
You have received a lavish gift—God’s grace in Christ.
Trust the Savior who redeemed you. You have redemption in Christ. God’s love for you and choice of you from eternity works out in time. It involved his sending his Son to die in your place. Significantly, you have redemption through the One that God loves. His love for you is tied up with the love of the Father for the Son. You have redemption. The term was used for buying back someone who had been kiidnapped, or a slave buying freedom. A price has been paid. The guilt of your sins are gone because the penalty has been paid by Christ. Pul has in mind the death of Christ on the cross, his blood shed for your salvation. This is essential to your being an adopted son or daughter of God. But the redemption is not only an individual matter—Christ redeems and restores his people and his creation. The great Old Testament picture of redemption is the Exodus. The exercise of power in delivering is crucial both on the level of individual salvation, and when you think of the redemption of creation.
“In his recitation of the blessings of God bestowed on the church so far, Paul has hinted at the center of these great gifts in the gospel, but now, in a few short lines, he zeroes in on the heart of the gospel and what makes it gracious: the substitutionary mediation of Christ…. ‘For Paul, God’s love is not found in the philosopher’s detachment from the world. Rather grace, motivated and empowered by God’s love and mercy (Eph. 2:4; 2 Thess. 2:16; cf. 1 Tim. 1:14), assumes a cruciform shape in a broken and suffering world.’ [quoting James R. Harrison]”
S. M. Baugh, Ephesians, p. 89

God has lavished his grace on you. God’s grace is a free, undeserved gift. He has poured it out richly, lavished it on you. He gives, not out of, but according to his riches. Wisdom and understanding are part of that gift, enabling us who had been dead in sin, blinded by, our understanding darkened, to now understand, appreciate, and take hold of the Savior.
Rejoice in the mystery of God’s will. The mystery has been revealed. A mystery is a secret that is known when God reveals it. The structure of the Old Testament looked beyond itself to something greater, something better. That has now been unveiled. God has made it known. He has sent his Son as the Redeemer. Don’t think of the Son persuading a reluctant Father. Rather, this is all the outworking of the plan of the Triune God from eternity. Now is the time of fulfillment.
“Because of the Fall the world of men and things has been fractured and fragmented. Disintegration is pervasive. Alienation reigns. Adam’s sin plunged into disorder and confusion the whole creation over which he was appointed as God’s steward-king. The fallen world no longer ‘adds up’ to the perfect, harmonious cosmos God brought into being and planned to glorify. Now, in Christ, God means to save his creation, to restore it and to transform it into the glory of its original destiny. This is what Christ came to accomplish.”
Sinclair B. Ferguson, Let’s Study Ephesians, p. 13
All things come together in Christ. Appreciate the inclusive language. All things come together in Christ. That includes Jews and Gentiles alike—overcoming divisions that were deeper than we can easily appreciate. But it includes the all things in heaven as well as on earth. Christ does not simply snatch us out of the world, but he redeems the creation. And he summons you to live as part of that redeemed body.
The doxology of verse 3 expands as you unpack the blessings that God has spoken to you in Christ.