Charles Ellicott Commentary Ephesians 1:17

"that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him;" — Ephesians 1:17 (ASV)

The God of our Lord Jesus Christ.—See John 20:17, I ascend unto My Father and your Father; and to My God and your God. It has been noted that, while on the cross, our Lord, in the cry, My God, why have You forsaken Me? adopted the common human language of the Psalmist. Here, after His resurrection, He emphatically distinguished between His unique relation to God the Father and the relation in which we, His members, call God “our Father.”

St. Paul’s usual phrase (see above, Ephesians 1:3) is “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”; the phrase used here is unique, probably substituted for the other because of the use of the word “Father” in the next clause. It refers, of course, entirely to our Lord’s nature as the true Son of Man. In that respect, God is, in the full sense (which in us is interrupted by sin), His God, in whom He lived and had His being. In proportion as we are conformed to His likeness, God is our God for ever and ever.

The Father of glory.—Better, of the glory. This phrase is again unique. We have, indeed, such phrases as “Father of Mercies” (2 Corinthians 1:3), “Father of Lights” (James 1:17); and, on the other hand, “the King of Glory” (Psalms 28:5), “the God of Glory” (Acts 7:2), “the Lord of Glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8; James 2:1). In all these latter instances, “the glory” seems certainly to be the Shechinah of God’s manifested presence, and in all cases but one is ascribed to our Lord.

But “the Father of the glory” seems a phrase different from all these. I cannot help connecting it with the missing element in the preceding clause and believing (with some old interpreters), despite the strangeness of expression, that God is here called “the Father of the glory” of the incarnate Deity in Jesus Christ , called in 2 Corinthians 4:6, the glory of God in the face (or person) of Jesus Christ. (See Excursus A to St. John’s Gospel: On the Doctrine of the Word; dealing with the identification of “the Word” with the Shechinah by the Jewish interpreters). The prayer that follows connects the knowledge of the glory of our inheritance with the exaltation of our Lord in glory.

The knowledge of him.—The word rendered here “knowledge” signifies “perfect and thorough knowledge”; and the verb corresponding to it is used distinctively in this sense in Luke 1:4; 1 Corinthians 13:12. It is employed by St. Paul especially in his later Epistles (Ephesians 4:13; Philippians 1:9; Colossians 1:9–10; Colossians 2:2; Colossians 3:10), as they deal with the deeper things of God and assume more of a contemplative tone. It is represented here as coming from distinct “revelation.”