The Son Redeems Definitely
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
Ephesians 1:7-12
The central portion of this doxology belongs to the work of the Son (vv. 7-12). It not only speaks of His work on the cross and its personally saving results, but of Christ as the central formal cause of all things. Here the words “fullness” and “mystery” and “inheritance” must all be treated in relation to each other, and all according to those same first and final causes that we already saw with the Father’s role, namely, the divine will and to the praise of His glory.
There is no ambiguity in who is being talked about here, anymore than there was about the Father’s activity in the previous section. For a fifth time, the concept of “in Christ” is used—the others being “faithful in Christ Jesus” (v. 1), “chose us in Christ” (v. 2), “he chose us in him” (v. 4), and again, “blessed us in the Beloved” (v. 6). Here, in verse 7, ‘In him’ (ἐν ᾧ) is in the dative use of the relative pronoun (ὅς, ἥ, ὅ), rendered, given the context, as which, whom, who, what, whose, this, or one. The ESV uses the opportunity, using the conceptual referent “Him,” to divide the sentences, so that this begins a new one. Whereas, the case against such a break relies on the most literal rendering. Hendriksen reinforces this, saying:
In the second paragraph the attention is shifted from heaven to earth, from the past to the present, and, in a sense, from the Father to the Son. I say ‘in a sense,’ for the change is by no means abrupt. The infinitely close connection between the Father and the Son in the work of redemption is fully maintained ... Nevertheless, the emphasis has changed from the work of the Father to that of the Son.1
Perhaps there is something of our union with Christ that Paul also has in mind. Thomas Watson wrote of Christ that, “He had the best right to redeem us, for he is our kinsman. The Hebrew word for Redeemer, Goel, signifies a kinsman, one that is near in blood. In the old law the nearest kinsman was to redeem his brother’s land. Ruth iv 4. Thus Christ being near akin to us, ‘Flesh of our flesh,’ is the fittest to redeem us.”2
The Form and Matter of Redemption
Under ‘we have’ (v. 7) we should consider how much this solidifies. We denotes a definite body of people, and have denotes an actual possession. Given the context of the opening to this letter, thus far, it is absolutely unnatural to read into this expression a merely possible possession held out for a hypothetical demographic. To be sure, each individual not yet born when Paul wrote it, or, perhaps, not yet a believer when first reading it, stands in a hypothetical and potential relationship to this possession, subjectively speaking. However, this is not because the security or substance of the object itself is added to by the addition of each subsequent member coming to be awakened to its reality. In short, the redemption secures the redeemed, not the redeemed the redemption.
Redemption (v. 7) means the purchase of something or someone, with a price.
The Reformed scholastic Petrus van Mastricht gave a very helpful summary:
Redemption, with respect to the term (λύτρωσις, Luke 1:68; 2:38; Heb. 9:12; ἀπολύτρωσις, Rom. 3:24; 8:23; Eph. 1:7, 14; Col. 1:14; Heb. 9:15), properly denotes a deliverance that occurs by a payment of a set price, the kind by which captive soldiers are set free, and although perhaps, now and again in the Scriptures it may denote a deliverance procured without the payment of a price (Acts 7:35), yet that happens improperly, and cannot be extended to that deliverance for which the price itself is expressly noted. Also concerning the word it must not be neglected that sometimes it may signal a future deliverance that is more actual and perfect (Luke 21:28; Rom. 8:23; Eph. 4:31; Heb. 11:35), and sometimes a present deliverance that is more virtual and imperfect (e.g. 1 Cor. 1:30; Eph. 1:7; Heb. 9; etc.).3
A needless obstacle arises here in the form of a dilemma. Does the Bible favor the theme of a general rescue by this word, or does it focus more specifically on the payment aspect? There are two reasons to reject this as a false dilemma. The first is that if the payment is the means of securing the rescue, then it is a category mistake to pit them against each other. The second is that one set of language may predominate as general because there are more kinds of rescues in life than the ultimate of being saved from our sins, or from God’s wrath. It may even be that the ultimate redemption is what secures, in a sense, all of the subordinate kinds.
At any rate, Thielman suggests about the two Hebrew words used for “redeem” as if with a ransom (גָּאַל and פָדַע), and their connection to the Greek, that “In both the Hebrew Scriptures and the LXX, all three terms and the nouns associated with them frequently carry a metaphorical meaning, distinctive to Biblical Greek, in which the notion of a purchase price fades into the background and the simple notion of deliverance or rescue, whether from Egypt, Babylon, other nations, or personal distress, becomes primary.”4
Eadie saw the same rationale in his day issued as a challenge against the transaction—i.e., blood for satisfaction:
It has been said that the idea of ransom is sometimes dropped, and that the word denotes merely rescue. We question this, at least in the New Testament; certainly not in Rom. viii. 23, for the redemption of the body is, equally with that of the soul, the result of Christ's ransom-work. Even in Heb. xi. 35, and in Luke xxi. 28, we might say that the notion of ransom is not altogether sunk, though it be of secondary moment; in the one case it is apostasy, in the other the destruction of the Jewish state, which is the ideal price ... The human race need deliverance, and they cannot, either by price or by conquest, effect their own liberation, for the penal evil which sin has entailed upon them fetters and subdues them.5
Although Leon Morris speaks as if the transactional import of this word is widely attested,6 Lincoln says that this “is a rare word in nonbiblical Greek and appears only once in the LXX, in Dan. 4:34, yet it occurs ten times in the NT, seven of these in the Pauline corpus.”7 Likely Morris meant the concept, more so than the exact word. Lincoln belongs among the more overly cautious here, rather than among the liberals. He says, “It is hard to decide this issue, but it appears to be overdogmatic to insist on ransom connotations for all uses of ἀπολύτρωσις in the NT. It is safer to see these only where they are explicit in the context.”8
It hardly requires insisting that “all uses” of the word refer to the ransom in order to maintain that this is the most essential idea when it comes to the cross. The related root λύτρον is used in Matthew 20:28 and Mark 10:45, which are parallel texts. There we are told how “the Son of Man came … to give his life as a ransom for many.” This is exactly where the blood of Jesus comes into the picture. So Paul joins the words immediately to redemption ‘through his blood’ (v. 7). The construction διὰ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ may suggest that the blood of Jesus is an instrumental cause of redemption. Eadie points to the etymological connection: “ἀπολύτρωσιν, as its origin intimates, signifies deliverance by the payment of a price or ransom—λύτρον.”9
Two other crucial verses for this are:
knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot (1 Pet. 1:18-19).
[You] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith (Rom. 3:24-25).
Though there is instrumentality here in terms of the translation, yet blood is a substance. Even if we carefully distinguish that which really makes atonement in heaven versus that which is spilled from the literal veins of the human Jesus on earth, still this suggests a material cause. Eadie’s comments are in agreement: “The means of deliverance, or the price paid, was the blood of Christ—διὰ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ; as in Acts xx. 28, where we have περιεποιήσατο, and 1 Cor. vi. 20, where we have, under a different aspect, ἠγοράσθητε, and similarly in Gal. iii. 13. Blood is the material of expiation.”10 Likewise, Calvin interprets it: “The apostle is still illustrating the material cause, — the manner in which we are reconciled to God through Christ. By his death he has restored us to favor with the Father; and therefore we ought always to direct our minds to the blood of Christ, as the means by which we obtain divine grace.”11
F. F. Bruce speaks of the continuity and discontinuity between old and new when it comes to the redeeming function of blood: “If, even under the shadow-economy of the Levitical ritual, sacrificial blood was accepted for worshippers’ atonement ‘by reason of the life’ (Lev. 17:11), then the price at which our emancipation was purchased was the infinitely more acceptable life of the Incarnate Son, freely offered up on the cross as a sacrifice to God in behalf of men.”12 It is in the Old Covenant sacrifices that we will come across the related word “atonement” with great frequency. This will help is theological discourse, in which the words atonement and redemption are often used interchangeably. While redemption references the purchase that salvation required, the idea of atonement suggests the more holistic rectitude, the making right what had been made wrong. Someone once even suggested the etymology of “at-one-ment” for this very reason.
The word in the phrase ‘the forgiveness of our trespasses’ (v. 7) may be translated at “trespasses” or “sins.” There is another main word for “sin” in the Greek New Testament, namely, hamartia, from which he derive the name of the more obscure loci, hamartiology. By contrast, παράπτωμα means more specifically “transgressions, transgression, trespasses, trespass,” signifying a slipping or falling away. Although Eadie cautions us from dividing these two words into a scale of sin, “as Jerome affirms, that the first term means the lapse toward sin, and the second the completed act in itself, for παράπτωμα is expressly applied by Paul in Rom. x. 15, etc., to the first sin of the first man.”13 At any rate, Eadie adds, “The apostle places the forgiveness of sins in apposition with redemption, not as its only element, but as a blessing immediate, characteristic, and prominent.”14
The expression πλοῦτος τῆς χάριτος αὐτοῦ, ‘the riches of his grace’ (v. 7) may be a way of applying the opening expression in verse 3 down to the work of the cross—so that the central blessing that secures all others is seen to be out of that same sovereign good pleasure. Henry commented,
Christ’s satisfaction and God’s rich grace are very consistent in the great affair of man’s redemption. God was satisfied by Christ as our substitute and surety; but it was rich grace that would accept of a surety, when he might have executed the severity of the law upon the transgressor, and it was rich grace to provide such a surety as his own Son, and freely to deliver him up, when nothing of that nature could have entered into our thoughts, nor have been any otherwise found out for us.15
As the Apostle comes full circle, Calvin says, “He now returns to the efficient cause, — the largeness of the divine kindness, which has given Christ to us as our Redeemer. Riches, and the corresponding word overflow, in the following verse, are intended to give us large views of divine grace.”16
Perhaps the passage that should come first in our reflection upon 1:7 is the parallel passage in Colossians 1:13-14, which says, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” There Paul maintains the emphasis of redemption and its consequences for sins, but the context is a bit different. Not the trinitarian work of salvation per se, but Christ’s Lordship and supremacy over the cosmos. Specifically the antithesis in the cosmic warfare is not utterly divorced from redemption. We have been moved from inhabitants in (even combatants for) one cosmic realm to the other.
I contend that an honest reading of this passage demands something like the Reformed doctrine of limited atonement—or, if you prefer, definite atonement or particular redemption. The particularity of it is signaled from the word “we,” and the definite or actual accomplishment of that work is signaled by the word “have.” What exact label one uses is immaterial, except that the use of the right one may be tailored to one’s audience. Even if one wants to object to that thorniest of labels that we reduce to the L in the TULIP acronym—even here, the objector has a fundamental problem to overcome. All Evangelicals are at least particularists. Let us call it “the particularist’s dilemma.” Sproul sets up the dilemma in this way:
It seems to follow from the idea of unlimited atonement that salvation is universal. The vast majority of Arminians, Dispensationalists, and other semi-Pelagians who deny limited atonement, however, reject universalism. Historic Arminianism embraces particularism: not all people are saved, only a particular number of them.17
In other words, assuming that one is not a universalist, then we all believe in limited atonement. The only remaining questions are what exactly limits it and what exactly was accomplished by it? We maintain that God’s decree is the limiting factor, as this passage had already proclaimed. We further insist that what we do in response contributes nothing to its accomplishment. Christ secured a people by His work on the cross. This is the meaning of where we are told,
“when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring” (Isa. 53:10).
“I lay down my life for the sheep” (Jn. 10:15).
“Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25).
“that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them” (Heb. 9:15).
“For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Heb. 10:14).
“To those who are elect … for sprinkling with his blood” (1 Pet. 1:1, 2).
Before we move from the matter and form of redemption to its ends, we would do well to reconnect this work of the Son with the work of the Father, as Paul himself does in verse 11.
“In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.”
Here we have returned back to the ultimate cause of the whole of salvation. What else should one conclude but that the Son’s work is traceable in this way back to the work of the Father? In saying this, I should point out what theologians call the “inseparable operations” of the Trinity. We shorthand here concerning the Father and the Son for two reasons: first, because the Scriptures themselves do; and secondly, because we can speak of the Son’s mission as distinct from the Father without implying that the Father and the Son had the one divine will separated in order to cause the decree. Paul’s concern is different in any event. He wants all Christian readers to see the Son’s work, no less than the Father’s, to be uncaused by what the sinner does. Calvin adds that, “In no respect, therefore, are men admitted to share in this praise, as if they brought anything of their own. God looks at nothing out of himself to move him to elect them, for the counsel of his own will is the only and actual cause of their election.”18
The Ends of Redemption
What follows from the cross is difficult to enumerate. Consider those words of Paul elsewhere that, “all the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Cor. 1:20). There is not a single blessing of the Christian that is not a blood-bought gift. That God ‘lavished upon us’ (v. 8) is made possible by the death of Christ. There is a greater to lesser rationale that he famously gives: “He who did not spare his own Son but rgave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). Nothing is so great that God would not give it, since He already gave that which is more valuable than all other things combined. So this idea of lavishing is neither overstated nor understated. It is not overstated because, apart from Christ, the only thing God would owe us is vengeance. Therefore it would be the height of impertinent arrogance for us to complain over anything He has withheld. To receive an abundance from God is a surprise. But Paul does not mean to be understated either, because to have given His Son is to have given the fountain from which will flow infinite goods throughout the eternal state. Henry says,
Heaven is the inheritance, the happiness of which is a sufficient portion for a soul: it is conveyed in the way of an inheritance, being the gift of a Father to his children. If children, then heirs. All the blessings that we have in hand are but small if compared with the inheritance. What is laid out upon an heir in his minority is nothing to what is reserved for him when he comes to age. Christians are said to have obtained this inheritance, as they have a present right to it, and even actual possession of it, in Christ their head and representative.19
Is ‘wisdom and insight’ (v. 8). the form, matter, or end of grace? The commentators are split on it. Lincoln takes this to be an addition of these, in grace, for the Christian life: “God’s lavish grace not only provides redemption but also supplies, along with this, all necessary wisdom and insight to understand and live in the light of what he has done in Christ and its implications.”20 Thielman points to “Many interpreters” who see wisdom and understanding to be “a further description of what God lavishes on his people.”21 If this expression is pointing to the form that the grace took in that fullness of time, then the meaning of it cannot be put better than Henry did: “How illustrious have the divine wisdom and prudence rendered themselves, in so happily adjusting the matter between justice and mercy in this grand affair, in securing the honour of God and his law, at the same time that the recovery of sinners and their salvation are ascertained and made sure!”22
This is the first use of the word μυστήριον, ‘mystery’ (v. 9). Boice says that, “In Bible language a mystery is something that formerly was unknown but is now revealed.”23
Calvin positions the gospel mystery of free grace against the natural difficulty all tend to have:
Some were alarmed at the novelty of his doctrine. With a view to such persons, he very properly denominates it a mystery of the divine will, and yet a mystery which God has now been pleased to reveal. As he formerly ascribed their election, so he now ascribes their calling, to the good pleasure of God. The Ephesians are thus led to consider that Christ has been made known, and the gospel preached to them, not because they deserved any such thing, but because it pleased God.24
When Calvin says “their election ... their calling,” I take him to be including both the corporate and individual shock that this truth presented. It may be that the Jews’ surprise that Gentiles could be elect and called is that which is confounded by the mystery, or that any individual would. Both certainly represented an offense.
This ‘fullness of time’ (v. 10) is that same concept taught in Galatians 4:4, except that here, rather than have it terminate in the Incarnation per se, it takes the form of the mystery coming to light. One takeaway, says Calvin, is to, “Let human presumption restrain itself, and, in judging of the succession of events, let it bow to the providence of God.”25
It is another word in verse 10 that requires more explanation. It is the Greek word ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι. The ESV renders this “to unite.” Martyn Lloyd Jones points to the word “again,” which functions as a prefix here ought never be “omitted” from our modern English translations, and that it often is. It is really more like “bring together again.” The word kephalē, by itself, means “head.” This can be a headstone, but also a main point or summary, as in an argument. So then Christ is the “big idea” of all created reality, not only redemption. However, the again suggests that this mystery, bound up under the surface of everything, will one day come to the light of all. Calvin has a very useful summary of this summary:
The meaning appears to me to be, that out of Christ all things were disordered, and that through him they have been restored to order. And truly, out of Christ, what can we perceive in the world but mere ruins? We are alienated from God by sin, and how can we but present a broken and shattered aspect? The proper condition of creatures is to keep close to God. Such a gathering together (ἀνακεφαλαίωσις) as might bring us back to regular order, the apostle tells us, has been made in Christ. Formed into one body, we are united to God, and closely connected with each other. Without Christ, on the other hand, the whole world is a shapeless chaos and frightful confusion. We are brought into actual unity by Christ alone.26
The summation of ‘things in heaven and things on earth in him’ (v. 10) appears not to be a treatment of two separate summations, though, perhaps that could be done. The conjunction is meant to say that it is precisely these two realms that are being reconciled. That is, after all, the implication of the eternal state being called the “new heavens and a new earth” (Isa. 65:17; cf. 66:22; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1). But here again Calvin offers a profound analysis.
But why are heavenly beings included in the number? The angels were never separated from God, and cannot be said to have been scattered. Some explain it in this manner. Angels are said to be gathered together, because men have become members of the same society, are admitted equally with them to fellowship with God, and enjoy happiness in common with them by means of this blessed unity. The mode of expression is supposed to resemble one frequently used, when we speak of a whole building as repaired, many parts of which were ruinous or decayed, though some parts remained entire ... Who then will deny that both angels and men have been brought back to a fixed order by the grace of Christ? Men had been lost, and angels were not beyond the reach of danger. By gathering both into his own body, Christ hath united them to God the Father, and established actual harmony between heaven and earth.27
We can say, then, that the end causes of the Son’s work are the transfer from being in the devil’s kingdom to being in Christ’s (taking also the Colossians passage into account), the forgiveness of sins, all manner of graces lavished upon us, including a reconciled spiritual and material realm. But even all of those are subordinate ends to the ultimate.
The ultimate end of redemption here is the same as the one Paul mentioned about election. It is only a shortened version. Whereas above he said, ‘to the praise of his glorious grace’ (v. 6), here it is ‘to the praise of his glory’ (v. 12). Since the whole section concerns salvation, there is no need for strict repetition. Clearly the work of the Son and the work of the Spirit are equally by grace, so that this is that basic glory being shown throughout. The upshot is the same for us as well. Just as the Father chose us that we would give Him the credit for doing so, likewise the Son redeemed us that we would give Him the credit for doing so. God’s glory remains on a collision course with human boasting.
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1. Hendriksen, Exposition of Ephesians, 81.
2. Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2008), 209.
3. Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, Volume 4: Redemption in Christ (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2023), 588.
4. Thielman, Ephesians, 59.
5. Eadie, A Commentary on the Greek Text of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, 40.
6. cf. Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), and The Atonement: Its Meaning and Significance (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983).
7. Lincoln, Ephesians, 27.
8. Lincoln, Ephesians, 28.
9. Eadie, A Commentary on the Greek Text of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, 40.
10. Eadie, A Commentary on the Greek Text of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, 40.
11. Calvin, Commentaries, XXI:202.
12. Bruce, The Epistle to the Ephesians, 31.
13. Eadie, A Commentary on the Greek Text of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, 41.
14. Eadie, A Commentary on the Greek Text of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, 41.
15. Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 2308.
16. Calvin, Commentaries, XXI:202.
17. Sproul, What is Reformed Theology? Understanding the Basics (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997), 165.
18. Calvin, Commentaries, XXI:206.
19. Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 2308.
20. Lincoln, Ephesians, 29.
21. Thielman, Ephesians, 61.
22. Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 2308.
23. Boice, Ephesians, 24.
24. Calvin, Commentaries, XXI:203.
25. Calvin, Commentaries, XXI:204.
26. Calvin, Commentaries, XXI:205.
27. Calvin, Commentaries, XXI:205.
