were in {98} that state of sin, the conditions of which he
has just summarised. We take note of the chief points in the method.

(1) St. Paul has in mind here, as always, the divine predestination.
There was an eternal purpose in the divine mind to make St. Paul and
those to whom he wrote such as they were now on the way to become; it
was a purpose not merely general, but extending to details. It
belongs, in fact, to the divine perfection, that God does nothing, and
purposes nothing, in mere vague generality. The universal range and
scope of the divine activity as over all creatures whatsoever, hinders
not at all its perfect application to detail. Thus God had
'predestined,' or held in His eternal purpose, not merely the state of
Christians as a whole or even of the Asiatic Christians in particular,
but the details of conduct which He willed them individually to
exhibit. It is the particular 'good works' which God 'prepared
beforehand in order that they should walk in them[5].'

(2) What God predestined He accomplished first in summary 'in Christ
Jesus.' In Him all that God meant to do for man was exhibited {99} and
accomplished as God's own and perfect handiwork, as an effective and
final disclosure. Men are to look for everything, for every kind of
development and progress, in Christ, but for nothing outside or beyond
Him. All is there--'all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,' all
'the fulness of the Godhead,' all the perfections of mankind, the
reconciliation of all seeming opposites. All is brought to the highest
possible level of attainment, 'the heavenly place.'

(3) What had been summarily realized in Christ is progressively
realized in those who are 'in Him.' Undeterred by their condition of
moral and spiritual death, God, out of the heart of His rich mercy,
simply because of the great love He bore to men, has brought them, by
one act of regeneration, into the new life of His Son; has 'quickened
them together with Christ,' that is, has introduced them, at a definite
moment of initiation, into the life which has once for all triumphed
over death, and been glorified in the heavenly places; and has
introduced them into this life in order that, by the gradual
assimilation of its forces, future ages might witness in them all the
wealth of the goodness which had lain hid in the original act {100} of
incorporation. Meanwhile, while their growth is yet imperfect, God
sees those who are Christ's as 'in C