For His Own Glory

Ephesians 1:6a

We have looked at some unbelievable truths already in these first few verses of Ephesians. What we have seen so far is that God blessed us with every spiritual blessing (1:3), chose us before the foundation of the world (1:4), and that He providentially sent His Son to die for our sins so that we may be adopted by Him through Christ’s sacrifice (1:5). We even saw that this was according to the good pleasure of His will (1:5); it was not plan B or C but plan A.

When reading verses like these I always tend to ask why. Why would God choose to create a world where He saves a wicked people from hell? Why wouldn’t He just sit on the throne and enjoy the praise and worship of His angels while He basks in His glory? He does not need us, so why even create us?

I believe verse six answers these questions for us. It says, “to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.” There is a whole lot to unpack in this verse, but let’s start with the first part of it. Here we find the answers to the questions I just laid out.

From verse three until the end of verse six, Paul has not used a period; this is all the same thought. Verse six concludes the entire thought by saying that He does all these things “to the praise of the glory of His grace.” If we read the whole sentence together I believe it becomes clear that “to” can be read as “for.” This makes it a little easier to understand. We can see that this verse now says that He does all these things for the praise of the glory of His grace. So God blessed us with every spiritual blessing for the praise of the glory of His grace.  God chose us for the praise of the glory of His grace. Before the foundations of the world were laid, God had providentially willed to send His Son to die for our sins on the cross for the praise of the glory of His grace. We are His adopted children for the praise of the glory of His grace.

What this means is that God is doing all of these incredible, awesome things for us because it ultimately glorifies Himself. This is His ultimate purpose. He delights in His glory.

If you are like me, you read verse six and you thinks, “isn’t that a little prideful of God? Isn’t He supposed to be humble? Why does He tell us glorify Him and then also go and glorify Himself?”

I think it is important to remember that we are sinners called to worship God whereas God is perfect. We need to become holy and blameless, and the way to do that is by obeying Him, the perfect One. If God did not glorify Himself then why would we? What would be the point of our purpose if the One we are called to glorify didn’t hold Himself to the same standard? We are imperfect and must therefore obey the perfect One in order to become more and more perfect. He is perfect and therefore rejoicing in and glorifying anything less then Himself would mean He was glorifying something imperfect. A holy, perfect God must glory in Himself or else He would no longer be perfect.

While it is true that it would be prideful and arrogant for us to glory in ourselves, it is not for Him. the reason is because we are imperfect and He is perfect. So again, He commands us to glorify Himself because He is perfect, and commanding anything less would result in an imperfect command making Him tolerant of sin and therefore imperfect. It is also true, however, that us glorifying Him is what is best for us.

Let that sink in. God is so wise and sovereign that He is able to both glorify and magnify His Name while also giving us what is best for us! We already saw how incredible His love and grace for us is when we read through verses three through five. Meanwhile, verse six tells us that He does it “to the praise of the glory of His grace”! He shows us how vast His grace is and does so to glorify His perfect Name while also choosing us before the foundation of the world, blessing us with every spiritual blessing, and adopting us as His children though we do not deserve it. What a God we serve!

We will look at the second half of this verse in the next article in this series. For now, I encourage you to ponder His Word and ponder His sovereignty and perfection. He is an awesome God, One Who deserves our praise and worship. Let us glorify Him, our perfect, wise Creator.

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