Ephesians 3:10

now In the great "fulness of the times;" the age of the Gospel.

the principalities and powers See on Ephesians 1:21. Here, as there, the reference is to "governments and authorities" in the world of holy Angels. "These things angels covet to look into" (1 Peter 1:12); as we find them doing, for example, in the closing visions of Daniel. To their pure and powerful but still finite intelligences the work of man's Redemption is not only a touching interest, an object of benevolent attention; it is indescribably important, as a totally new and unique revelation of the Mind and Ways of their Lord, and perhaps (though here the hints of Scripture are few and dark) as indicating how their own bliss stands secure. See some excellent pages on this last subject in The Incarnation of the Eternal Word, by the Rev. Marcus Dods, (1835) pp. 7 25.

in heavenlyplaces] See on Ephesians 1:3.

might be known The verb implies the gift of information ab extra. The angelic mind, like the human, needs and is capable of such information.

by the church Better, through. The means of information to these exalted students is God's way of redemption and glorification for His saints of our race; His action for and in "the blessed company of all faithful people." The thought is one to stimulate the feeblest and most solitary Christian; while yet its chief concern is with the aggregate, the community, in which the grace which works freely and primarily in the individual attains its perfect harmony and speaks to the heavenly "watchers" (Daniel 4:13, &c.) with its full significance.

the manifold wisdom Lit., "the much variegatedwisdom." The adjective is stronger (by the element "much,") than that in 1 Peter 4:10 ("manifold grace"). It occurs only here in N.T. The reference probably is to the complicated problemof man's redemption, met and solved by the "unsearchable riches" of the work of Christ. Alike as a race and as individuals, man presented difficulties innumerable to the question, how shall God be just, and the justifier, and sanctifier, of this race? But everydifficulty was, and is, met in "Christ, the Wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24; 1 Corinthians 1:30).