From the same point his gaze sweeps onward to the end. God's purpose embraces the ages to come with those that are past. His working will not cease till the whole counsel is fulfilled. What we have of our inheritance, though rich and real, holds in it the promise of infinitely more; and the Holy Spirit is the "earnest of our inheritance" (ver. 14). God intends "that we should be to the praise of His glory." As things are, His glory is but obscurely visible in His saints. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be,"--and it will not appear until the unveiling of the sons of God (Rom. viii. 18-25). One day God's glory in us will burst forth in its splendour. All beholders in heaven and earth will then sing _to the praise of His glory_, when it is seen in His redeemed and godlike sons.
Verses 9 and 10 (_which He purposed ... upon the earth_) are, as we have said, a parenthesis or episode in the passage just reviewed. Neither in structure nor in sense would the paragraph be defective, had this clause been wanting. With the "in Him" repeated at the end of verse 10, St Paul resumes the main current of his thanksgiving, arrested for a moment while he dwells on "the mystery of God's will."
This last expression (ver. 9), notwithstanding what he has said in verses 4 and 5, still needs elucidation. He will pause for an instant to set forth once more the eternal purpose, to the knowledge of which the Church is now admitted. The communication of this mystery is, he says, "according to God's good pleasure which He purposed in Christ [comp. ver. 4], for a dispensation of the fulness of the times, intending to gather up again all things in the Christ--the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth."
God formed in Christ the purpose, by the dispensation of His grace, in due time to re-unite the universe under the headship of Christ. This mysterious design, hitherto kept secret, He has "made known unto us." Its manifestation imparts a wisdom that surpasses all the wisdom of former ages.[42] Such is the drift of this profound deliverance.
The first clause of verse 10 supplies a datum for its interpretation. The _fulness of the times_, in St Paul's dialect, can only be the time of Christ.[43] The dispensation which God designed of old is that in which the apostle himself is now engaged;[44] it is the dispensation, or administration (_economy_), of the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ, whether God be conceived as Himself the Dispenser, or through the stewards of His mysteries. The Messianic end was to Paul's Jewish thought the dénouement of antecedent history. How long this age would continue, into what epochs it might unfold itself, he knew not; but for him the fulness of the times had arrived. The Son of God was come; the kingdom of God was amongst men. It was the beginning of the end. It is a mistake to relegate this text to the dim and distant future, to some far-off consummation. We are in the midst of the Christian reconstruction of things, and are taking part in it. The decisive epoch fell when "God sent forth His Son." All that has followed, and will follow, is the result of this mission. Christ is all things, and in all; and we are already complete in Him.