thoughts that
fill his mind with a deep and comprehensive thanksgiving for that large
measure of correspondence with the divine purpose which is reported
from the Asiatic churches, and with a prayer for their full
enlightenment in heart and intellect. He prays that they may rise to
the true science of what their Christian calling, as fellow-inheritors
with the saints of the divine blessing, really means; and to an
adequate expectation of what God intends to do in them, on the analogy
of what He has already done in Christ their head.

For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus
which is among you, and which _ye shew_ toward all the saints, cease
not to give thanks for you, making mention _of you_ in my prayers; that
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto
you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; having
the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope
of his calling, what the riches {79} of the glory of his inheritance in
the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward
who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might
which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and made
him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly _places_, far above all
rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is
named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and
he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head
over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him
that filleth all in all.

There is very little further explanation needed for this passage. But
three phrases may be noted:--

(1) St. Paul calls the Father 'the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,' as
our Lord Himself calls Him 'my God' (John xx. 17) in His resurrection
state. It is no doubt of Christ _as man_ that the Father is God; but
this relation of the Son as man to the Father depends upon an eternal
subordination in which the Son, even as God, stands to the Father from
whom He derives His divine life. The essential subordination of the
Son (and Spirit) to the Father as the one fount of Godhead, is
continually suggested in the New Testament; but it involves no
inferiority in Godhead, or subsequence in time--'nothing before or
after, nothing greater or less,' as the _Quicunque vult_ says. And it
conveys to us the moral lesson that a subordinate position