which he has caused to abound towards us in all wisdom and intelligence,
Verse 7 has just spoken of redemption and forgiveness "according to the riches of his grace." Verse 8 says that grace did not stop there — so what does God give a forgiven person next, and why does He give it as wisdom?
Forgiveness of sins is enormous. Still, this verse treats it as a starting point, not a ceiling:
The free forgiveness of our sins in Christ is far from exhausting the riches of the grace of God. He who saves us is the only wise God. In the way He works now, as the Creator of His Church, He shows to faith both the glory of His wisdom and the deep perfection of His plan.
Notice what the verse does not say. Forgiveness meets a need. Wisdom is about something else:
It is not said, "abounded toward us in forgiving us," because full forgiveness is a positive need. But when we hear of "wisdom and prudence," it is a question of God's counsels about His Son. That stands above any thought of need, and does not depend on it. He says, as it were, You are able now to enter into My thoughts, and understand them when I speak. You are delivered from anxiety about your sins, and are free now to enter into My purpose.
The ESV says "insight." Older versions say "prudence." Others translate it "intelligence." One writer separates the two words like this:
As far as I know, wisdom is resource or ability, but prudence means intelligence. Wisdom would be the ability to understand these things. Intelligence would be that you grasp them. Without the ability to understand these things we could never have them as light in our souls.
And He gives this wisdom so that we can enjoy it, not just know it:
Not only has He abounded to us in connection with His grace, but also in connection with His wisdom. Verse 8 speaks of "wisdom and prudence [or, intelligence]." He has made known the secrets of His wisdom. His aim is that we should enter into them with understanding, and enjoy them.
This wisdom is not open to human cleverness:
But the true knowledge of God's way belongs only to those who have been made alive by His grace, and fully established through faith in Jesus. Natural cleverness has no power to reach the mysteries of God. They are open only to the spiritual person.
Warm grace and cool wisdom can feel like opposites. One writer joins them:
God has abounded in this grace. There is no limiting, no reserve — only the full, free flow of His love, showing His favour to His saints. This grace is not moved by a burst of eager affection alone. It is moved by pure wisdom and prudence, with the calm deliberation of eternal intelligence (v.8). How perfectly His grace and wisdom are mingled in these marvellous things!
Verse 9 goes on to speak of God "making known to us the mystery of his will." You share your plans with a friend. One writer draws that line:
He acts according to the "riches of His grace." He has caused that grace to abound toward us "in all wisdom and intelligence" (as it may be read). This suits people called to such a calling. He does it by making known the mystery of His will, which He purposed in Himself for the glory of Christ. He treats us as friends (compare John 15:15), in the place of intimacy and nearness.
God does not hold this blessing back for heaven. He means us to know it on earth, today:
God has given us of His grace in all wisdom and prudence. He is not content to give us this portion only by bringing us into it later on. He wants to give us the knowledge of it now, here below, in all wisdom and prudence, according to His good pleasure. We have not to do with a God who sets us before His justice, but with a God of grace who acts according to His own thoughts.
Commentators differ in emphasis. Some read "wisdom and prudence" as qualities in God's own way of acting. Others read them as capacities He gives to us.
- Overflow. Forgiveness is where grace begins, not where it ends. The same riches that cancelled sin keep pouring out in wisdom.
- Freed to listen. God has settled our anxiety about sin, so the mind is free for something higher: His counsels about His Son.
- Capacity. "Wisdom" is the ability to take in God's things. "Insight" or "intelligence" is grasping them — light in the soul, not facts in the head.
- Friendship. God makes His purpose known the way a friend shares plans. He brings us near instead of keeping us at a distance.
- Now. This intimacy is not postponed to glory; He intends us to know and enjoy it here, today.
having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in himself
Ephesians 1:9 turns from what God has done about our sins to what He has told us about His own plans — a secret now made known. The commentators quote an older translation of the second half: "according to His good pleasure which He has purposed in Himself," where the ESV reads "according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ."
The word can put people off, as though Paul were pointing to something too deep to grasp. Commentators insist on the opposite meaning:
"Making known to us the mystery of His will." This does not mean something you cannot understand. It means something you could not know before God told you. Do not turn away and say, All I want to know is to be saved. We ought to desire to learn all God is willing to teach us. The word "mystery" means something God chose to keep secret. He had not revealed it before, but it is perfectly understandable once He unfolds it.
So what is this secret, and whose idea was it?
The mystery of His will is what has always been near to His heart, for it involves the glory not of the church only but of Christ. It is "according to His good pleasure which He has purposed in Himself." No one suggested it. It was His own will. And what is the mystery of His will? It is that when the times are complete, God will gather together into one all things in Christ, both the things in heaven and the things on earth. Under Christ He will reunite all these things that Satan has scattered.
The verse ties God's will to His "good pleasure." That adjective is not decoration:
God has always acted according to His own will. In the presence of sin and the ruin it caused, He chose for long ages to keep the main purpose of His will a secret, a mystery. Yet the pleasure of His will and His purpose has always been good, for He is good. This is a great fact, and we do well to hold on to it. The "pleasure of His will" is good (v. 5). The "pleasure which He has purposed in Himself" is good (v. 9). God's pleasure and purpose is not tied to judgment. That work is necessary, and He will carry it out at the right time, but He calls it His "strange work."
Verse 9 follows redemption and forgiveness, and the order matters. The "wisdom and prudence" of verse 8 is a different gift from pardon:
It is not said, "abounded toward us in forgiving us," because full forgiveness is a positive need. But "wisdom and prudence" is a matter of God's counsels about His Son. These stand above any thought of what we need, and do not depend on it. He says, as it were, You are able now to enter into My thoughts, and understand them when I speak. You are delivered from anxiety about your sins, and are free now to enter into My purpose.
Sharing your plans with someone shows how close you are. Commentators find that same mark of closeness here:
When God reveals His thoughts to us like this, it is not about our own direct blessing. It is the sign of His confidence in us, whom He has brought into such a close relationship with Himself. As Christ said to His disciples, "I do not call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you."
Knowledge of God's plan is not filed away as information. It reshapes how a person lives now:
In the glory of Christ and of the church, God has given us a future full of His own designs. Studying it now fills our hearts with associations with Him... He reveals it to us as His friends (John 15:15; Eph. 1:9), making us sharers of the thoughts that occupy Himself... If the ends men pursue show what they are, our conduct in this present life will carry the stamp of the future we expect. Our life here will be coloured by the foretaste of things there.
- Secret, not riddle. "Mystery" here means something God kept to Himself until He chose to speak. Once He speaks, you can understand it.
- Source. The plan came from God alone. No one advised Him, and His good pleasure is good, not harsh or arbitrary.
- Content. God will gather again under Christ everything Satan has scattered, in heaven and on earth.
- Order. Forgiveness settles the anxiety about our sins; only then are we free to take in God's counsels about His Son.
- Result. God tells His plans to friends, not servants — and the future we expect stamps the life we live now.
for [the] administration of the fulness of times; to head up all things in the Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth; in him,
God's plan has a goal, and this verse states it: a coming order in which God brings everything in heaven and on earth under one Head, Christ. Two questions follow. When is this "fullness of time"? And what does it mean to unite all things in Him?
Where the ESV has "plan," older translations have "dispensation." The word comes from the running of a house.
The word "dispensation" appears twice in the older English translation of the letter to the Ephesians — in Ephesians 1:10 and Ephesians 3:2. In both places the Greek word means the law or arrangement of a house. It is close to the word for steward, so it is sometimes translated "stewardship." In general, a dispensation is the order of affairs that God chooses to set up at any given time.
Older translations read "the dispensation of the fulness of times." The point is not that time runs out. It is that God's ways reach their perfection — unlike what human rule has produced.
The "fulness of times" can hardly mean the eternal state, for then God will be all in all. It seems rather to have in view the world to come — the thousand-year reign of Christ — when the full result of God's ways in government will appear in perfection. God has entrusted men with all the principles of government at different times, and men have failed completely in each of them. Under the rule of Christ those same principles will appear in perfection. The government of man has shown the ruin of the times. The reign of Christ will show the "fulness," or perfection, of the times.
Some read this as a description of the age we live in now. One writer traces the mistake to a similar phrase in Galatians.
Many have supposed that this means the present dispensation. They confuse it with another expression used in Galatians 4:4: "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son." But "the fulness of time" and "the dispensation of the fulness of times" are two very different expressions… The Church is now reconciled; but things in heaven and on earth are still to be reconciled.
The ESV's "to unite all things" translates a word that means to head up. One writer pictures it with a barrel-maker.
What marks it out is the gathering together — literally, the heading up — of all things in heaven and on earth in the Christ… Have you ever seen a barrel-maker heading up a cask? He stands the wooden staves on end around the head, or end piece, of the cask… That head is the centre that holds them all together. Once it is in place, the harder he presses the staves in, the firmer and better the work.
The verse names heaven and earth, and leaves one place out. The unity it promises answers what sin has done.
The verse says nothing about the things in hell, because this promised gathering belongs to a world of blessing… Sin is lawlessness. It turns every man into a little unit on his own, with his only centre in himself. So through all these ages of sin's reign, however cleverly men build their unities, everything has fallen apart. God has His unity. He is working towards it.
Why would things in heaven need to be brought back at all?
Elsewhere we read of the reconciliation of heavenly things as well as earthly ones (Colossians 1:20). That word implies they were estranged before. And here it rests on the cross: "making peace by the blood of His cross"… Sin has defiled not the earth only but the heavens. The work of Christ has glorified God about that sin, so He can step in, deliver what is to become the inheritance of Christ and His "joint-heirs," and bring it back to Himself.
Adam and his wife show where the church stands.
But the church is not included in any of these things… We are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ — not just heirs under Christ, but heirs with Him. It is the picture given at the very start of man's history. Adam had the glory of being head over this lower world, and his wife shares that rule because she is joined to him. The church is the spiritual Eve of the Lord Jesus, the bride of the last Adam.
- House — "Dispensation" means the ordering of a house. God sets up each arrangement in its time, and He keeps this one for the age to come.
- Head — To "unite all things" is literally to head them up. Christ is the centre that holds every separate piece in place.
- Reach — The heading up covers heaven and earth alike, because the cross dealt with sin's defilement in both.
- Timing — Commentators place this in the age to come, not in our own. Do not confuse it with the "fullness of time" of Galatians 4:4.
- Share — Believers are not among the things gathered. They are joint-heirs with the Head, the church being Eve to the last Adam, sharing the rule of the One she is joined to.