The blessedness of men in Christ is not matter of purpose only, but of reality and experience. With the word _grace_ in the middle of the sixth verse the apostle’s thought begins a new movement. We have seen Grace hidden in the depths of eternity in the form of sovereign and fatherly election, lodging its purpose in the foundation of the world. From those mysterious depths we turn to the living world in our own breast. There, too, Grace dwells and reigns: “which grace He imparted to us, in the Beloved,--in whom we have redemption through His blood.” The leading word of this clause we can only paraphrase; it has no English equivalent. St Paul perforce turns _grace_ into a verb; this verb occurs in the New Testament but once besides,--in Luke i. 28, the angel’s salutation to Mary: “Hail thou that art highly favoured (made-an-object-of-grace).”[34] If we could employ our verb _to grace_ in a sense corresponding to that of the noun _grace_ in the apostle’s dialect and nearly the opposite of _to disgrace_, then _graced_ would signify what he means here, viz., _treated with grace_, made its recipients. God “showed us grace _in the Beloved_”--or, to render the phrase with full emphasis, “in that Beloved One”--even as He “chose us in Him before the world’s foundation” and “in love predestined us for adoption.” The grace is conveyed upon the basis of our relationship to Christ: on that ground it was conceived in the counsels of eternity. The Voice from heaven which said at the baptism of Jesus and again at the transfiguration, “This is my Son, the Beloved,” uttered God’s eternal thought regarding Christ. And that regard of God toward the Son of His love is the fountain of His love and grace to men. Christ is the Beloved not of the Father alone, but of the created universe. All that know the Lord Jesus must needs love and adore Him--unless their hearts are eaten out by sin. Not to love Him is to be anathema. “If any man love me,” said Jesus, “my Father will love him.” Nothing so much pleases God and brings us into fellowship with God so direct and joyous, as our love to Jesus Christ. About this at least heaven and earth may agree, that He is the altogether lovely and love-worthy. Agreement in this will bring about agreement in everything. The love of Christ will tune the jarring universe into harmony. 1. Of grace bestowed, the first manifestation, in the experience of Paul and his readers, was _the forgiveness of their trespasses_ (comp. ii. 13-18). This is “the redemption” that “we _have_.” And it comes “through His _blood_.” The epistles to the Galatians and Romans[35] expound at length the apostle’s doctrine touching the remission of sin and the relation of Christ’s death to human transgression. To _redemption_ we shall return in considering verse 14, where the word is used, as again in chapter iv. 30, in its further application.