Four times, in these three verses, with exulting emphasis, the apostle claims this distinction for "us." _Who_, then, are the objects of the primordial election of grace? Does St Paul use the pronoun distributively, thinking of individuals--you and me and so many others, the personal recipients of saving grace? or does he mean the Church, as that is collectively the family of God and the object of His loving ordination? In this epistle, the latter is surely the thought in the apostle's mind.[32] As Hofmann says: "The body of Christians is the object of this choice, not as composed of a certain number of individuals--a sum of 'the elect' opposed to a sum of the non-elect--but as the Church taken out of and separated from the world."
On the other hand, we may not widen the pronoun further; we cannot allow that the sonship here signified is man's natural relation to God, that to which he was born by creation. This robs the word "adoption" of its distinctive force. The sonship in question, while grounded "in Christ" from eternity, is conferred "through" the incarnate and crucified "Jesus Christ"; it redounds "to the praise of the glory of His _grace_." Now, grace is God's redeeming love toward sinners. God's purpose of grace toward mankind, embedded, as one may say, in creation, is realized in the body of redeemed men. But this community, we rejoice to believe, is vastly larger than the visible aggregate of Churches; for how many who knew not His name, have yet walked in the true light which lighteth every man.
There lies in the words "in Christ" a principle of exclusion, as well as of wide inclusion. Men cannot be in Christ against their will, who persistently put Him, His gospel and His laws, away from them. When we close with Christ by faith, we begin to enter into the purpose of our being. We find the place prepared for us before the foundation of the world in the kingdom of Divine love. We live henceforth "to the praise of the glory of His grace!"
[27] Vv. 13, 14; Rom. viii. 2-6, 16; 1 Cor. ii. 12; Gal v. 16, 22-25.
[28] =eis auton=, _for Him_; not =autô=, _to Him_.
[29] Ch. v. 25-27; Col. i. 27-29; Jude 24.
[30] On _sonship_, see Chapters XV.-XVII. and XIX. in _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor's Bible).