Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he has purposed in himself:
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
The pleasure of God, whose counsel cannot be changed, was to show in Christ the mystery of his will. This happened at the time when he chose that he should be revealed. Now his will was this, that he should then draw close to all who were in sin, either in heaven or in earth. God gave Christ to bring believers the gift of forgiveness of their sins through faith in Christ. .
Not only has God a will, but the intention of his will is expressed in Christ. Hence all things are done through him. There is nothing in the mystery that is not done through Jesus Christ. .
The whole of this wisdom and prudence consists in knowing Christ and through Christ understanding and seeing God. For whatever remaining wisdom there is in the world and whatever other wisdom of this kind there may be outside it, all wisdom and prudence is nonetheless empty, worthless and wretched without Christ. .
That he might make known to us, and to all men, the mystery of his will and pleasure in establishing his new law, of calling all Gentiles, as well as Jews, to believe in his Son, made man for us, in the dispensation of the fulness of times, (that is, at the time decreed from eternity) to establish, to accomplish, and, as it is in the Greek, to recapitulate all things in heaven and on earth, in Christ, and through him, and his merits; on earth, by fulfilling all the types, figures, and prophecies concerning the Messias; and in heaven, by filling up the number of his elect. The mystery of his will. The word mystery signifies a secret, an unknown design. It was the will of God, to reveal to us the great design he had in the incarnation of his Son, i.e. the formation of one great body of true adorers; composed, without distinction, of Jew and Gentile: till when the time appointed shall come, he will reunite and perfect in or under Christ this one body, composed of the Church triumphant, An...
The Stoics also hold that there is a distinction between wisdom and insight. They say, “Wisdom is the knowledge of things divine and human, insight only of that which is mortal.” According to this distinction we might apply Paul’s term wisdom to the invisible and visible and insight only to the visible. .
Some attentive reader might object: “If Paul knows in part and prophesies in part and now sees as through a glass darkly, how is the mystery of God revealed either to him or to the Ephesians “in all wisdom and insight?” … It is not that they by themselves have learned this mystery “in all wisdom and insight,” but God “in all wisdom and insight” has revealed the mystery to us, so far as we are able to grasp it. .
That is to say, this He desired, this He travailed for, as one might say, that He might be able to reveal to us the mystery. What mystery? That He would have man seated up on high. And this has come to pass.
For His favor was upon her good works before the ages, as well as on her and for a long time, for that which was foreordained has come, and has been greatly accepted.
) "all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth".
The apostle, too, writing to the Ephesians, says that God "had proposed in Himself, at the dispensation of the fulfilment of the times, to recall to the head "(that is, to the beginning) "things universal in Christ, which are above the heavens and above the earth in Him."
