It is possibly evoked by the immediately preceding thought of God's
infinite supply of all human need 'according to his riches in _glory_';
but the glory which is so richly stored in Christ, and is the full
storehouse from which our emptiness is to be filled, is not the same as
the glory here ascribed to Him. The former is the sum of His divine
perfections, the light of His own infinite being: the latter is the
praise rendered to Him when we know Him for what He is, and exalt Him in
our thankful thoughts and adoration. As this doxology is the last word
of this whole letter, we may say that it gathers into one all that
precedes it. Our ascription of glory to God is the highest object of all
His self-manifestation, and should be the end of all our contemplations
of Him and of His acts. The faith that God does 'all for His glory' may
be and often has been so interpreted as to make his character repellent
and hideous, but in reality it is another way of saying that God is
love. He desires that all men should be gladdened and elevated by
knowing Him as He is. His glory is to give. That to which He has
committed the charge of interpreting Him to our dim eyes and disordered
natures is not the attributes of sovereign power, or creative wisdom, or
administrative providence, or any other elements which men lay hold of
in their conceptions of deity. When men make gods they make them in
their own image: when God reveals God, the emphasis is put on an
altogether different aspect of His nature. It is His self-communicating
and paternal love revealed to the heart of a son which will kindle the
highest aspiration of praise, and that fatherhood is not found in the
fact that God has made us, but in the higher fact that He has redeemed
us and has sent the spirit of His Son into our hearts. The doxology of
our text is a distinctively Christian doxology which Paul conceives can
only be uttered by lips which have learned to say 'Abba, Father,' 'and
have received the adoption of sons' through the eternal Son.
Mark, too, that this glad ascription of glory to God is conceived of as
sounded forth for ever and ever, or literally through 'ages and ages, as
long as successive epochs shall unfold.' It is not as if the revelation
of the divine character were in the past, and the light of it continued
to touch stony lips to music, but it fills in continuous forthcoming
every age, and in every age men receive the fulness of God, and in every
age redeemed hearts bring back their tribute of praise and love to Him.