Happy Friday, here is today's question, hello Pastor John, my name is Christina, and

I follow you from Italy.

I appreciate how DesiringGod.org makes wonderful resources available for free online.

Praise God for you all.

I particularly appreciate your fairness and honesty in dealing with all kinds of questions

as well as views on any biblical matter.

Personally, I struggle with interpreting Ephesians 118.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the

hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.

Namely, is it about what God is going to inherit us, the saints, or is it about what we

as poor, empty-handed people are going to inherit ourselves?

Is this us inheriting him?

What's the inheritance and who inherits it?

Well, Christina, you're not in a class by yourself because I, too, have struggled with

verse 18 of Ephesians 1 because in English the wording is ambiguous, and frankly it is

in Greek as well, though not quite as ambiguous.

So let's get it in front of us.

In the first 15 verses of Ephesians, Paul laid out the magnificent saving work of God

from eternity to eternity, and then in verse 15 he, or 16, he turns from theology to prayer.

It's a beautiful example of how we need both theology, verses 1 to 15, and then divine

supernatural spiritual illumination in verses 16 to the end of chapter 1.

Just a beautiful example of how to go about seeing and savoring the glories of God.

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