly person is the one who is full of virtues.

It is asked how anyone can be saintly and unblemished in God’s sight. . . . We must reply [that] Paul does not say he chose us before the foundation of the world on account of our being saintly and unblemished. He chose us that we might become saintly and unblemished, that is, that we who were not formerly saintly and unblemished should subsequently be so. . . . So understood it provides a counterargument to one who says that souls were elected before the world came to be because of their sanctity and freedom from any sinful vice.

God in his love has predestined us to adoption through Christ. How could God possibly have Christ for his Son by adoption? . . . We speak of ourselves as heirs of God the Father and heirs through Christ, being sons through adoption. Christ is his Son, through whom it is brought about that we become sons and fellow heirs in Christ.^[1]

The former [verse] refers to those saints who did not previously exist and who before they came into being were thought of and subsequently acquired existence. This [verse] speaks of God, who was preceded by no thought or willing but always existed and never had a beginning for his existence. Therefore he rightly used the term destined for those who, having once not existed, subsequently acquired existence. But of the Son, that is, of our Lord Jesus Christ, he wrote ordained in another place also.^[1]

Christ, as we have often said already, is wisdom, justice, peace, joy, temperance and the rest. Note that the names of all these virtues are loved even by those who do not pursue them! No one is such a brazen criminal that he does not claim to love wisdom and justice.

The reason for saying he destined us in love is that he empowered us with his gracious love in order to predestine us.

Everywhere the purpose^[1] or good pleasure means God’s antecedent will.^[2] Yet there is another will. For God’s first [or antecedent] will is that sinners should not perish. His second or consequent will^[3] is that those who become evil should perish. Hence he does not chastise them from necessity but due to their own willing.

The eternal firmness and firm eternity of God’s predestinating will consist not only in the ordaining of works. God also knows in advance the number of the elect. No one of that full number may lose his eternal grace, nor may any outside that total attain the gift of eternal salvation. For God, who knows all things before they come to pass, is not confused about the number of the predestined, any more than he doubts the effectiveness of the works he has ordained.^[1]

We, being such as we are, are surrounded and held fast by vice and libidinous sin. When we are set free by him, acquitted of sin and pardoned for our sins, we are also adopted as his sons. All this is therefore to the praise of his glory and grace—his glory because he can do so much, and his grace because he offers this to us freely.

So that our love for him may become more fervent, he desires nothing from us except our salvation. He does not need our service or anything else but does everything for this end. One who openly expresses praise and wonder at God’s grace will be more eager and zealous.

The one who is yet to be redeemed is a captive. He has ceased to be free by coming under the power of the enemy. So we are captives in this world and bound by the yoke of slavery to the principalities and powers, unable to release our hands from our chains. So we raise our eyes upward until the Redeemer arrives.

The death of the Lord has made us worthy of love. In shedding through him the toils of sin and being freed from slavery to the tyrant,^[1] we have been drawn toward the characteristics of God’s image.

Forgiveness of sins follows redemption, for there would be no forgiveness of sin for anyone before redemption occurs. First then we need to be redeemed, to be no longer subject to our captor and oppressor, so that having been freed and taken out of his hands we may be able to receive the benefit of remission of sins. Once our wounds have been healed we are called to live in accord with piety and the other virtues.

The wonder is not only that he gave his Son but that he did so in this way, by sacrificing the one he loved. It is astonishing that he gave the Beloved for those who hated him. See how highly he honors us. If even when we hated him and were enemies he gave the Beloved, what will he not do for us now?

The riches of God are heaped upon us in that he makes us something better than we were at the beginning of our existence.

The whole of this wisdom and prudence consists in knowing Christ and through Christ understanding and seeing God. For whatever remaining wisdom there is in the world and whatever other wisdom of this kind there may be outside it, all wisdom and prudence is nonetheless empty, worthless and wretched without Christ.

The pleasure of God, whose counsel cannot be changed, was to show in Christ the mystery of his will. This happened at the time when he chose that he should be revealed. Now his will was this, that he should then draw close to all who were in sin, either in heaven or in earth. God gave Christ to bring believers the gift of forgiveness of their sins through faith in Christ.

The Stoics also hold that there is a distinction between wisdom and insight. They say, Wisdom is the knowledge of things divine and human, insight only of that which is mortal. According to this distinction we might apply Paul’s term wisdom to the invisible and visible and insight only to the visible.

Some attentive reader might object: If Paul knows in part and prophesies in part and now sees as through a glass darkly,^[1] how is the mystery of God revealed either to him or to the Ephesians in all wisdom and insight? . . . It is not that they by themselves have learned this mystery in all wisdom and insight, but God in all wisdom and insight has revealed the mystery to us, so far as we are able to grasp it.

We must examine the possibility that predestination and purpose differ so that purpose is presupposed in predestination. Thus, as it were, the predestination is in the thought of God and the purpose unfolds in accordance with things predestined, so that then they become realities and actualize the predestination.

Not only has God a will, but the intention of his will is expressed in Christ. Hence all things are done through him. There is nothing in the mystery that is not done through Jesus Christ.

The fullness of time was the Son’s appearing. When, then, God had done all through angels, through prophets and through the law, yet nothing had improved, there was a danger that humanity had come into being for nothing. It was not going merely nowhere but to the bad. All were perishing together, just like in the days of the flood but more so. Just then he offered this gracious dispensation—to ensure that creation should not have come into being for nothing or in vain. The fullness of time is that divine wisdom by which, at the moment when all were most likely to perish, they were saved.

See how precisely he speaks. The origin is from the Father—the design, the resolution, the first initiative. The embodied fulfillment of the design came through the Son, who is never called servant but always Son. . . . What the Father has willed in the Son is not external to his will. What the Son has done has not deprived the Father of his willing action. All is common in the relation of Father and Son.

Thus Christ unites^[1] . . . in himself all that is earthly and all that is spiritual. He unites humanity to Spirit and places the Spirit in humanity. Being himself made the fountainhead of the Spirit, Christ gives the Spirit to be the head of humanity. Thus through the Son by the Spirit we ourselves now see and hear and speak.

It is not all things indifferently that are restored but all things that are in Christ—both those that are in heaven and those that are on the earth but only those that are in Christ. Others are strange to him. Whatever things then are in Christ, it is these that are revitalized and rise again, whether in heaven or in earth. For he is salvation, he is renewal, he is eternity.

To recapitulate is to join together. But let us press on closer to the fuller truth. In our customary usage a recapitulation is a brief summary of what has been said at great length. It is a concise expression of everything that has been detailed. That is what it is here as well. The providential ordering that has occurred over a long time, the Son has once for all recapitulated. Everything is summed up in him. . . . There is also another meaning: In Christ’s incarnation God has given a single head to all creation, both angels and humans.

Only God’s nature needs nothing. The whole creation stood in need of his healing order of gifts. For, since the elements came into being to serve human needs, he made them subject to corruption, for he could foresee that transgression was going to make humanity mortal also. As for the unseen powers,^[1] they were naturally aggrieved when they saw human beings living in wickedness. . . . By recapitulation he means the complete transformation of things. For through the gift given through Christ the Lord the human nature is raised anew and puts on incorruptibility. Ultimately the visible creation, delivered from corruption, will receive incorrup-tion. The hosts of unseen powers will rejoice continually, because sorrow and grief and sighing have fled away. This is what the divine apostle teaches through these words; for he said not simply heaven and earth but those in heaven and those on earth.