well as the earthly one, will finally uplift the Lord and bring glory to Him, to Whom it

alone belongs.

The fact that grace is brought in here doubly emphasizes the fact that human merit and

works are ruled out, just as Rom. 11: 6, dealing with the characteristics of grace, clearly

reveals. This great grace has been reckoned ours, as the rest of verse 6 states. The words

"made us accepted" have the word `grace' in the original, reading literally ". . . . . the

glory of His grace, wherein He graced us in the Beloved (One)". This is another of the

great words of Paul's prison letters. It occurs only once more in the New Testament,

namely Luke 1: 28, where the angel addresses Mary as "highly-favoured". The margin

here reads "graciously accepted, or much graced", and how true this is for each one of the

members of Christ's Body! What company of God's redeemed children since Genesis

have had such grace and riches poured upon them?

Israel were indeed a favoured nation, above all nations of the earth (Psa. 147: 19, 20;

Rom 9: 3-5), yet this eclipses anything that they possessed, and just as Israel were

intended `to possess their possessions', so are we. But are we doing so? If we are not,

then we are indeed foolish and robbing ourselves of much joy and blessing.

Once more we see this linked to the Lord Jesus Christ, for we have been much-graced

"in the Beloved (One)", and this brings us to the next section of the chapter which

enlarges on the redemptive work of the Son, Who alone makes all these wonders of the

Father's will possible by what He has accomplished for us on Calvary's Cross: "In

Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the

riches of His grace" (verse 7). If we want to see redemption in picture form, then we find

it being carried out in Israel's experience, when the Lord redeemed them from Egypt with

its cruelty and bondage. The book of Exodus makes it clear that the Israelites were in no

position to redeem themselves. They were slaves of a tyrannical Pharaoh, and all they

could do was to cry to God for deliverance (Exod. 2: 23, 24; 3: 7, 8).  The earlier

chapters of this book reveal the majestic way in which God accomplished this for them,

but not before Calvary had been exacted typically, by the blood of the Passover lamb

(Exod. 12: 3, 12-14).

We, who are the members of the church which is the Body of Christ, have a greater

redemption from a greater bondage to Satan (Eph. 2: 2), the world which at present lies in

his power (I John 5: 19 R.V.) and from the sinful old nature which we all inherit from

fallen Adam. We have been set free from all this, not typically by a Passover lamb, but

by the reality of the precious shed blood, the life laid down by the Saviour on the cross on

our behalf, this being the price He paid for our deliverance, and "if the Son therefore shall

make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8: 36). This is liberty in the fullest sense,

not the spurious thing that man prates about. We who once were slaves, whether we

knew it or not, are now free, not just to please ourselves, but to please and serve Him as

He wills and shows us just what this involves day by day.

This redemption is further explained in Eph. 1: 7 as "the forgiveness of sins". There

is only One Who has the right to forgive sins, and that is God alone, for all sin ultimately