There has been enough in our past lives to make us humble, if we would recall it, and to make us feel that we are not worthy to be enrolled among the saints. So it should be with us - with all Christians. If Paul was humble, who should not be? Who, since his time, has equalled his ardor, his zeal, his attainments in the divine life? Yet the remembrance of his former life served always to keep him humble, and operated as a check on all the tendencies to pride in his bosom. He felt that he was not worthy to be enrolled in that society which he had so greatly injured. He recalled the time when he persecuted the church. Paul felt that he was the least of all saints. It meets man as he is - as everywhere a fallen and a ruined being - and provides a plan adapted to raise all to the glories of the same heaven.Ģ. This is one of its glories and for this we should love it. The gospel regards all people as on a level offers the same salvation to all and offers it on the same terms. In all these eases, there is the secret feeling that in virtue of rank, or blood, or property, one class are the objects of divine interest, more than others and that the same plan of salvation is not needed for them which is required for the poor, for the ignorant, and for the slave. In another, the attempt is made to create such a distinction by wealth and it is felt that the rich are the favorites of Heaven.
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In another, complexion has made a difference and the feeling has insensibly grown up that one class were the favorites of Heaven, because they had a skin not colored like others, and that those not thus favored might be doomed to hopeless toil and servitude. In another nation, it has been held that the services of an illustrious ancestry made a difference among people, and that this fact was to he regarded, even in religion. In one nation, there has been a distinction of "caste" carefully kept up from age to age, and sustained by all the power of the priesthood and the laws and it has been held that that one class was the favorite of Heaven, and that every other was overlooked or despised. The great effort has been made everywhere to show that there was a favored class of people - a class whom God regarded with special affection, on account of their birth, or rank, or nation, or wealth, or complexion. The Jews regarded themselves as a unique people, and as exclusively the favorites of Heaven. It is a great and glorious truth that the offers of the gospel are made to us, who are by nature Gentiles and that those offers are confined to no class or condition of people - to no nation or tribe Ephesians 3:1-6.
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It is literally, "Unto all generations of the age of ages," or "unto all the generations of the eternity of eternities, or the eternity of ages." It is the language of a heart full of the love of God, and desiring that he might be praised without ceasing forever and ever.ġ. It is one of "the apostle's self-invented phrases" (Bloomfield) and Blackwall says that no version can fully express the meaning. It means, in the strongest sense, forever. Throughout all ages, world without end - There is a richness and amplification of language here which shows that his heart was full of the subject, and that it was difficult to find words to express his conceptions. The church was to be the instrument by which the glory of God would be shown and it was by the church that his praise would be celebrated. In the church - Or, by the church Ephesians 3:10. Barnes' Notes on the BibleUnto him be glory - see the notes, Romans 16:27.
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