Ephesians 1:6 - To the praise of His glory

1:6

“to the praise of His glorious grace”. This is the first of three times when Paul speaks of things being to the praise of His glory (v12, 14). So if we are to understand the world we need to realise that things are planned to bring praise to God. Now to some that seems an incredibly proud thing to do. The reason it is not is that God is worthy of praise. If we deny God praise then we are actually denying the truth. Conversely, when we do praise God we are living in accordance with the truth. The aspect of the truth that deserves praise here is God’s grace. Many try to attain salvation by works of one sort or another, but this will not work. Salvation is by grace. We may be shocked or offended that God pours out His blessing on some unworthy person, and we wonder why? The why is because God’s plans are worked out on the basis of grace. It also means that we should never lose hope, either for ourselves or for others. We (or they) might have sinned beyond hope, failed beyond hope, but there is always hope. For the deciding factor is the grace of God, not our failure. This grace is not an abstract thing, it was freely given to us “in the One He loves”, ie in Christ. Grace is freely given. We do not need to persuade God to eke out a little more grace from a limited supply, there is an unlimited supply. What hinders us from receiving this grace is often pride, insisting on depending on our own supposed worthiness. we need to live in the light of God’s grace, or as Pauls says in Romans 5:2 we stand in the grace of God.