Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ephesians 1:14
Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.
14. the earnest ] The Gr. word is arrhabn. It appears in the LXX. (only in Gen 38:17-18; Gen 38:20); in the later Greek classics (e.g. Aristotle); and in the Latin classics. It is Shemitic (Heb. ’rbhn, Genesis 38) by derivation. See further, Additional Note, p. 164. It probably reached the Greeks and Latins through the (Shemitic) Phenician traders. By derivation it has to do with exchange, and so first means a pledge (the word used here by the ancient Latin versions) to be exchanged between two parties to an agreement first given, then on fulfilment returned. But usage brought it to the kindred meaning of an earnest; a part of a price, given as a tangible promise of the payment of the whole in time. Thus it is defined by the Greek lexicographers. It was used for the bridegroom’s betrothal-gifts to the bride; a case exactly in point here. In ecclesiastical Latin, prose and verse, it appears usually in the shortened form arra. It survives in the French arrhes, the money paid to strike a bargain. Arrhbn occurs elsewhere in N. T. 2Co 1:22; 2Co 5:5. There, as here, it denotes the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to the saints, as the part-payment of their coming “weight of glory,” the inmost essence of which is the complete attainment (1Jn 3:2) of that likeness to their Lord which the Spirit begins and developes here (2Co 3:18). A kindred expression is “ the firstfruits of the Spirit,” Rom 8:23, where see note in this Series.
our inheritance ] The “enjoyment fully for ever” of God in Christ; the final Canaan of the true Israel, His “heirs” because His children (Rom 8:17).
until ] Better, perhaps (as the more usual meaning of the Gr.), unto; with a view to; as the spiritual means to the glorious end.
redemption ] See note on Eph 1:7, and on Rom 8:23. The saints already “have redemption,” in the radical sense of Acceptance, rescue from condemnation into sonship. But they still look forward to redemption, in the developed sense of actual emancipation from the last effects of sin, which is to come when the body is glorified along with the spirit.
the purchased possession ] The R. V. renders “ God’s own possession.” “Purchased” is an idea not necessary to the Gr. noun (though such passages as Act 20:28 readily suggest it as a kindred idea here), which denotes simply “acquisition,” however made. The explanatory word “God” is doubtless a true interpretation. The noun is the same as that in 1Pe 2:9, where “peculiar” means (literally from the Gr.) “intended for (His) personal property ”. Thus the thought here is not of “glory” as the “property” of the saints, but of the saints, the Church, the New Israel (cp. Exo 19:5; Psa 135:4), as the property of God, to be hereafter actually “bought back” from the grave for His eternal use and pleasure.
unto the praise of His glory ] Cp. note on Eph 1:12. Here perhaps the word “glory” has a special reference to the manifestation of the Divine Character, as the Object of praise, in the glorified world.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Which is the earnest of our inheritance – On the meaning of this, see the notes at 2Co 1:22.
Until the redemption – see the notes at Rom 8:23. The meaning here is, we have the Holy Spirit as the pledge that that shall be ours, and the Holy Spirit will be imparted to us until we enter on that inheritance.
Of the purchased possession – Heaven, purchased for us by the death of the Redeemer. The word used here – peripoiesis – occurs in the following places in the New Testament: 1Th 5:9, rendered to obtain salvation; 2Th 2:14, to the obtaining of the glory of the Lord; Heb 10:39, to the saving of the soul; 1Pe 2:9, a peculiar people; literally, a people of acquirement to himself; and in the passage before us. It properly means, an acquisition, an obtaining, a laying up. Here it means, the complete deliverance from sin, and the eternal salvation acquired for us by Christ. The influence of the Holy Spirit, renewing and sanctifying us, comforting us in trials, and sustaining us in afflictions, is the pledge that the redemption is yet to be wholly ours.
Unto the praise of his glory – see Eph 1:6.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Eph 1:14
Which is the earnest of our inheritance.
The Holy Spirit the earnest of our inheritance
I. The Holy Spirit imparts heavenly knowledge to the mind, and is thus the earnest of our inheritance.
1. Heavens glory will consist partly in the direct and full vision of God, whom the redeemed shall see, no longer darkly as through a glass, but face to face. They will possess an immediate and intuitive knowledge of God in their minds, and as far as finite can comprehend the infinite, they will enjoy a clear perception of His nature and perfections, sufficient for their perfect satisfaction and blessedness. This knowledge is the most excellent possession which the intellect of man can conceive. It is the loftiest, the purest, and the most comprehensive of all kinds of knowledge. What a piece of goodness and condescension is it on Gods part to give unto us His blessed Word, inspired of the Holy Ghost, as a means to dispel the darkness of our minds and bring us to the knowledge of the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, which is eternal life! He the glory of heaven alights upon earth, dimmed, it may be indeed, by the earthly atmosphere, but still essentially the same. If God the Spirit is to speak to man, if He is to communicate the knowledge of God to us in our imperfect state, He must use the language of man–the language of earth; and He must also have respect to our weak capacities. In the Bible we have a clear and sufficient revelation of God. This light is furnished by the Holy Spirit.
2. Let us also notice another department of knowledge in which the Spirit so instructs believers as to become an earnest of heaven. We refer to the method of Divine Providence, a subject full of high and profitable instruction, but often difficult and inscrutable.
II. The Holy Spirit is an earnest of the inheritance by the peace and joy and comfort which He imparts to the soul. The essential elements of the saints inheritance, apart from any outward sources of heavenly riches, will consist in a full and perfectly satisfying knowledge of God and His works, in a pure and perfect love dwelling in their hearts, and in a constant and ineffable joy filling their souls like a river. The vision of God, perfect love, and boundless delight, will go together to make up heavens happiness–light, love, joy–a triune blessedness. (W. Alves, M. A.)
The earnest of heaven
So, then, heaven, with all its glories, is an inheritance. Not a thing that can be bought with money, earned by labour, or won by conquest. It comes by birth; it is given to the man who shall receive it, because he has been begotten again unto a lively hope, etc. They who come unto glory are sons. But is it possible for us, provided that heaven be our inheritance, and we are Gods sons–is it possible for us to know anything whatever of that land beyond the flood? It is. Gods Spirit can turn the veil aside for a moment, and bid us take a glimpse, though it be but a distant one, at that unutterable glory. There are Pisgahs even now on the surface of the earth, from the top of which the celestial Canaan can be beheld; there are hallowed hours in which the mists and clouds are swept away, and the sun shines in his strength, and our eye, being freed from its natural dimness, beholds something of that land which is very far off, and sees a little of the joy and blessedness which is reserved for the people of God hereafter. The text tells us that the Holy Spirit is the earnest of the inheritance–not merely a pledge, but a foretaste of that which shall be enjoyed in full hereafter–the first-fruits of the eternal harvest.
I. First, then, there are some works of the Spirit which are peculiarly an earnest to the child of God of the blessings of heaven.
1. And, first, heaven is a state of rest. It may be because I am constitutionally idle that I look upon heaven in the aspect of rest with greater delight than under any other view of it, with but one exception. To let the head, which is so continually exercised, for once lie still–to have no care, no trouble, no need to labour, to strain the intellect, or vex the limbs! It is a rest which puts from them all carking care, all harrowing remorse, all thoughts of tomorrow, all straining after a something which they have not as yet. They are runners no more–they have reached the goal; they are warriors no more–they have achieved the victory; they are labourers no more–they have reaped the harvest. They rest, saith the Spirit; they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them. My beloved, did you ever enjoy on certain high days of your experience a state of perfect rest? You could say you had not a wish in all the world ungratified: you knew yourself to be pardoned; you felt yourself to be an heir of heaven; Christ was precious to you; you knew that you walked in the light of your Fathers countenance; you had cast all your worldly care on Him, for He cared for you. You felt at that hour that if death could smite away your dearest friends, or if calamity should remove the most valuable part of your possessions on earth, yet you could say, The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. Your spirit floated along the stream of grace, without a struggle; you were not as the swimmer, who breasts the billows, and tugs and toils for life. Your soul was made to lie down in green pastures, beside the still waters. You were passive in Gods hands; you knew no will but His. Oh! that sweet day! It was a morsel taken from the loaf of delights; it was a sip out of the wine vats of immortal joy; it was silver spray from the waves of glory.
2. But, secondly, there is a passage in the Book of Revelation which may sometimes puzzle the uninstructed reader, where it is said concerning the angels, that They rest not day and night; and as we are to be as the angels of God, it must undoubtedly be true in heaven that, in a certain sense, they rest not day nor night. They always rest, so far as ease and freedom from care is concerned; they never rest, in the sense of indolence or inactivity. In heaven spirits are always on the wing; their lips are always singing the eternal hallelujahs unto the great Jehovah that sitteth upon the throne; they rest, but they rest on the wing; as the poet pictured the angel as he flew–not needing to move his wings, but resting, and yet darting swiftly through the ether, as though he were a flash shot from the eye of God. So shall it be with the people of God eternally; ever serving–never wearied with their service. They rest not day and night. Have there never been times with you when you have had both the pledge and the earnest of this kind of heaven?
3. Heaven is a place of communion with all the people of God. A heaven of people who did not know each other; and had no fellowship, could not be heaven, because God has so constituted the human heart that it loves society, and especially the renewed heart is so made that it cannot help communing with all the people of God. Have we anything on earth like this? Ay, that we have, in miniature. We have the pledge of this; for if we love the people of God, we may know that we shall surely be with them in heaven. We have the earnest of it; for how often has it been our privilege to hold the highest and sweetest fellowship with our fellow Christians!
4. Part of the bliss of heaven will consist in joy over sinners saved. The angels look down from the battlements of the city which hath foundations, and when they see prodigals return they sing. Jesus calleth together His friends and His neighbours, and He saith unto them, Rejoice with Me, for I have found the sheep which was lost.
5. But further than this–to put two or three thoughts into one, for brevitys sake: whenever, Christian, thou hast achieved a victory over thy lusts–whenever, after hard struggling, thou hast laid a temptation dead at thy feet–thou hast had in that day and hour a foretaste of the joy that awaits thee, when the Lord shall shortly tread Satan under thy feet. That victory in the first skirmish is the pledge and the earnest of the triumph in the last decisive battle. If thou hast overthrown one foe, thou shalt overthrow them all. Oh, Christian, there are many windows to heaven, through which God looks dawn on thee; and there are some windows through which thou mayest look up to Him. Let these past enjoyments be guarantees of thy future bliss; let them be to thee as the grapes of Eshcol were to the Jews in the wilderness; they wore the fruit of the land, and when they tasted them they said, It is a land that floweth with milk and honey. These enjoyments are the products of Canaan; they are handfuls of heavenly flowers thrown over the wall; they are bunches of heavens spices, brought to thee by angel hands across the stream. Heaven is full of joys like these. Thou hast but a few of them; heaven is strewn with them. There thy golden joys are but as stones, and thy most precious joys are as common as the pebbles of the brook. Now thou seest the glimmerings of heaven as a star twinkling from leagues of distance; follow that glimmering, and thou shalt see heaven no more as a star, but as the sun which shineth in its strength.
6. Permit me to remark yet once more, there is one foretaste of heaven which the Spirit gives which it were very wrong for us to omit. And now I shall seem, I dare say, to those who understand not spiritual mysteries, to be as one that dreams. There are moments when the child of God has real fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. You know what fellowship between man and man means. There is as real a fellowship between the Christian and Christ. Our eyes can look on Him. I say not that these human optics can behold the very flesh of Christ; but I say that the eyes of the soul can here on earth more truly see Christ, after a spiritual sort, than ever eyes of man saw Him when He was in the flesh on earth. There are moments with the believer when, whether in the body or out of the body, he cannot tell–God knoweth–but this he knows, that Christs left hand is under his head, and His right hand doth embrace him. Christ hath shown to him His hands and His side. He could say with Thomas, My Lord and my God; but he could not say much more. The world recedes; it disappears. The things of time are covered with a pall of darkness; Christ only stands out before the believers view.
7. I do not doubt, also, that on dying beds men get foretastes of heaven which they never had in health. When Death begins to pull down the old clay house, he knocks away much of the plaster, and then the light shines through the chinks. The nearer to death, the nearer to heaven, with the believer; the more sick, the nearer he is to health.
II. The black reverse of this picture. There is another world, for the wicked as well as for the righteous. They who believe not in Christ are no more annihilated than those who do believe in Him. If thou be this day without God and without Christ in the world, thou hast in thyself a few sparks of that eternal fire. Ungodly, unconverted men, have an uneasiness of spirit; they are never contented; they want something; if they have that, they will want something more. They do not feel happy; they see through the amusements which the world presents to them; they are wise enough to see that they are hollow; they understand that the fair cheek is painted; they know that its beauty is but mere pretence; they are not befooled; God has awakened them. Now, when a man gets into that uneasy state, he may make a guess of what hell will be. It will be that uneasiness intensified, magnified to the extreme. But unconverted men without Christ have another curse, which is a sure foretaste to them of hell. They are uneasy about death. I have my mind now upon a person who trembles like an aspen leaf during a thunderstorm. But those dreads of death are but the foreshadows of that darker gloom which must gather round your spirit, except you believe in Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The earnest of an inheritance
An earnest is something given beforehand, to indicate and assure one of a greater good yet to come. It is a part of a mans wages, and a pledge of the rest. It is a part of the price paid for anything bought, and a pledge of the residue. Here the figure is commercial. Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession. It is a bounty which not only is valuable itself, but points to more value yet to come. It is used, in the New Testament, as substantially equivalent to the harvest term, first-fruits; and in some passages the two terms, earnest and first-fruits, are used interchangeably. The coming harvest is more advanced in some parts than in others. The owner gathers a handful of the earliest ripe grain, plucks the first yellow apple, singles out the purple cluster that is soonest ripe; and such early gatherings are, to be sure, good for what they are of themselves; but this is as nothing compared with what they promise and prophesy. One handful of grain gives the farmer promise of vast harvests just coming forward. One apple is forerunner of ten thousand. I wish today to illustrate this general truth, that God gives to His children, in this world, intimations of that to which they are coming in the next world–first-fruits of joys, and experiences, and revelations, which they are to reap in full harvest by and by.
1. The general result of life, in teaching men how to employ themselves, gives us glimpses of that higher life to which we are coming–and only glimpses. Men are started in this world with some two score of separate faculties, which they do not know how to use–which they certainly do not know how to use together. A voyage we are put upon, with an undisciplined crew. They are rebellious, in part; none of them know how to work; some of them are too young; some of them are green; and all of them are to be trained before the voyage is ended. New machinery needs to wear smooth. But what if the machinery had to grow before it could perform its functions? What if part of the wheels were mere seed forms, and had to grow up into their different proportions and relations before they could work together? Nay, what if each wheel and spring was a voluntary agent, and had to consent to work instead of being coerced by physical laws? This would come nearer to what is taking place in every human soul. See, now, what this state of mind in this world comes to. How thoroughly the mind is waked up! How it learns to cooperate in all its parts! How much it gains in breadth, force, facility! And, above all, how strange the material history is, of passions, affections, moral sentiments, intellectual forces, and the will, in various conflicts, and in a common school of discipline, uniting into one final character, and working towards a perfect subordination and harmony! It doth not yet appear what we shall be–it does not yet appear what a perfect character will be; but we do see, on every side, that there are startings forth of every part of our nature, and that, while travelling differing paths, they are converging–coming nearer and nearer together.
2. There are moments of fortunate conjunction in this life, in which the body, the feelings, the intellect, all parts of our being, are in such exquisite harmony with each other, and are liked up with such rare stimulus, that we think more and easier in one single moment than in days of ordinary life. I recollect to have stood upon a hill in Amherst, where the college is, and where is spread out one of the most glorious panoramas on earth, and witnessed a scene of rare interest. The landscape below was hid from my view. I could see here and there the top of some mountain, but the whole vast basin was as white as milk, enveloped as it was in exquisite morning mists. By and by one could see great undulations in the fleecy mass. The sun was working at it, and hurling his arrows of heat into it. Soon it began to break away; and I do not know how it could have been removed so suddenly, but in a minute, almost, not only did there appear great openings through it, but the whole immense ocean of mist and fog was lifted up, and I saw all at once the entire sweep of the valley beneath it. Thus out of the dust and din and mist and obscurations of life there come moments when God permits us to see in a second further, wider, and easier than by the ordinary methods of logic we can see in a whole life.
3. But there are, in connection with the occurrence of these states, some facts of great significance over and above the sense of that large life which we are coming to in the future. When any single feeling is strong in us, and kindled to white heat, the intellect perceives the truths which that feeling interprets, with a clearness and amazing accuracy which nothing else ever gives. The heart teaches the head. A large part of the power of knowledge is located in the feelings. In the world to come our knowledge will be measured, not by the amount of thought power we have, but by the amount of heart power. The resources of heavenly understanding are not to be measured by the resources of scientific knowledge, nor by any capacity of knowing physical things. Our heavenly understanding is to be in the ratio of our moral sentiments, our loving affections. When we come to that supernatural state to which we are tending, we may suppose that the eye will perceive in the proportion that the heart gives its power to perceive; and the man that has the deepest, sweetest, and most noble feeling here will be the furthest seeing there.
4. There are, in this life, we might say, hours of judgment given to us. Christ promised the apostles that they should sit upon twelve thrones, and judge the twelve tribes of Israel. We are to judge time, and earth, and life. And we sometimes, even here, have such a view as does not, for days and years, pass from us, of what this world is, and what its issues are. Do you not, in advance, sit in judgment upon earthly things, and rank them by a golden reed reached forth and put into your hand, as it were, from heaven? I very well remember going back, after having arrived at years of manhood, to the school house where I did not receive my early education. I measured the stones which, in my childhood, it seemed that a giant could not lift, and I could almost turn them over with my foot. I measured the trees which seemed to loom up to the sky, wondrously large, but they had shrunk, grown shorter, and outspread narrower. I looked into the old school house, and how small the whittled benches and the dilapidated tables were, compared with my boyhood impression of them. I looked over the meadows across which my little toddling feet had passed: they had once seemed to me to be broad fields, but now but narrow ribbons, lying between the house and the water. I marvelled at the apparent change which had taken place in these things, and thought what a child I must have been when they seemed to me to be things of great importance. The school maam–oh, what a being I thought she was! and the schoolmaster–how awe-stricken I was in his presence! So, looking and wistfully remembering, I said to myself, Well, one bubble has broken. But when you shall stand above, and look back with celestial and clarified vision upon this world–this rickety old school house, earth–it will seem smaller to you than did to me that old village school!
5. Christians have earnests of things spiritual and invisible. Ordinarily, we are under the influence of the things which are seen. In our lower life we must be under the influence of sense. But now and then, we know not how, we rise into an atmosphere in which spirit life, God, Christ, the ransomed throng in heaven, virtue, truth, faith, and love, become more significant to us, and seem to rest down upon us with more force than the very things which our physical senses recognize. There is an atmosphere of the soul as well as an atmosphere of nature. I dwelt last summer on a spot which overlooks a great variety of scenery. Hills, mountains, valleys, and forests, may be seen from almost every part of it. There were times when a thick haze so prevailed that all the glory of hill, river, and mountain was hidden. At length would come up storm; a plunging rain, sweeping winds, and cleansing commotion. The storm brought light, and turmoil peace. For, that past, every tree stood forth in every lineament clear against the horizon, every line and furrow and scallop of hill was distinctly visible, and the mountains not only appeared in their proper shapes, but were out so plain that forty miles seemed scarcely four; and things before quite beyond the vision were advanced almost to the very gate of the senses. And so, in the atmosphere of the soul, God sometimes brings down the Divine landscape–heavenly truths–so clearly that the soul rests upon them as upon a picture let down.
7. In this world we have an earnest of the future world, as a realm of everlasting praise. As a traveller over rugged mountains and hills now and then passes through exquisite little dells, where beautiful and fragrant flowers greet him at every step, where rills gush from every rock, and every tree is full of singing birds, so that he cannot but say, Oh, that I had a tabernacle here! so, now and then, we pass into days that are grown all over with flowers fragrant with praise. All things seem beautiful; and we have a near and touching conviction that events flow from the gift-covered right hand of God, and that they are tokens of His particular thought of us! We say, The lines have fallen to us in pleasant places; and there is an irrepressible desire to render thanks, and earnest longing to give back love for love received. I do not know that there is any literature for this sense of gratitude except tears; and we can only stand before God and shake, as flowers shake when the wind blows upon them, and the dew drops off! The intimations which God is giving you are designed to be to you a means of grace, of instruction, of consolation, and of advancement in the Divine life. Look well at what God is revealing to you every day. There is much in it which you cannot afford to cast away. You will find that the interpretation of Gods Word to your soul stands largely in the experience He is working out in you. It is not necessary that we should be able to reason upon these intimations, and understand them in every particular. Some persons attempt to ascertain exactly to What they point. This is foolish. If I am lost in a forest, and have waited all night long to learn the points of the compass, I do not stop when morning comes to get a full view of the sun. As soon as I see a growing brightness in the east, I say to myself, Now I know my direction; for that is east, and that is west, and that is north, and that is south. I think there are thousands of intimations that we get which, although we cannot fully understand them, plainly indicate that they are designed of God to point out our way in this world; and that is enough. These partial views of the future–and not plenary ones–are just what we need to stimulate our hope and faith. They are transient, but they are long enough to work out Gods designs in us They come quickly, and go quickly; but if we are wise, their impressions upon us will be abiding. You men of prevision, you prophets, you seers, you that are lifted out of darkness into light that you may discern the marvellous things that belong to the children of God, have you anything in your experience which answers to what I have spoken? Are you able to see the future through the present? (H. W. Beecher.)
The assurance of the Christian inheritance
How is the assurance of the spiritual inheritance to be attained? is one of the most vital questions of Christian life; and men conscious of its importance have variously endeavoured to answer it. Is it by searching into our inward experiences that we become sure of the future kingdom, or by measuring our outward actions by the standards of spiritual morality? Are we to look for it in moments of peculiar ecstasy, or are there aspirations constantly present in the Christian soul which form Divine pledges of its reality? This question is one of great practical significance to us. Paul here gives us the answer–he speaks of the Holy Spirit sealing us with an earnest of the kingdom. Our subject, therefore, is, The assurance of the Christian inheritance: Its nature–Sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise; Its necessity – Until the redemption of the purchased possession.
I. Its nature.
1. The ground on which the certainty is founded. We have seen that Paul teaches that the promises given us by the Spirit are earnests of the future, and at once the question arises, How do we know that they are? By what right do we feel so sure that these hopes and aspirations of today are the infallible assurances of the kingdom of God tomorrow? At first sight, the ground of assurance may seem very doubtful. Every man has his dreams, his aspirations, which seem to him to be promises of what he might be, and every man has found out how often they are vain. Visions of the future haunt the child, and he imagines they will be realized, but as life advances they flee like shadows away. Many, perhaps most, men are afraid of the awful light which Hope throws on the dark future, and fear to trust the whisper she breathes within. The question, therefore, is most important: if, in actual life, we find these promises of hope so delusive, do they form any ground of assurance to the Christian? How separate the false from the true, or rely on such longings as earnests of a kingdom to come? That is a question we have a right to ask; and let us try to answer it clearly, because in reality there is one of the strongest grounds of assurance here. It is a great law that those deep and unconquerable longings of a man are earnests of what he might be; they are proofs of hidden power–flashes of sleeping capacity. What you long to be–so deeply that your longings become a very spirit of promise–you may be. Apply this to spiritual things. The longings of the Christian life are the promises and actual earnests of what we shall be, for they are the whispers of the Holy Spirit, who is omnipotent to realize the promises He utters. He creates longings for what He can and will bestow; and the expectation is the dawning of their fulfilment. Thus we have the assurance–the hope, the outflashing of hidden capacity, the germ of the hidden spirit life; and the longings and aspirations of the soul promising the future kingdom are the actual commencement and first-fruits of its glory.
2. We pass on to illustrate the manner in which this assurance rises in the soul. This inheritance of spiritual life consists of three great elements: love, power, blessedness.
(1) Love. And by Divine love I mean the firm conviction of Gods love to us, and the answering love of the soul to Him; and we can only correspond to the love of the Infinite One by consecrating our natures to Him–by being filled with the love of the Father. This is our inheritance–the spiritual kingdom we seek for. It is a kingdom now. It robes life in splendour. It brings the glory of heaven into the soul.
(2) Power. There can be no spiritual kingdom until the soul is king in its own house. But the Holy Spirit gives might to dash aside temptation, to endure with strength equal to our day; and all this is but an earnest of what we shall be. Kings to God we shall become, by being priests over the sacrifice of our own selves.
(3) Blessedness, as a result of love and power. The Holy Spirit tells the soul of depths of bliss inconceivable, of which no tongue can speak–earnests are they all, assurances of the spiritual kingdom.
II. Its necessity. Mark again the words, Until the redemption of the purchased possession. The inheritance is given, but not reached. Between the gift and its attainment there lies a long path of conflict, in which the old struggle between the flesh and the spirit reveals itself in three forms.
1. Sense against the soul. The body must be mastered, or it will master; its animalizing tendencies repressed, and brought into subjection.
2. The present against the future. We are constantly tempted to sell our heavenly birthright; to forget the eternal in the struggle for the temporal; to live carelessly here, for mere pleasure, regardless of our immortality.
3. Steadfast work against the roving propensities of the heart. We are ever prone to be discontented with the sphere in which God has placed us; to grow weary of the work which God has entrusted to us; to become faithless of the immortal harvest of spiritual toil; to despair, and to renounce the old quiet way of patient, persevering service to God. Therefore, until clothed with a spiritual body–until the temporal is changed fox the eternal–we have need of the assurance of our eternal inheritance. Grieve not, then, the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. (E. L. Hull, B. A.)
The Holy Spirit an earnest of our inheritance
I. In what respects the Spirit is an earnest to us.
1. A pledge of something yet future.
2. A part of something hereafter to be received in its entirety. As such the Spirit itself will never pass away from the possession of the Church. It is in itself a final end and supreme blessedness. But in another aspect of its presence and work it is only a part of what shall be. Powers (as of faith and holiness) are awakened and developed by its influence within us which do not belong to our bodily nature, but are the beginnings of a higher life, hereafter to be perfected in the presence of God. And it is one of a number of manifestations belonging to a new supernatural order or kingdom, whose completeness and glory are yet to be revealed (2Co 4:18; 2Co 5:5). Above all, it is the Spirit of Adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:4)–a consciousness which seems to open up infinite vistas of possibility (Rom 8:17; 1Jn 3:1-2). We are thus brought into universal relations, and are indissolubly linked with the eternal and Divine.
II. What effect it is intended to produce. The Gentile Christians were sealed with it, and were thus–
1. Separated from unbelievers. As circumcision was a seal to Abraham of the personal acceptance with God of which he had been already assured (Gen 15:6; Gen 15:18; Gen 17:11), so it became a seal to his children in the sense of separating them to God in covenant. In like manner the saints are said to be sealed with the name of the Lord (Rev 22:4; Rev 9:4), Something of the same general sense is conveyed by 2Ti 2:19. Christians are, by the indwelling of the Spirit, set apart, consecrated to God.
2. Confirmed in their own souls. By intensifying and rendering more vivid religious impressions and resolves, it seals believers unto the day of redemption. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)
The earnest of our inheritance
An earnest is part of that which is to follow, and it is of the same kind as that of which it is the earnest. The earnest is not withdrawn. In this it differs from a pledge or bond. A pledge or bond is restored or cancelled when it is fulfilled. Gods promise and oath are His pledges to His people, and they shall never be withdrawn till He has fulfilled His word. But the Holy Ghost given is the earnest of our inheritance; and he who gives an earnest pledges his faithfulness to give the rest. For this reason the earnest of the Spirit is called the first fruits of the Spirit. Now, the first fruits of the harvest were a part, sample, and earnest of the harvest which would follow. The first fruits, moreover, consecrated the coming harvest for the use of Gods people. The Holy Ghost is the earnest from God to us of His inheritance in us; and He is, also, the earnest to us of our inheritance in God. Now where the Spirit of the Lord is, the fruits of the Spirit follow. As many as received Him. Notice, all is in the receiving. It is not something we have to do or to suffer, but only to receive: to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name. And because ye are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father (Gal 4:6). We probably repeat the Lords Prayer daily. We call Him Father, alas! often without apprehending that He is our Father. Let us not mock God. Believers have a rich, mighty, loving Father; and if we, being evil, know how to give good things to our children, how much more will He give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? God first sends the life of His Son into the soul, and then the spirit of His Son into that soul. First God the Holy Ghost gives us to believe, and then He seals us as believers. He first gives us the seal of the Spirit, and then He makes the sealing Spirit to be the earnest of our inheritance. When we seal a document we remove the instrument that makes the impression; but when God seals it is altogether different, for He leaves the instrument with which He seals the soul to be the earnest of the inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession. This earnest of the Spirit is not only our security, but also our ability for the enjoyment of our inheritance in faith here and in fruition hereafter. When the Holy Ghost is the earnest of our inheritance, everything of the believers is sealed unto the day of redemption. Our Head has been sealed. He is the head of all principality and power. Him hath God the Father sealed (Joh 6:27). He is our life, our title, our representative, our wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption. The foundation on which we rest is sealed. The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His, and, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity (2Ti 2:19). (M. Rainsford, B. A.)
Gods Holy Spirit the earnest of our redemption
So much of the Spirit of grace and truth as we have here, is but the earnest and handsel of a greater sum, the seed and first fruits of a fuller harvest. Therefore the apostle mentions a growing change from glory to glory by the Spirit of God. We must not expect a fulness till the time of the restitution of all things, till that day of redemption and adoption, wherein the light, which is here but sown for the righteous, shall grow up into a full harvest of holiness and of glory. (Bp. Reynolds.)
The present and the future inheritance
The Holy Spirit of promise, given to all who believe, is here declared to dwell in and to seal believers as the earnest of their inheritance; whilst, on the other hand, that sealing is declared to last until–or, as seems more probably the rendering of the preposition here, to be done with a view unto–the full redemption of Gods purchased possession. So that the two halves of the thought are intentionally brought together in these words of our text. And about both of them–Gods possession of us and our possession of God–it is asserted or implied, that they are partially realized here, and are to be realized more fully in the future. An earnest is a portion of the estate which is paid over to the purchaser on the completion of the purchase, as the token that all is his and that it will all come into his hands in due time. Like that part of a mans wages given to him in advance when he is engaged; like the shilling put into the hands of a recruit; like the half crown given to the farm servant at the hiring fair; like the bit of turf that in some old ceremonials used to be solemnly presented to the sovereign on his investiture; it is a portion of the whole possession, the same in kind, but a very tiny portion, which yet carries with it the acknowledgment of ownership and the assurance of full possession. So says my text, the Spirit of God is the earnest of the inheritance, a small portion of it granted to us today, and the pledge that all shall be granted in the future. And the same idea of present imperfection is suggested in the corresponding clause, which speaks about Gods entire purchase (for there is an emphasis in the Greek word in the original); His possession as also a thing of the future. So then here are the three points that I want to look at for a moment or two; first, a word about the imperfect present; second, about the present, imperfect as it is, still being a guarantee and pledge of the future; and, lastly, about the perfect future which is the outcome of the imperfect present.
I. A word about this imperfect present, which is put here as being on one side the earnest of the inheritance, and on the other side as being Gods partial acquisition of us as His possession. There can be nothing deeper, nothing greater, nothing more real in the manner of possession, than the possession which every one of us may have of an indwelling God for our life and our peace. It passes all human analogy; love gives us the ownership, most really and most sweetly, of the hearts that we love; but after all the yearning desires for union, and experience of oneness in sympathy, the awful wall of partition between spirits remains; and life may, and death must, separate; but he that hath Gods Divine Spirit with him, has God for the life of his life and the soul of his soul. And we possess Him when, by faith in Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God dwells in our hearts. But most real and most blessed as that union and possession is, my text tells us that it is incomplete. I need not dwell upon that in order to prove it; I only want to apply and urge the truth for a moment. We have an Infinite Spirit to dwell with us; how finite and little is our possession of it! The Spirit of God is set forth in Scripture under the symbol of a rushing, mighty wind, and you and I say that we are Christs, and that we have Him. How does it come, then, that our sails flap idly on the mast, and we lie becalmed, and making next to no progress? The Spirit of God is set forth in Scripture under the symbol of flaming tongues of fire, and you and 1 say that we have it; how is it, then, that this thick-ribbed ice is round our hearts, and our love is all so tepid? The Spirit of God is set forth in Scripture under the symbol of rivers of water; and you and I say that we possess it. How is it, then, that so much of our hearts and of our natures is given up to barrenness, and dryness, and deadness? Oh, brethren, with an Infinite Spirit for our Guest and Indweller, any of us that look at our own hearts must feel that my text is too surely true, and that the present possession of the best of us is but a partial and incomplete possession. Many Christian people forget that if our present condition be, as it certainly is, necessarily imperfect, it ought also to be, and it will be, if there be any vital force of Christian principle within us, constantly and indefinitely approximating to the ideal standard of perfection that gleams there ahead of us. Or, to put it into plainer English, if you have life you will grow. If there be any real possession of the inheritance, it will be like the rolling fences that they used to have in certain parts of the country, where a squatter settled himself down upon a bit of a royal forest, and had a hedge that could be moved outwards and shifted on by degrees; and from having begun with a little bit big enough for a cabbage garden, ended with a piece big enough for a farm. And that is what we are always to do, to be always acquiring, adding field to field in the great inheritance that is ours.
II. Now turn to the second thought here–that this imperfect present, imperfect though it be, is a prophecy and a pledge of a perfect future. The earnest of our inheritance till the full redemption of the purchased possession. The facts of Christian experience are such as that they inevitably point to the conclusion that there is a life beyond. All that is good and blessed about religion, our faith, the joy that comes from our faith, the sweetness of communion, the aspiration after the increase of fellowship with Him; all these, to the man that enjoys them, are the best proof that they are going to last forever, and that death can have no power over them. Like thoughts, their very sweetness yieldeth proof that they are born for immortality. To love, to know, to reach the hands out through the shows of time and sense, and to grasp an unseen reality that lies away beyond, is, to any man that has ever experienced the emotion and done the thing, one of the strongest of all demonstrations that nothing belonging to this dusty low region of the physical can touch that immortal aspiration that knits him to God; but that whatsoever may befall the husk and shell of him, his faith, his love, his obedience, his consecration, these at least are eternal, and may laugh at death and the grave. And I believe that even to the men that have not the experience, the fact of religious emotion, the fact of worship, ought to be one of the best demonstrations of a future life. But I pass that with these simple remarks, and touch another thing; the very incompleteness of our possession of God, and of Gods possession of us, points onwards to, and, as it seems to me, demands a future. The imperfection, as well as the present attainments of our Christian experience, proclaim a coming time. That we are no better than we are, being as good as we are, seems to make it inconceivable that this evidently half-done job is going to be broken off short at the side of the grave. Here is a certain force at work in a mans nature, the power of Gods good Spirit, evidently capable of producing effects of entire transformation. Such being the case, who, looking at the effects, can doubt that sometime and somewhere there will be less disproportion between the two? The engine is evidently not working full power. The characters of Christians at the best are so inconsistent and contradictory that they are evidently only in the making. It is clear that we are looking at unfinished work, and surely the great Master Builder, who has laid such a foundation stone tried and precious, will not begin to build and not be able to finish. Every Christian life, at its best and noblest, shows, as it were, the ground plan of a great structure partly carried out–a bit of walling up here, vacancy there, girders spanning wide spaces, but gaping for a roof, a chaos and a confusion. It may look a thing of shreds and patches, and they that pass by the way begin to mock. But the very fact that it is incomplete, prophesies to wise men of the day when the headstone shall be brought with shouting, and the flag hoisted on the roof tree. Fools and children, says the proverb, should not see half done work–certainly they should not judge it. Wait a bit. There comes a time when tendencies shall be facts, and when influences shall have produced their appropriate effects; and when all that is partial and broken shall be consummate and entire in the Kingdom that is beyond the stars. Wait! and be sure that the good and the bad, so strangely blended in Christian experience, are alike charged with the prophecy of a glorious and perfect future.
III. Then, lastly, my text in the one clause asserts, and in the other implies, that the future is the perfecting of the present. The earnest points onwards to an inheritance the same in kind, but immensely greater in degree. The redemption of the possession is a somewhat singular expression; for we are accustomed to regard the great act of redemption as already past in the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. But the expression is employed here, as in several other places, to express not so much the act of purchase, the paying of the price of our salvation, which is done once for all and long ago, as the historical working out of the results of that price paid in the entire deliverance of the whole nature of man from every form of captivity to anything that would prevent his full possession by God. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Grace but an earnest of glory
As old Master Durham says, Tis but a taste! You have tasted that the Lord is gracious, but you do not know how good and how gracious He is. We have not yet rested beneath the vines of Canaan; we have only enjoyed the first fruits of the Spirit, and they have set us hungering and thirsting for the fulness of the heavenly heritage. We groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption. We are like David; we have had a draught of water from the well of Bethlehem, that is within the gate, brought to us through the valour of Christ Jesus; but we have not yet drank the clear, cool stream, in all its perfection, at the fountainhead. We are but beginners in spiritual education; we have learned the first letters of the alphabet; we cannot read words yet, much less can we read sentences; we are but infants now; we have not come to the stature of perfect men in Christ Jesus. As one says, He that has been in heaven but five minutes, knows more than all the general assembly on earth, though they were all learned divines. We shall know more of Christ by one glimpse of Him in heaven, than we shall know by all our learning here. Tis but a taste here, and if a taste be so ravishing, what must it be to sit at the table and eat bread in the kingdom of God? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Heaven our inheritance
We have heard of a great man who once took a poor believer and said–Do you look over there to those hills. Yes, sir. Well, all that is mine; that farm yonder, and that yonder, and beyond that river over there–it is all mine. Ah, said the other–look at yonder little cottage, that is where I live, and even that is not mine, for I have to hire it, and yet I am richer than you, for I can point up yonder and say, there lies my inheritance, in heavens unmeasured space, and let you look as far as ever you can you cannot see the limit of my heritage, nor find out where it ends nor where it begins. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Foretastes of heaven
The more you are acquainted with God while you live, the more willing you will be to die, to go to Him; for death, to a child of God, is nothing else but a resting with God, in whose bosom he hath often been by holy meditation, when he was alive. Dr. Preston, when he was dying, used these words: Blessed be God, though I change my place I shall not change my company; for I have walked with God while living, and now I go to rest with God. (Arvine.)
Heaven a costly purchase
There are sometimes rare and beautiful wares brought into the market, that are invoiced at almost fabulous rates. Ignorant people wonder why they are priced so high. The simple reason is that they cost so much to procure. That luxurious article labelled 200 was procured by the adventurous hunter, who at the hazard of his neck, brought down the wild mountain goat, out of whose glossy hair the fabric was wrought. Yonder pearl that flashes on the brow of the bride is precious, because it was rescued from the great deep at the risk of the pearl fishers life, as he was lifted into the boat half dead, with the blood gushing from his nostrils. Yonder ermine, flung so carelessly over the proud beautys shoulder, cost terrible battles with polar ice and hurricane. All choicest things are reckoned the dearest. So is it, too, in heavens inventories. The universe of God has never witnessed aught to be reckoned in comparison with the redemption of a guilty world. That mighty ransom no such contemptible things as silver and gold could procure. Only by one price could the Church of God be redeemed from hell, and that the precious blood of the Lamb–the Lamb without blemish or spot–the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)
The praise of His glory
That must be a possession indeed, the bestowal of which shall be not only to the glory of Jehovah, but to the praise of His glory. Observe the several things said here with regard to it. The nature of it–an inheritance. It is a choice possession–the gift of God, and to the praise of His glory. It is an inheritance by birthright. It is a purchased possession. Who can estimate the price? It is a possession already obtained: In whom also we have obtained an inheritance (verse 11). Obtained in Christ, the Holy Ghost Himself has sealed us unto it, He is also the earnest of it in our hearts, and He remains in US, our seal and earnest, until the redemption of the purchased possession. For it is not yet finally redeemed. Now let us endeavour, by degrees, to get some definite idea of this great subject. Our inheritance! As condemned lost sinners in ourselves, we have no inheritance of our own, save that of sin, and shame, and death, and hell. God gave Adam and Eve, in Him, a splendid inheritance. All things here below were under their dominion. But soon they lost their inheritance, their kingdom, their crown, their souls. And we lost all in them. Nevertheless, Adam was the image of Him that was to come, the Second Adam, the Lord from heaven, the appointed heir of all things. But the possession is not yet fully redeemed. Redemption in the Bible is spoken of in two connections. There is redemption by payment of a price, and that is already done. Every believer has been redeemed, not with silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. But there is another redemption spoken of, even a redemption by power, and that is not yet. Oh, these poor frames of ours are sorry representatives of the power of Gods redemption. Nay, we who have the first fruits of the Spirit, and are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, and sealed unto the day of redemption, even we groan, being burdened, carrying about with us a body of sin and death, liable to temptations, harassed by the world, the flesh, and the devil; and we are waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body. Consider–
1. Not only will God give us back the inheritance we have lost by sin, but He Himself shall become our inheritance.
2. Not only shall we be His inheritance, but also His purchased possession.
3. Meanwhile, and since we are still in the flesh, God has given us His Holy Spirit, our Comforter, to subdue, rescue, stablish, anoint, seal us, and be the earnest of our inheritance.
4. Our inheritance is not only kept for us, but we are kept by the power of God for our inheritance.
5. Finally, we have been adopted according to the good pleasure of His will, redeemed and forgiven according to the riches of His grace, and our purchased selves and our inheritance are and ever shall be to the praise of His glory. Amen. (M. Rainsford, B. A.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 14. Which is the earnest of our inheritance] This Holy Spirit, sealing the soul with truth and righteousness, is the earnest, foretaste, and pledge of the heavenly inheritance. And he who can produce this earnest – this witness of the Spirit, in the day of judgment, shall have an abundant entrance into the holiest. On the , or earnest, See Clarke on Ge 38:13, c., and 2Co 1:22.
The redemption of the purchased possession] That is, till the time when body and soul are redeemed from all their miseries, and glorified in the kingdom on heaven.
The redemption of the purchased possession – is variously understood and indeed the original is variously translated. Dr. Whitby has observed that the verb signifies to save alive; and he refers the , here, to the redemption of the body from corruption, and to its final glorification with the soul.
All those who believe in Christ Jesus are considered as his peculiar people and property, and to them eternal glory is promised. The Spirit of promise, which is given them, is a pledge that they shall have a resurrection from the dead, and eternal blessedness; the redemption, or bringing to life of the body, cannot take place till the day of judgment, but the Holy Spirit promises this redemption, and is now in their hearts an earnest or pledge of this complete restoration at the great day, which will then be, in an especial manner, to the praise of his glory, viz. of Christ, who has bought them by his blood.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Which is the earnest of our inheritance: the Spirit, given to and dwelling in believers by his gifts and graces, is the earnest or pledge whereby their inheritance is secured to them; as men are secured the payment of a promised sum, by a part given beforehand in earnest for the rest.
Until the redemption of the purchased possession; either:
1. The redemption of the possession is put for the possessing of the redemption, (by an hypallage), viz. full and final redemption from sin, and death, and hell, and Satan; which redemption though perfectly wrought by Christ, is but in part applied in this life, and is to be fully enjoyed in the other: or rather:
2. (Though to the same sense), To the full and final redemption in the end of the world, of all Gods people, who are here called his purchased possession: see the same word so taken, Act 20:28; 1Pe 2:9.
Unto the praise of his glory; the final salvation and complete redemption of Gods people, will be especially for the glory of God, 2Th 1:10.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
14. earnestthe firstinstalment paid as a pledge that the rest will follow (Rom 8:23;2Co 1:22).
untilrather, “Untothe redemption,” c. joined thus, “ye were sealed (Eph1:13) unto,” that is, for the purpose of and against,the accomplishment of “the redemption,” namely, not theredemption in its first stage, made by the blood of Christ,which secures our title, but, in its final completion, whenthe actual possession shall be ours, the full “redemptionof the body” (Ro 8:23), aswell as of the soul, from every infirmity (Eph4:30). The deliverance of the creature (the body, and the wholevisible creation) from the bondage of corruption, and from theusurping prince of this world, into the glorious liberty of thechildren of God (Rom 8:21-23;2Pe 3:13).
of the purchasedpossessionGod’s people purchased (“acquired,”Greek) as His peculiar (Greek) possession by theblood of Christ (Ac 20:28). Wevalue highly that which we pay a high price for; so God, His Church(Eph 5:25; Eph 5:26;1Pe 1:18; 1Pe 2:9;”my special treasure,” Mal3:17, Margin).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Which is the earnest of our inheritance,…. The incorruptible and never fading one in heaven, or the heavenly kingdom; this is the Father’s gift, his bequest, and belongs only to children; it comes to them through the death of the testator, Christ, and is for ever; and of this the Spirit of God is the pledge and earnest: an earnest, is what confirms an agreement, and assures the right to the thing agreed to, and is a part of it, and lesser than it, and is never returned; so the Spirit of God certifies the right to the heavenly inheritance, as well as gives a meetness for it; he is the firstfruits of eternal glory and happiness, and of the same kind with it; and as he is enjoyed in measure by the saints now, is lesser than the communion which they shall have with him, and with the Father, and the Son, hereafter, for the best things are reserved till last; and being once given into the heart as an earnest, he always continues, he never removes more, or is ever taken away:
until the redemption of the purchased possession, or “of the peculiar people”; see 1Pe 2:9, for this is not to be understood of heaven, which is never said to be purchased, nor can it with any propriety be said to be redeemed; but of saints, of the church of God, who are bought with a price, and are purchased with his blood; and who, as they were redeemed from sin, Satan, and the law, when they were purchased, so will be redeemed again in the resurrection morn, which is called the day of redemption, Eph 4:30, and which will be a redemption of them from the weakness, corruption, and mortality of the body; from their present state of absence and pilgrimage; from the body of sin and death; from all sorrows and afflictions, both inward and outward; from the reproaches and persecutions of men; from a tempting devil, and an unbelieving heart; from all doubts and fears; and from death and the grave; and so the Syriac version very justly renders it, “until the redemption of them that are saved”. Now till such time, the Spirit of God abides as an earnest, even until the whole felicity is enjoyed both in soul and body; and this shows the perpetuity of the Spirit’s inhabitation, and grace, the final perseverance of the saints, and the security of the inheritance to them.
Unto the praise of his glory; as to the glory of the Father, by whom the saints are chosen and predestinated, Eph 1:6 and to the glory of the Son, by whom they are redeemed, in whom they obtain the inheritance, and in whom they trust, Eph 1:12, so to the glory of the Holy Spirit, by whom they are sealed, and who is their earnest; for he must have his share of glory in the salvation of the elect, as well as the other two persons.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
An earnest (). See 2Co 1:22 for discussion of . Here “of promise” ( ) is added to the Holy Spirit to show that Gentiles are also included in God’s promise of salvation.
Of our inheritance ( ). God’s gift of the Holy Spirit is the pledge and first payment for the final inheritance in Christ.
Of God’s own possession ( ). The word
God’s is not in the Greek, but is implied. Late and rare word (from , to make a survival) with the notion of obtaining (1Thess 5:9; 2Thess 3:14) and then of preserving (so in the papyri). So in 1Pet 2:9; Heb 10:39, and here. God has purchased us back to himself. The sealing extends () to the redemption and to the glory of God.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Earnest. See on 2Co 1:22.
Unto the redemption, etc. Construe with ye were sealed.
Of the purchased possession [ ] . See on peculiar, 1Pe 2:9. The word originally means a making to remain over and above; hence preservation; preservation for one’s self; acquisition; the thing acquired, or a possession. Used here collectively for the people possessed, as the circumcision for those circumcised, Phi 3:3; the election for those chosen, Rom 11:7. Rev., God ‘s own possession, God ‘s own being inserted for the sake of clearness. Compare Isa 43:21; Act 20:28; Tit 2:14.
Unto the praise of His glory. Construe with ye were sealed : Ye were sealed unto the redemption, etc.; setting forth God ‘s purpose as it contemplates man. Ye were sealed unto the praise of His glory; God ‘s purpose as it respects Himself
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “Which is the earnest of our inheritance” (hos estin arrabon tes kleronomias hemon) “Who is an earnest (assurance, guarantee, or security) of our inheritance,” or a “title deed” to our heir-setting or right as members of His church in worship and service, toward ruling and reigning with Him on the earth. Luk 22:29; Rom 8:14-18. The indwelling Holy Spirit not only seals and leads children of God in worship and service through the church, but also to an hour of glory reign, Rev 5:9-10.
2) “Until the redemption of the purchased possession” (eis apolutrosin tes peripoieseos) “Until the redemption or recovery of the possession.” The final redemption or recovery of man and the universe are effected in two things: 1) First, the adoption of the physical body of believers, and 2) Second, by the restoration, redemption, or restitution of all things to the Father, Rom 8:23; 1Co 15:24-28.
3) “Unto the praise of his glory” (eis epainon tes dokses autou) “To or toward (the) praise of his glory.” Each of these two areas of redemption and glory — man and the universe — is to be to the praise and glory of God by the death of His Son, Joh 3:16; through the indwelling Spirit in redeemed believers who are sealed unto the redemption of the body from the grave, Rom 8:11; Rom 8:23; and through His church which He purchased with His own blood, empowered with His Holy Spirit, and commissioned as His praise and glory agency to the end of the age and ages to come, Act 20:28; Eph 5:25-27; Act 1:8; Act 2:1-4; Mat 16:18; Mat 28:18-20; Eph 3:21.
THE CHURCH NEEDS THE LAYMAN
ON THE JOB
Now a layman has his troubles, And a layman has his joys, But he also has the training, Of the little girls and boys.
The Church is all that lifts us, From the course and selfish mob, But the Church that is to prosper, Needs the layman on the job.
For it’s not by song or sermon, That the Church’s work is done, For the Church that is to prosper, Needs the layman on the job.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
14. Which is the earnest (115) of our inheritance. This phrase is twice used by Paul in another Epistle. (2Co 1:22.) The metaphor is taken from bargains, in which, when a pledge has been given and accepted, the whole is confirmed, and no room is left for a change of mind. Thus, when we have received the Spirit of God, his promises are confirmed to us, and no dread is felt that they will be revoked. In themselves, indeed, the promises of God are not weak; but, until we are supported by the testimony of the Spirit, we never rest upon them with unshaken confidence. The Spirit, then, is the earnest of our inheritance of eternal life, until the redemption, that is, until the day of complete redemption is arrived. So long as we are in this world, our warfare is sustained by hope, and therefore this earnest is necessary; but when the possession itself shall have been obtained, the necessity and use of the earnest will then cease.
The significance of a pledge lasts no longer than till both parties have fulfilled the bargain; and, accordingly, he afterwards adds, ye are sealed to the day of redemption, (Eph 4:30,) which means the day of judgment. Though we are now redeemed by the blood of Christ, the fruit of that redemption does not yet appear; for “every creature groaneth, desiring to be delivered from the bondage of corruption. And not only they, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body;” for we have not yet obtained it, but by hope. (Rom 8:21.) But we shall obtain it in reality, when Christ shall appear to judgment. Such is the meaning of the word redemption in the passage now quoted from the Epistle to the Romans, and in a saying of our Lord,
“
Look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.” (Luk 21:28.)
Περιποίησις, which we translate the possession obtained, is not the kingdom of heaven, or a blessed immortality, but the Church itself. This is added for their consolation, that they might not think it hard to cherish their hope till the day of Christ’s coming, or be displeased that they have not yet obtained the promised inheritance; for such is the common lot of the whole Church.
To the praise of his glory. The word praise, as in the twelfth verse, Eph 1:12 signifies “making known.” (116) The glory of God may sometimes be concealed, or imperfectly exhibited. But in the Ephesians God had given proofs of his goodness, that his glory might be celebrated and openly proclaimed. Those persons, therefore, who slighted the calling of the Ephesians, might be charged with envying and slighting the glory of God.
The frequent mention of the glory of God ought not to be regarded as superfluous, for what is infinite cannot be too strongly expressed. This is particularly true in commendations of the Divine mercy, for which every godly person will always feel himself unable to find adequate language. He will be more ready to utter, than other men will be to hear, the expression of praise; for the eloquence both of men and angels, after being strained to the utmost, falls immeasurably below the vastness of this subject. We may likewise observe, that there is not a more effectual method of shutting the mouths of wicked men, than by shewing that our views tend to illustrate, and theirs to obscure, the glory of God.
(115) “The original word ἀρ᾿ῥαβών, seems properly to denote the first part of the price that is paid in any contract, as an earnest and security of the remainder, and which, therefore, is not taken back, but kept till the residue is paid to complete the whole sum. And thus it differs from a pledge, which is somewhat given for the security of a contract, but redeemed and restored, when the contract is completed; but it must be owned that the word is used to denote both an earnest and a pledge, and in either sense it is very properly applied to the Holy Spirit of promise.” — Chandler.
(116) “ Louange yci se prend comme ci devant pour la publication et manifestation.” “Here, as formerly, ‘praise’ denotes proclamation and manifestation.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(14) Which is the earnest of our inheritance.On the word earnest (arrhabn), a precious gift, as surety for a fuller gift hereafter, see 2Co. 1:22. The word inheritance has a correspondent meaning. It is a present possession (as in Act. 7:5), which shall be developed into a more precious future. We are very members, incorporate in the mystical body of Christ, and also heirs through hope of His everlasting kingdom.
Until the redemption of the purchased possession.The redemption here is the complete and final salvation from sin and death (as in Rom. 8:23). The original word here rendered purchased possession properly means the act of purchase or acquisition, and is so used in 1Th. 5:9; 2Th. 2:14; Heb. 10:39. But it seems clear that it is here used (in the sense of our version) with that confusion of idea, common in English, though rare in Greek, under which the result of an action is understood instead of the action itself, so that the word purchases is used for things purchased, acquisitions for things acquired and the like. The transition is marked in relation to this same word in Mal. 3:17; 1Pe. 2:9, where the Israelites are spoken of as a people for acquisition, that is, as a people acquired or purchased.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
14. The earnest See note, 2Co 1:20. The blessed Spirit is a first instalment, a small portion, of our inheritance already given us to assure us that it will be finally bestowed in fulness.
Our inheritance Not God’s, or Christ’s inheritance of the elect, but the elects’ inheritance of the final reconciliation in Christ. See note on Eph 1:11. This pledge looks to the completed redemption (see Eph 1:7) of the purchased possession, namely, the possession purchased through his blood, (Eph 1:7,) which possession takes place at and in the reconciliation of Eph 1:10 and Col 1:20.
Paul showed in the previous paragraph a picture of the final reconciliation in Christ, the glorious head, and of the blessedness of an election through faith to that inheritance. He now prays that the minds of those addressed may be raised to a full conception of that blissful consummation, and then gives a second picture of Christ in his glorious redeeming headship. The three transcendent passages (Eph 1:10; Eph 1:19-23, and Col 1:14-19) should be read together as correspondent parts of the same sublime portraiture.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Eph 1:14. Which is the earnest, &c. “In which Holy Spirit you have a certain pledge and token of your being by adoption entitled to the future inheritance; to encourage and animate you under all the difficulties of your way, till the complete redemption of his faithful saints, whom he hath so dearly purchased for his possession. To whom he hath promised everlasting happiness; and he will certainly bestow it upon them inthe day of his final appearance, which will at length open with a lustre that shall fully repay so long an expectation, and abundantly conduce to the praise of his glory.” What we render till the redemption of the purchased possession, Dr. Whitby would render, till the redemption of life (see Rom 8:23.); and Beza, nearly to the same sense, till the redemption of vindication; that is, “till the faithful are set entirely at liberty, andreceive complete deliverance and salvation.” Some read it, until [the time of] the salutary redemption.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Eph 1:14 . .] stands in significant relation (as affording more precise information) to : who is earnest of our inheritance ; for in the reception of the Spirit the recipients have obtained the guarantee as one receives earnest-money as a guarantee of future payment in full that they shall become actually partakers of the Messianic blessedness (comp. Rom 8:15-17 ; Gal 4:6-7 ). , applying to the , not to Christ , agrees in gender with . See Herm. ad Viger. p. 708; Heindorf, ad Phaedr . p. 279; Buttm. neut. Gr. p. 241 [E. T. 281]. As to the epexegetic relative, see Ngelsb. on Horn. Ilias , Exo 3 , p. 3. As to , see on 2Co 1:22 .
] unto the redemption , etc., is likewise (comp. also Eph 4:30 ) the causa finalis of . . ., consequently that, to which the purpose of God was directed, when ye were sealed. Comp. Eph 1:10 . Others connect it with (Estius, Flatt, Rckert, Schenkel, Bleek, al. ), in which case is taken by some likewise in a telic sense, by others as usque ad (the latter at variance with the parallel which follows). But the more precise definition thus resulting would in fact be, after . . ., quite self-evident and unnecessary.
The is here in accordance with the whole connection, and because the (see below) is the subject which experiences the the final consummation of the redemption effected by the of Christ (Eph 1:7 ) at the Parousia (Luk 21:28 ), when suffering, sin, and death are wholly done away, and in the glorifying (resurrection, or relative transformation) of the body there sets in the of the children of God, and the in all all-determining dominion of God (1Co 15:28 ). See Rom 8:18-23 ; 1Co 15:54 ff. Comp. Eph 4:30 . Beza aptly terms this final definitive redemption .
The (for at the end does not apply, as it is usually referred, merely to , but also to ., whereby the latter obtains its definite character, and the discourse gains in vividness and energy [107] ) is the acquisition of God , i.e. the people acquired by God for His possession , by which is here meant the whole body of Christians , the true people of God, acquired by God as His property by means of the redeeming work of Christ. Comp. 1Pe 2:9 ; as also Act 20:28 , where the Christian community is presented as the acquisition of Christ (comp. Tit 2:14 ). The expression quite corresponds to the Hebrew , by which the people of Israel is designated as the sacred peculium Dei , and opposed to the Gentiles. See Exo 19:5 ; Deu 7:6 ; Deu 14:2 ; Deu 26:18 f; Psa 135:4 . The LXX. too, though usually expressing the notion of by , translate it, Mal 3:17 , by . Comp. also Isa 43:21 : ( ) . . . The objection to this view (which is followed, after the Peshito and Oecumenius, by Erasmus, Calvin, Grotius, and most expositors, including Flatt, Rckert, Meier, Harless, Olshausen, de Wette, Baumgarten-Crusius, Schenkel), that never in itself, without defining addition, signifies the people of God (see specially Koppe), entirely disappears when we take in the : “ unto redemption of His acquired possession, unto the praise of His glory .” Others, retaining likewise the signification of acquired possession , explained it in the neuter sense, like Calovius (comp. already Bugenhagen): “plena fruitio redemtionis haereditatis nobis acquisitae .” Comp. Matthies: “unto the redeeming of the promised glorious possession.” But how can it be said of the salvation acquired for us, that it is redeemed? And the plena fruitio is imported. Beza, wrongly denying the concrete use of , insists upon the abstract notion of vindicatio, assertio , and specifies as the meaning: “ dum in liberationem vindicemur .” But this would need to be expressed by (comp. 1Th 5:9 ; 2Th 2:14 ). The word is also taken in the abstract sense by those who understand it as preservation, conservatio (Heb 10:39 ; 2Ch 14:13 ; Test. XII. Patr . p. 633; Plat. Defin . p. 415 C; Wetst. II. p. 424), like Bengel, Bos (“redemtio, quae salutem et conservationem affert”), Bretschneider (“redemtio, qua vitae aeternae servamur”), Holzhausen (who, following Homberg, arbitrarily assumes . . to stand for . . ). But against these explanations it may be decisively urged that in the case of the thought: unto everlasting life , or the like, is added arbitrarily, and that the assumed genitive relation does not arise out of the notion of , according to which the genitive is either the subject, which is redeemed (Luk 21:28 ; Rom 8:23 ), or expresses that, from which one becomes free (Heb 9:15 ; Fritzsche, ad Rom. II. p. 178). To the erroneous attempts at explanation belongs also that (Vatablus, Koppe) which takes for , the redemption acquired for us , or (so Bleek) the redemption, which is to become our possession . [108]
] a climactic parallel to what goes before, containing as it does the final aim of God in the sealing with the Holy Spirit. And thus has Paul accordingly reached what he had in view in the joining on of , Eph 1:13 , namely, the assigning to the Gentile-Christians the same ultimate destination, which he has in Eph 1:12 predicated of the Jewish-Christians.
The reference of to God , as in Eph 1:12 ; Eph 1:6 (not, with Estius and Hofmann, to Christ), flows from ., which is God’s act. See van Hengel, Annot. p. 198 ff. The glory of God is the final aim of the whole unfolding of salvation.
[107] So also Hofmann, Schriftbew . II. 2, p. 29; and Schenkel.
[108] This sense, too, would in fact have needed to be expressed by .
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.
Ver. 14. Which is the earnest ] Not the pawn, but the earnest, Quia pignus redditur, arrha retinetur, saith Jerome. A pawn is to be returned again, but an earnest is part of the whole sum, and assures it. We here have eternal life, 1. In pretio; In reward, 2. In promisso; In promise, 3. In primitiis, In the firstfruits.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Eph 1:14 . : which is an earnest of our inheritance . So with the RV, rather than “who is the earnest,” etc., of the AV. The reading is preferred by Lachm., Alf., WH, etc., as supported by [72] [73] [74] [75] , Athan., Cyr., Chrys., etc. The TR is the reading of [76] [77] [78] , Thdrt., Damasc., Theophyl., etc.; the masc. form being due to attraction to the following , as, e.g. , in , Gal 3:16 . The word (or , the form preferred by Tisch. and regarded by WH as only Western, cf. Westcott and Hort’s New Testament in Greek , II., App., p. 148) is the LXX reproduction of the Heb. which occurs in Gen 38:17-18 ; Gen 38:20 and is rendered “pledge”. It is found in classical Greek of earlier date than the LXX ( e.g. , Isaeus, De Cir. her. , 23; Aristotle, Pol. , i., 11; Menander, Frag. Com. (Meineke), iv., pp. 268, 283; etc., cf. Light., Notes, ut sup. , p. 323), and is supposed, therefore, to have come from the Phnicians into Greek use. At an early date it was introduced also into Latin, but by what channel we know not. In Latin it occurs in the three forms- arrabo, rabo ( e.g. , in Plautus, Truc. , iii., 20), and arra ( e.g. , Aul. Gell., xvii., 2). It survives in the forms arra, arrhes in the languages most directly derived from the Latin; as also in our arles , the obsolete English earlespenny , etc. Etymologically, it appears to have expressed the idea of exchange , and so its primary sense may have been that of a “pledge” simply. But it came to mean more than , or pledge , in the sense of something exchanged between two parties to a contract or agreement. Its proper sense is that of earnest part of the price to be received or part of the thing that is to be possessed, given in assurance that the full payment or the complete possession will follow. Wycl. gives “ernes”; the Rhemish, “pledge”; Tynd., Cran., and the Genevan, “earnest”. The idea is similar to that elsewhere expressed by , “first-fruits” (Rom 8:23 ). The “earnest of the Spirit” is mentioned by itself in 2Co 5:5 ; in 1Co 1:22 , as here, it is introduced along with the sealing of the Spirit. To the truth expressed by the latter it adds the higher idea that the believer possesses already in reality, though but in part, the life of the future; the inheritance of the present and the inheritance of the future differing not in kind but only in degree, so that even now we have the life and blessedness of the future in the way of foretaste. It is doubtful whether the term is also meant to suggest the idea of obligation on the believer’s side, as Light. thinks, who takes it to intimate that “the Spirit has, as it were, a lien upon us”. : unto the redemption . The “unto” of the RV is to be preferred to the “until” of the AV. The clause is to be connected not with the , . . ., but with the main statement, viz. , the , and the expresses not the idea of time but that of purpose . It is the first of two purposes which God is here declared to have had in sealing them. In that operation of His grace God had it in view to make them certain of the complete redemption which was to come at the consummation of the Kingdom of God. The here, as the tenor of the passage plainly indicates, is the final, perfected redemption, as in Eph 4:30 , Rom 8:23 , and probably 1Co 1:30 . : of the possession . The “ purchased possession” of the AV is less apt, as the verb expresses the general idea of preserving, acquiring, gaining for oneself , without specific reference to a price . But what is the import of the phrase here? The form of the noun and its use point to the active sense, preserving, acquiring . In 2Ch 14:13 it is said of the Ethiopians that they fell , so “that they could not recover themselves” (RV text), or, “so that none remained alive” (RV marg.). The word occurs in the NT five times in all ( Eph 1:14 ; 1Th 5:9 ; 2Th 2:14 ; Heb 10:39 ; 1Pe 2:9 ). In three of these instances it certainly has the active sense (1Th 5:9 , . ; 2Th 2:14 , . ; Heb 10:39 , . ), and it would be most natural to take it in that sense here. But it is difficult to adjust that to the genitive case dependent on the . The most plausible rendering on that view is that proposed by Abbott, viz. , “a complete redemption which will give possession ”. The noun may be taken, however, in the passive sense, and a more natural meaning results. Some then understand it of the inheritance we are to possess. So Aug. and Calv. make it = haereditas acquisita ; Matthies, “the promised glorious possession”; Bleek, “the redemption which is to become our possession”. So, too, Macpherson takes the “possession” to be the “inheritance of the saints” here, as he takes the previous to mean “made possessors of our lot”. But all becomes plainer if we understand the idea to be rather that of God’s possession in us, the being taken as the equivalent of the OT , , by which Israel is designated as the possession acquired by the Lord for Himself (Exo 19:5 ; cf. Deu 7:6 ; Deu 14:2 ; Deu 26:18 ; Psa 135:4 ). It is true that the LXX rendering of is usually . But that is not the only form that is adopted. In Psa 135:4 the phrase is ; and in Mal 3:17 , where Aquila has , the LXX has . Further, in Isa 43:21 the same idea is expressed by the corresponding verb ( cf. Act 20:28 , ). So, too, Peter, with this passage in view, describes the spiritual Israel of the NT as (1Pe 2:9 ); while in Tit 2:14 , again, we have . This interpretation is that of the Syriac, Erasm., Calvin, etc., and it is preferred by most recent commentators, including Harless, Meyer, Ell., Alf., etc. It is adopted also by the RV, which renders it “ God’s own possession”. Wycliffe, however, gives “purchasynge”; the Genevan, “that we might be fully restored to liberty”; the Rhemish, “the redemption of acquisition”; the AV, Tyndall and Cranmer give “the purchased possession”. : unto the praise of his glory . The second end of the sealing , or rather the second aspect of the ultimate purpose of God in the sealing. The final end on our side of that great act of grace is the consummation of the redemption of those who have been made God’s own people. On God’s side the final end of the same grace is “the praise of His glory” the adoring confession of the glories of the Divine Nature and Mind so revealed to men. The refers to the main subject here, not Christ in whom we obtain the grace, but God by whom it is willed the Eternal Origin of all.
[72] Codex Alexandrinus (sc. v.), at the British Museum, published in photographic facsimile by Sir E. M. Thompson (1879).
[73] Codex Vaticanus (sc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.
[74] Codex Boernerianus (sc. ix.), a Grco-Latin MS., at Dresden, edited by Matthi in 1791. Written by an Irish scribe, it once formed part of the same volume as Codex Sangallensis ( ) of the Gospels. The Latin text, g, is based on the O.L. translation.
[75] Codex Angelicus (sc. ix.), at Rome, collated by Tischendorf and others.
[76] Codex Sinaiticus (sc. iv.), now at St. Petersburg, published in facsimile type by its discoverer, Tischendorf, in 1862.
[77] Codex Claromontanus (sc. vi.), a Grco-Latin MS. at Paris, edited by Tischendorf in 1852.
[78] Codex Mosquensis (sc. ix.), edited by Matthi in 1782.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
EPHESIANS
THE EARNEST AND THE INHERITANCE
Eph 1:14
I have dealt with a portion of this verse in conjunction with the fragment of another in this chapter. I tried to show you how much the idea of the mutual possession of God by the believing soul, and of the believing soul by God, was present to the Apostle’s thoughts in this context. These two ideas are brought into close juxtaposition in the verse before us, for, as you will see if you use the Revised Version, the latter clause is there rightly paraphrased by the addition of a supplement, and reads ‘until the redemption of God’s own possession.’ So that in the first clause we have ‘our inheritance,’ and in the second we have ‘God’s possession.’ This double idea, however, has appended to it in this verse some very striking and important thoughts. The possession of both sides is regarded as incomplete, for what we have is the ‘earnest’ of the ‘inheritance,’ and ‘God’s own possession’ has yet to be ‘redeemed,’ in the fullest sense of that word, at some point in the future. An ‘earnest’ is a fraction of an inheritance, or of a sum hereafter to be paid, and is the guarantee and pledge that the whole shall one day be handed over to the man who has received the foretaste of it in the ‘earnest.’ The soldier’s shilling, the ploughman’s ‘arles,’ the clod of earth and tuft of grass which, in some forms of transfer, were handed over to the purchaser, were all the guarantee that the rest was going to come. So the great future is sealed to us by the small present and the experiences of the Christian life to-day, imperfect, fragmentary, defective as they are, are the best prophecy and the most glorious pledge of that great to-morrow. The same law of continuity which, in application to our characters, and our work, and our daily life, makes ‘to-morrow as this day, and much more abundant,’ in its application to the future life makes the life here its parent, and the life yonder the prolongation and the raising to its highest power, of what is the main though often impeded tendency and direction of the present. The earnest of the ‘inheritance’ is the pledge until the full redemption of ‘God’s own possession.’ I wish, then, to draw attention to these additional thoughts which are here attached to the main idea with which we were dealing in the last sermon.
I. And I ask you to look with me, first, at the incompleteness of the present possession.
I tried to show in my last sermon how those great thoughts of God’s having us, and our having God, rested upon the three ideas of mutual love, mutual communication, and mutual indwelling. On His side the love, the impartation, the indwelling, are all perfect. On our side they are incomplete, broken, defective; and, therefore, the incompleteness on our side hinders both God’s possession of us, and our possession of Him; so that we have but the ‘earnest’ and not the ‘inheritance.’ That is to say, the ownership may be perfect in idea, but in realisation it is imperfect.
And then, if we turn to the word in the other clause, ‘the redemption of the purchased possession,’ that suggests the incompleteness with which God as yet owns us. For though the initial act of redeeming is complete, yet redemption is a process, and not an act. And we ‘are having’ it, as the Apostle says in another place very emphatically, in continual and growing experience. The estate has been acquired, but has not yet been fully subdued. For there are tribes in the jungles and in the hills who still hold out against the reign of Him who has won it for Himself. And so seeing that the redemption in its fulness is relegated to some point in the future, towards which we are progressively approximating, and seeing that the best that can be said about the Christian experience here is that we have an ‘earnest of the inheritance,’ we must recognise the incompleteness to-day of our possession of God, and of God’s possession of us.
That is a matter of experience. We know that only too well. ‘I have God’-have I? I have a drop at the bottom of a too often unsteadily held and spilling cup, and the great ocean rolls unfathomable and boundless at my feet. How partial, how fragmentary, how clouded with doubts and blank ignorance, how intermittent, and, alas! rare, is our knowledge of Him. We sometimes go down our streets between tall houses, walking in their shadow, and now and then there is a cross street down which a blaze of sunshine comes, and when we reach it, and the houses fall back, we see the blue beyond. But we go on, and we are in the shadow again. And so our earthly lives are passed, to a large extent, beneath the shade of the grimy buildings that we ourselves have put up, and which shut out heaven from us, and only now and then a slanting beam comes through some opening, and carries wistful thoughts and longings into the Empyrean beyond. And how feeble our faith, and how little of His power comes into our hearts, and how little of the joy of the Lord is realised in our daily experience we all know, and it is sometimes good for us to force ourselves to feel it is but an ‘earnest’ of the ‘inheritance’ that the best of us has.
‘God has us.’ Has He? Has He my will, which submits itself, and finds joy in submitting itself, to Him? How many competitors are there for my love which come in in front of Him, and we ‘cannot get at Him for the press’! How many other motives are dominant in our lives, and how often we wrench ourselves away from our submission to Him, and try to set up a little dominion of our own, and say, ‘Our lives are ours; who is lord over us?’ Oh, brethren! we have God if we are Christians at all, and God has us. But alas! surely all honest experience tells us that there are awful gaps in the circle, and that our possession of Him, and His possession of us, are wofully incomplete.
Now, let me remind you that this incompleteness is mainly our own fault. Of course, I know that for the absolute completeness, either of my possession of God or of His of me, I must pass from out this world, and enter upon another stage and manner of being. But it is not being in the flesh, but it is being dominated by the flesh, that is the reason for the incompleteness of our mutual possession. And it is not being in the world, but it is being seduced and tyrannised over by the influx of worldly desires and thoughts, surging into our hearts, that drives God from out of our hearts, and draws us away from the sweet security of being possessed by, and living close to, Him. Death does a great deal for a man in advancing him in the scale of being, and in changing the centre of gravity, as it were, of this life. But there is no reason to believe that anything in death, or beyond it, will so alter the set and direction of his soul as that it will lead him into that possession of God, and being possessed by Him, which he has not here. There are many of us who, if we were to die this instant, would no more have God for ours, or belong to God, than we do now. It is our fault if the circle is broken into so many segments, if the moments of mutual love, communion, and indwelling are so rare and interrupted in our lives. The incompleteness which is due to our earthly condition is nothing as compared with the incompleteness which is due to our own sin.
But this incompleteness is one which may be progressively diminished, and we may be tending moment by moment, and year by year, nearer and nearer, and ever nearer, to the unreachable ideal of the entire possession of, and being possessed by, our God. There is a continual process of redemption of ‘God’s own possession’ going on if a Christian man is true to himself and to that Divine Spirit which is the ‘earnest’ of the ‘inheritance.’ Mark that in my text, as it stands in our Bibles, and reads ‘until the redemption,’ there seems to be merely a pointing onwards to a future epoch, but that, in the more accurate rendering which you will find in the Revised Version, instead of ‘until’ we have ‘unto,’ and that teaches us that the Divine Spirit, which in one aspect is the ‘earnest of the inheritance,’ is also operating upon men’s hearts and minds so as to bring about the gradual completion of the process of redemption.
So, dear brethren, seeing that by our own faults the possession is incomplete, and seeing that in the incompleteness there is given to each of us, if we rightly use it, a mighty power which is working ever towards the completion, it becomes us day by day to draw into our spirits more and more of that divine influence, and to let it work more fully upon the sins and faults which, far more than the body of flesh, or the connection with the world which it brings about, are the reasons for the incompleteness of the possession. We have, if we are wise, the task to discharge of daily enclosing, so to speak, more and more of the broad land which is all given over to us for our inheritance, but of which only so much as we fence in and cultivate, and make our own, is our own.
The incompleteness is progressively completed, and it is our work as much as God’s work to complete it. For though in our text that redemption is conceived of as a divine act, it is not an act in which we are but passive. The air goes into the lungs, and that oxygenates the blood, but the lung has to inflate if the air is to penetrate all its vesicles. And so the Spirit which seals us unto the redemption of the possession has to be received, held, diffused throughout, and utilised by our own effort.
II. Now, secondly, notice the certainty of the completion of the incompleteness.
As I have already said, the clod of earth and the handful of grass, the servant’s wages, the soldier’s shilling, are all guarantees that the whole of the inheritance or of the pay will be forthcoming in due time. And so there emerges from this consideration of the Divine Spirit as the ‘earnest,’ the thought that the present experiences of a Christian soul are the surest proofs, and the irrefragable guarantees, of that perfect future. We ask for proofs of a future life. They may be very useful in certain states of mind, and to certain phases of opinion, but as it seems to me, far deeper than the region of logical understanding, and far more conclusive than anything that can be cast into the form of a syllogism, is the experience of a soul which knows that God is its, and that it is God’s. ‘I think, therefore, I am,’ said the philosopher. ‘I have God; therefore I shall always be,’ says the Christian. Whilst that evidence is available only for himself, it is absolutely conclusive for himself. And the fact that it does spring in the hearts which are purest, because nearest God, is no small matter to be considered by men who may be groping for proofs of a life to come. If the selected moments of the purest devotion here on earth bring with them inevitably the confidence of the unending continuance of that communion, then those who do not believe in that future have to account for the fact as best they may. As for us who do know, though brokenly, and by reason of our own faults very imperfectly, what it is to have God, and be had by Him, we do not need to travel out to dim and doubtful analogies, nor do we even depend entirely upon the fact of a risen Christ ascended to the heavens, and living evermore, but we can say, ‘I am God’s; God is mine, and death has no power over such a mutual possession.’
The very incompleteness adds strength to the assurance, for the facts of the Christian life are such as to demand, both by its greatness and by its littleness, by its loftiness and by its lapses into lowliness, by the floodtide of devotion that sometimes sweeps rejoicingly over the mud-shoals and by the ebb that sometimes leaves them all black and festering, a future life wherein what was manifestly meant to be, and capable of being, dominant, supreme, but was hampered and hindered here, shall reach its full development, and where the plant that was dwarfed in this alien soil, transplanted into that higher house, shall blossom and bear immortal fruits. The new moon has a ragged edge, and each of the protrusions and concavities are the prophecy of the perfect orb which shall ere long fill the night with calm light from its silvery shield. The incompleteness prophesies completion.
And if the incompleteness is so blessed, what will the completeness be? A shilling to a million pounds, Knowledge which is partial and intermittent, like the twilight, as contrasted with the blaze of noonday, Joy like winter sunshine as compared with the warmth and heat of the midday sun at the zenith on the Equator. The ‘earnest’ of the ‘inheritance’ is wealth; the inheritance itself shall be unaccountable treasure.
III. And so, lastly, a word about the completion of the possession.
The ‘earnest’ is always of the same nature as, and a part of the ‘inheritance.’ Therefore, since the Holy Spirit is the earnest, the conclusion is plain, that the inheritance is nothing less than God Himself. Heaven is to possess God, and to be possessed by Him. That is the highest conception that we can form of that future life. And it is sorely to be lamented that subsidiary conceptions, which are all useful in their subordinate places, have, by popular Christianity, been far too much elevated into being the central blessedness of that future heaven. It is all right that we should cast the things which it is ‘impossible for men to utter’ into the shape of symbols which may a little relieve the necessary inarticulateness; but golden streets, and crystal pavements, and white robes, and golden palms, and all such representations, are but the dimmest shadows of that which they intend to express, and do often, as is the vice of all symbols, obscure. We can only conceive of a condition of which we have had no experience, by the two ways of symbolism and of negation. We can say, ‘There shall be no night there; there shall be no curse there; they need no candle, neither light of the sun; they rest not day nor night; there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.’ But all these negations, like their sister symbols, are but surface work, and we have to go deeper than all of them.
But to possess God, and to be possessed by Him, and in either case fully, perfectly in degree, progressively in measure, eternal in duration, is the Heaven of heaven.
If that is the true conception of the inheritance, then it follows indubitably that such a Heaven is not for everybody. God would fain have us all for His there, as He would fain have each of us here and now, but it may not be. There are creatures which live beneath stones, and if you turn their coverings up, and let light fall on them, it kills them. And there are men who have refused to belong to God here, and refused to claim their portion in Him, and such cannot possess that true Heaven which is God Himself. Then, if its possession is not a mere matter of divine volition, giving a man what he is not capable of receiving, it plainly follows that the preparation must begin now and here by the incomplete possession of which my text is discoursing. And the way of such preparation is plain. The context says: ‘In whom, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.’ Faith in Jesus Christ, and trust in Him and His work as my forgiveness, my acceptance, my changed nature and heart-is the condition of being ‘sealed’ with that Spirit whose sealing of us is the condition of our love, our surrender, and mutual indwelling, which are our possession of God and being possessed by Him, and are the condition of our future complete possession of the ‘inheritance.’ We must begin with faith in Christ. Then comes the sealing, then comes the earnest, then comes the growing redemption, and in due time shall come the fulness of the possession. ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ’ if thou wouldst have the earnest, whilst thou dost tabernacle in tents in the wilderness of Time, and if thou wouldst have the inheritance when thou crossest the flood into the goodly land.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Which . . . possession. In parenthesis.
the earnest = a pledge. See 2Co 1:22. The gift of the new nature (spirit) is a pledge of God’s future gifts in the same kind, thus differing from any ordinary pledge. Compare 1Pe 1:4.
inheritance. Greek. kleronomia. See Act 20:32. Compare our inheritance here, and His inheritance, Eph 1:18.
until = unto. Greek. eis. App-104.
purchased possession. Greek. peripoiesis. Here; 1Th 5:9. 2Th 2:14. Heb 10:39. 1Pe 2:9. Compare Act 20:28.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Eph 1:14. , of our) He here includes Jews and Greeks.- , unto redemption) Construe with you were sealed); Eph 4:30. This future deliverance or redemption, by the addition of , of preservation [conservationis, Engl. Vers., of the purchased possession], is distinguished from the redemption made by the blood of Christ. So and , 1Th 5:9; Heb 10:39.- is said of that which remains still, when all other things perish:[14] LXX., 2Ch 14:12 (13); Mal 3:17.
[14] Wahl, in his Clavis, takes passively, res acquisita; , quem Deus hoc consilio elegit ut sit sibi proprius: populus Deo proprius: , . The full redemption of His purchased people.-ED.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Eph 1:14
Eph 1:14
which is an earnest of our inheritance,-An earnest is money given in advance, as a pledge or security that the full amount promised shall be paid. In its use here, it means that assurance that the believer has of the work of the Holy Spirit in his heart that the ultimate blessing, of which he has now a foretaste, shall not fail. The following is illustrative of the meaning here: The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.” (Rom 8:16-17). It should be observed that the earnest of the Spirit in the passage before us and the witness of the Spirit is not some vague, mysterious experience of which no rational account can be given. It is rather the very work of the Spirit himself. The Spirit gives the directions as to the kind of life the believer is to live, and his own spirit bears testimony as to whether he conforms his life to these instructions. But the Holy Spirit, through this testimony or witness, moulds the human spirit into his own likeness, dwells with the spirit of the believer; so that the same Spirit that was in Jesus Christ dwells in him. He is led by the Spirit, and through the Spirit of God acts and works, because his spirit is imbued with the purposes, thoughts, temper, and being of the divine Spirit (Gal 5:22-23) there is a happy and harmonious union of the Holy Spirit with his spirit that brings confidence and assurance to his heart and enables him to cry: Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God. (1Jn 3:1).
[The inheritance thus acquires a significance which should be noticed. As earnest money is part of the full amount which is ultimately to be made complete, so what a Christian experiences now is, while an earnest of the inheritance to be finally his in its fullness, a part of that very inheritance, and in so far makes him know what the inheritance as finally enjoyed shall be. So much of real spiritual blessing as he now enjoys is heaven already in his heart; what he has in the work and fruits of the Spirit is for him alike pledge and foretaste.]
unto the redemption of Gods own possession,-The redemption is the raising them from the grave to immortality. [For this we wait till the time appointed of the Father-the time when he will reclaim his heritage in us, and give us full possession of our heritage in Christ. We do not wait as did the saints of former ages, ignorant of the Fathers purpose for our future lot. Life and immortality are brought to light through the gospel. By faith we see beyond the chasm of death. We enjoy through the gracious promise: That the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward. For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. (Rom 8:18-23).]
unto the praise of his glory.-[His grace having done its work, all issues to the praise of his glory. This paragraph began with an ascription of blessing, it ends with this refrain which makes praise the ultimate end of the entire scheme of redemption. Our free ascription of praise is for what he has done and for what he is.]
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
the earnest: Rom 8:15-17, Rom 8:23, 2Co 1:22, 2Co 5:5, Gal 4:6
the redemption: Eph 4:30, Lev 25:24-34, Psa 74:2, Psa 78:54, Jer 32:7, Jer 32:8, Luk 21:28, Act 20:28, Rom 8:23, 1Pe 2:9, *marg.
unto: Eph 1:6, Eph 1:12
Reciprocal: Num 34:2 – an inheritance 2Ki 19:34 – for mine Psa 111:9 – sent Son 2:12 – of the turtle Isa 37:35 – for mine Eze 36:27 – I will Luk 15:22 – a ring Joh 4:14 – shall be Joh 7:39 – this spake Joh 14:16 – abide Act 9:31 – and in Act 26:18 – inheritance Gal 3:2 – Received Gal 3:14 – might Eph 1:11 – we Phi 1:4 – in Phi 1:11 – unto Phi 2:1 – if any fellowship 2Th 1:10 – to be glorified 1Pe 1:4 – an 1Pe 1:8 – full Rev 14:4 – redeemed
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
(Eph 1:14.) -Who is the earnest of our inheritance. The reading is found in A, B, F, G, L, but appears to be a correction. The relative does not agree with its antecedent in gender, not that, as Bloomfield imagines, such a change is any argument in favour of the personality of the , for it only assumes the gender of the following definitive predicate. So Mar 15:16; Gal 3:16; 1Ti 3:13, etc. Winer, 24, 3; Khner, 786, 3; Madvig, 98. From not perceiving this idiom, some refer to Christ as the antecedent. -earnest, is but the Oriental , H6860 in Greek letters. 2Co 1:22; 2Co 5:5. The earnest is not, properly speaking, a mere pledge, pignus, as the Vulgate has it. The pledge is restored when the contract has been performed, but the earnest is a portion of the purchase money. Isidore, lib. 5.25; Gaius, 3.139; Suicer, sub voce. The master gives the servant a small coin when the paction is agreed on, and this handgelt, or earnest, , as Hesychius defines it, is the token that the whole sum stipulated for will be given when the term of service expires. The earnest is not withdrawn, but is supplemented at the appointed period, for it is only, as Chrysostom explains it, . Irenaeus also says-Quod et pignus dixit Apostolus, hoc est partem ejus honoris qui a Deo nobis promissus est, in epistola quae ad Ephesios est.-Adv. Haeres. lib. v. cap. 11. The inheritance, , is that glorious blessing which awaits us, which is in reserve for us, and held by Christ in our name-that inheritance in which we have been enfeoffed (Eph 1:11), and which belonged to the ; and is resumed, for it belonged alike to believing Jew and Gentile.
The enjoyment of the earnest is a proof that the soul has been brought by faith into union with God. It has said to the Lord, Thou art my Lord. This covenant of God’s peace is ratified by the earnest given. The earnest is less than the future inheritance, a mere fraction of it-ex decem solidis centum solidorum millia, as Jerome illustrates. The work of God’s Spirit is never to be undervalued, yet it is only a small thing in relation to future blessedness. That knowledge which the Spirit implants is but limited-the dawn, faint in itself, and struggling with the gloom of departing night, compared to the broad effulgence of mid-day. The holiness He creates is still imperfect, and is surrounded and often oppressed with remaining infirmities in this body of death, and the happiness He infuses is often like gleams of sunshine on a dark and cloudy day, faint, few, and evanescent. But the earnest, though it differ in degree, is the same in kind with the prospective inheritance. The earnest is not withdrawn, nor a totally new circle of possessions substituted. Heaven is but an addition to present enjoyments. Knowledge in heaven is but a development of what is enjoyed on earth; its holiness is but the purity of time elevated and perfected; and its happiness is no new fountain opened in the sanctified bosom, but only the expansion and refinement of those susceptibilities which were first awakened on earth by confidence in the Divine Redeemer. The earnest, in short, is the inheritance in miniature, and it is also a pledge that the inheritance shall be ultimately and fully enjoyed. God will not resile from His promise, the Spirit conferred will perfect the enterprise. To give believers a foretasting, and then withhold the full enjoyment, would be a fearful torture. The prelibation will be followed by the banquet. As an earnest of the inheritance, the Holy Ghost is its pledge and foretaste, giving to believers the incipient experience of what it is, and imparting the blissful assurance of its ultimate and undisturbed possession. And all this-
, -till the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory. The expression is idiomatic and somewhat difficult. 1. Some suppose to mean salus, conservatio, deliverance and life. The allied verb sometimes signifies in the Septuagint to save alive, and so Whitby renders the phrase the redemption of life, and Bretschneider, redemptio qua vitae aeternae servamur. Wetstein, Bengel, and Bos have virtually the same explanation. Holzhausen justifies this criticism at some length, and resolves the clause . . 2. Others take the noun in the sense of possession. In 2Ch 14:13, the noun seems to signify a remnant preserved, . 3. Some connect the two substantives as cause and effect. Luther renders zu unserer Erlsung, dass wir sein Eigenthum wrden-to our redemption, that we should be His possession. In this view Luther was preceded by Theodoret and Pelagius, and has been followed by Homberg and von Gerlach. Bucer has redemptio qua contingat certa vitae possessio. But with an active sense the noun, as may be seen under Eph 1:7, is followed by a genitive. 4. Vatablus, Koppe, and Wahl give the noun a participial rendering-the redemption which has been secured or purchased for us. Koppe also gives it another turn, which we have already possessed, in allusion to Eph 1:7. 5. Others change this aspect, and give it this rendering, ad obtinendam redemptionem. Beza translates, dum in libertatem vindicemur-a rendering which would require the words to be reversed. 6. Another party, H. Stephanus, Bugenhagen, Calovius, and Matthies, preceded by Ambrosiaster and Augustine, who seem to have understood it in the same sense, take the word in the general sense of possession-haereditas acquisita. But the inheritance needs not to be redeemed; the redemption certainly applies to us, and not to the blessedness prepared for us. 7. The verb denotes to acquire for oneself: Gen 36:6; Gen 31:18; Pro 7:4; Isa 43:21, ; Act 20:28, , ; 1Ti 3:13, . Similar instances occur in the Apocrypha, and the same meaning is found in the classics. Didymus defines it, . , that is ., which is emphatically reckoned as portion of our substance and possession. Theophylact explains the words by the same terms, and OEcumenius defines it by itself, . . In this way the noun is used in 1Th 5:9, . ; 2Th 2:14, . ; Heb 10:39, . . In all these cases there is the idea of acquisition for oneself, and the noun followed by a genitive has an active significance, which it cannot have here, and Meyer’s connection with is strained. The idea of life, vitality, or safety, found in the term so often when it stands in the Old Testament as the representative of , H2651, and on which some exegetes lay such stress, is evidently a secondary use. The central idea is to preserve for oneself, and as life is the most valuable of possessions, so the word was employed -to preserve it. The great majority of critics understand in the abstract-the possession, i.e. the people possessed-. As a collective noun to denote a body of people, is employed in Php 3:3, and so stands in Rom 11:7 for . The word thus corresponds to the Hebrew , H6035, often rendered by a similar term-. Compare Exo 19:5; Deu 7:6; Deu 14:2; Deu 26:18; Isa 43:21; or Mal 3:17, . The in the Old Testament refers not to any possession held by the people, but to the people themselves held in possession by God. Tit 2:14; and , 1Pe 2:9. The collective people of God are His -the body of the faithful whom He has taken to be His . They are His by the blood paid for their ransom. , says Theophylact, . And the redemption which is here referred to, is their complete and final deliverance from all evil. The people who form the possession become God’s by redemption, and shall fully realize themselves as God’s when that redemption shall be completed.
Olshausen, Meyer, and Stier understand to denote the final cause-for the redemption of the purchased possession. Still in this case for would have virtually a subtemporal sense. De Wette and Rckert render it until; Eph 4:30. Whether the words be joined with or with the immediately preceding clause, it matters not, for the meaning is much the same. The sealing and earnest are alike intermediate, and point to a future result- implying a future purpose and period, when both shall be superseded. The earnest is enjoyed up till the inheritance be received, when it is absorbed in its fulness. The idea is common in the Old Testament, as showing the relation which the ancient Israel bore to God as His inheritance-His, and His by a special tie, for He had redeemed them out of Egypt. Triune divine operation is again developed;-the Father seals believers, and His glory is the last end; in the Son are they sealed, and their redemption is His work; while the Spirit-which proceedeth from the Father, and is sent by the Son-is the Seal and the Earnest.
And this is our absolute redemption, as Chrysostom terms it. Wilke understands by -the liberation of the minor on his majority, comparing this passage with one somewhat similar in Galatians. But seems, in the apostle’s idea of it, to be a long process, including not a single and solitary blessing, but a complete series of spiritual gifts, beginning with the pardon of sin, and stretching on to the ultimate bestowment of perfection and felicity, for it rescues and blesses our entire humanity. In Jesus we are having redemption; and pardon, enlightenment, and inheritance, with the Spirit as the signet and the earnest, are but its present elements, given us partially and by instalments in the meanwhile: for though it begin when sin is forgiven, yet it terminates only when we are put in possession of that totality of blessing which our Lord’s obedience and death have secured. Rom 8:23; 1Co 1:30. We have redemption so soon as we believe; we are ever having it so long as we are on earth; and when Jesus comes again to finish the economy of grace, we shall have it in its full and final completion. Thus the redemption in Eph 1:7 is incipient, and in Eph 1:14 is final-the first and last stages of the same .
And all issues -to the praise of His glory-His grace having now done its work. As in Eph 1:5 th and 6 th, with the proximate end is followed by with the ultimate purpose. The -the LORD’S OWN, the Holy Catholic Church in heaven, praises Him with rapturous emotion, for His glory is seen and felt in every blessing and hope, and this perpetual and universal consciousness of redemption is ever jubilant in its anthems and halleluiahs. See under Eph 1:6.
The period of redemption expires with the . No more is redemption to be offered, for the human race has run its cycle; and no more is it to be partially enjoyed, for the redeemed are to be clothed with perfection: so that the period of perfection in blessing harmonizes with that of perfection in numbers. As long as the process of redemption is incomplete, the collection of recipients is incomplete too. The church receives its complement in extent at the very same epoch at which it is crowned with fulness of purity and blessedness. May it please Thee of Thy gracious goodness shortly to accomplish the number of Thy elect, and to hasten Thy kingdom, is an appropriate petition on the part of all saints.
Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians
Eph 1:14. This verse is an illustration drawn from a familiar business transaction involving a considerable value, in which one party makes a “down” payment as an evidence of good faith. It binds the parties to the contract until the time when full payment is to be made and the contract completed. God has promised eternal life to all who enter into this covenant with Him, which is to be bestowed in fact at the day of judgment. This, of course, is on condition that both parties fulfill all the terms of the agreement until the final time comes. This “down” payment is here called the earnest, which literally means a pledge. The pronoun which means that God’s earnest or pledge payment is the favor bestowed through the Spirit as shown in verse 13. When the time arrives and God delivers the crown of eternal life to all the faithful “signers” of the agreement, all praise and glory will go to Him.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Eph 1:14. Which is an earnest, i.e., the Holy Spirit Earnest is a part of the purchase-money paid as a pledge of full payment afterwards. The present gift of the Spirit is such a pledge of fuller blessing; comp. 2Co 1:22.
Of our inheritance. Believers obtain the certainty that they are heirs and have an inheritance in eternity, not through an assurance from without, but chiefly through the reality of the possession, not at once in its entire extent, but in an earnest (Braune).
Unto the redemption, etc. Unto, rather than until; the preposition being the same as that used in the next clause. Since the clauses are so similar, they should be regarded as parallel, and both accordingly be joined with the main verb (were sealed). The former of the two sets forth Gods purpose in the sealing, as that purpose respects man; the latter the ultimate purpose as respects God. But the former, as a matter of fact, includes what God does for man, the latter what return man makes to God. Redemption is here used in a wider sense than in Eph 1:7 (comp. chap. Eph 4:30 and Rom 8:23), pointing to the full final deliverance of soul and body from sin and death, and also to the glorifying which is the positive side of the redemption.
Of his purchased possession. The word is an unusual one, but much discussion had led to general agreement as to its meaning. The verb from which it is derived meant, at first, to cause to remain; then the reflexive sense, to cause to remain for ones self, became to acquire, to gain. The noun thus means an acquired possession, and is here equivalent to the Hebrew idea of a people belonging to God, acquired by Him. Many other meanings have been suggested, but all of them are decidedly objectionable.
Unto the praise of his glory. See Eph 1:12. All issues to the praise of His glory, His grace having now done its work (Eadie). This section began with an ascription of blessing, it ends with this refrain which makes praise the ultimate end of the entire scheme of redemption. Our free ascription of praise is for what He has done and for what He is. The beginning, middle, and end of the Christian life, or its ground, path, and goal, is the praise and adoration of God (Braune).
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
ARGUMENT 4
THE HOLY GHOST AND REDEMPTION
14. Who is the earnest of our inheritance unto the redemption of the possession, unto the praise of His glory.
The Holy Ghost, personally received in sanctification, is the first installment of the heavenly fruition, destined to sweep on with ever- increasing delight and eternally accumulating rapture through the flight of the heavenly ages. The indwelling God, in the person of the Holy Ghost, is the secret of heavenly bliss. We receive him as an indwelling Comforter in the experience of entire sanctification to abide forever.
The redemption in this passage is the glorification of mind and spirit, and the transfiguration of the body at the second coming of Christ, transforming the saints of the bridehood into the similitude of his own glorious body, to shine and shout forever.
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
Verse 14
The earnest; the pledge and assurance.–Until the redemption, &c.; until the time shall come for the full enjoyment of the possession thus purchased for us.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.
Paul continues to expand the truth of the Spirit within us. He is not only our seal, but he is the earnest of our inheritance, or the guarantee to us from God that our inheritance is sure and safe. The Spirit will be with us until our redemption is complete in eternity.
This, by the way is a basis for the teaching that the Spirit is withdrawn with the Church at the rapture. He is the guarantee that the taking away of the believers will happen and that we will enter into our eternal state.
Other truth is set forth here. We see that we are purchased, and we are also HIS possession – we are not our own.
Talk about theology, Paul crammed at least a semesters worth into the first fourteen verses of this little book.
“Earnest” relates to the same thought we have in real estate today, when we promise to buy a house, we put down some earnest money. It is money that we place with the owner that is a guarantee that we will follow through with the purchase sometime yet in the future.
The Spirit is God’s earnest money to guarantee that the purchase will be complete in eternity. It cannot be stopped.
Did you notice that phrase again? “Praise of his glory” – that phrase that has appeared three times in this section. In verse six we see “To the praise of the glory of his grace” and in verse twelve and fourteen we see “praise of his glory” – do you get the feeling that praising His glory and who He is might be a very important thing to do in our worship service?
Do we see this in the hand shaking time that interrupts most services?
Do we see this in many of the specials where glory is brought upon the performer?
Do we see this in the announcements?
Do we see this in the singing?
Do we see this in the preaching?
Some considerations when you want to plan some Scriptural worship services in the future.
Fuente: Mr. D’s Notes on Selected New Testament Books by Stanley Derickson
1:14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the {t} redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.
(t) Full and perfect.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence is a pledge of all that God will give us as His children. This pledge is not just a promise but the first part of our inheritance, the down payment, so to speak (cf. Gen 38:17-20 LXX). The fact that we possess Him now (the "already" aspect of our salvation) assures us that the rest of our salvation (the "not yet" portion) will inevitably follow. An engagement ring is this kind of pledge.
"The content of the inheritance here is life in heaven with God." [Note: Joseph C. Dillow, The Reign of the Servant Kings, p. 90.]
The redemption in view here (Gr. apolytrosin) is a different aspect of our salvation than the redemption mentioned in Eph 1:7. Here it is not release from sin’s guilt (Eph 1:7), but release from sin’s presence (cf. Rom 8:23; Php 3:20-21). In Eph 1:7, justification is in view, but here glorification is, the final aspect of our redemption. We experience redemption in three stages: we have been redeemed in Christ (Eph 1:7), we are being redeemed as the Spirit makes us more like Christ (Rom 8:1-4), and we shall be redeemed when Christ returns and we become sinless, as He is. God’s possession is the believer whom He has chosen (Eph 1:3-6), redeemed (Eph 1:7-12), and sealed (Eph 1:13-14) "to the praise of His glory" (cf. Eph 1:6; Eph 1:12; Eph 1:18). Another view is that the inheritance in Eph 1:11 as well as the possession in Eph 1:14 is the church. [Note: E.g., Stott, p. 47.] However, the context seems to be describing blessings that every individual Christian enjoys rather than blessings that God enjoys.
"This beautiful phrase needs to be unpacked. The glory of God is the revelation of God, and the glory of his grace is his self-disclosure as a gracious God. To live to the praise of the glory of his grace is both to worship him ourselves by our words and deeds as the gracious God he is, and to cause others to see and to praise him too." [Note: Ibid., p. 50.]
The nine spiritual blessings Paul identified in Eph 1:3-14 are election, predestination, adoption, grace, redemption, forgiveness, knowledge, sealing, and inheritance. Stott summarized them as three: past election, present adoption, and future unification. [Note: Ibid., p. 36.] The recurrence of the phrase "in Christ" and equivalent expressions emphasizes that all these blessings come with our union with our Savior (Eph 1:3-4; Eph 1:6-7; Eph 1:9-10; Eph 1:12-13 [twice]). Likewise the repetition of "His will" and its equivalents emphasizes that the sovereign God is responsible for all these blessings (Eph 1:5; Eph 1:9; Eph 1:11). These verses (3-14) contain a compact statement of every believer’s spiritual riches. The passage is similar to a bank statement because it lists every Christian’s spiritual assets.
"We have been listening to an overture of the hallelujahs of the blest, and it closes, as it began, on the note of the praise of God’s glory, the highest of all themes. . . . False and true theology may be discriminated by a simple criterion. Do they magnify God or man?" [Note: Simpson, p. 36.]