“It pleased God to reveal His Son in me,” says he. This is the ground of the Church's special dignity, and the Gospel which Paul preached. It was not the Gospel of Messiah, the Hope of Israel, nor the Gospel of the once crucified One, now exalted “to be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins”; but it was the Gospel of the Son of God revealed in him.
The Son had been revealed to the disciples by the Father before (Matt. 16:17); but now He is revealed in Paul. He had the Spirit of adoption. The Holy Spirit in him was the Spirit of the Son. And anointed with this oil of gladness, he had to go forth and spread the savor of it everywhere. And upon the Son thus revealed within, hangs everything that is peculiar, as I have observed, to the calling and glory of the Church. Thus we read, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together” (Rom. 8:16-17). And again, we read, “that we are predestinated to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ,” that is, as Paul here speaks of himself, to have the Son revealed in us. And this being the predestinated condition of the Church, there comes forth, as in the train of this, all the Church's holy prerogatives—acceptance in the Beloved, with forgiveness of sins through His blood —entrance into the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, so as to have made known to us the mystery of the will of God—future inheritance in and with Him, in Whom all things in heaven and earth are to be gathered—and the present seal and earnest of this inheritance in the Holy Spirit. This bright roll of privileges is inscribed by the Apostle thus “spiritual blessings in the heavenlies”; and so they are, blessings through the Spirit flowing from and linking us with Him Who is the Lord in the heavens (Eph. 1:4-12).
All this follows upon the Son being revealed in us, by which the Church puts on Christ, so as to be one with Him in every stage of His wondrous way; dead, quickened, raised, and seated in heaven in Him (Eph. 2:6).