<p>1:12 <i>So that we who had first hoped in Christ should be for the praise of His glory</i>- The next verse &quot;In whom you also believed / hoped&quot; could suggest that the &quot;we&quot; here refers to Paul and his missionary team. But &quot;first hoped&quot;, <i>proelpizo</i>, carries the sense of &quot;to hope in advance of other confirmation&quot; (Strong). Having written and implied so much about God's predestination of us, and the outworking of His will in choosing us, Paul may be balancing that by saying that we have to also show initiative. Faith is in a sense a leap in the dark. No amount of clever apologetic arguments can ever take that away from what it means to believe / hope in Christ. Most of the apologetic arguments in any case refer to God, the Bible, the creation record etc.- and not to faith in Christ. Faith in Christ is spoken of here as hope,<i> elpizo</i>, a solid expectation and assurance- that He shall save us eternally. And no apologetic arguments can give you that. This is a leap which must be taken. But the idea of &quot;to hope in advance of other confirmation&quot; begs the question: 'What confirmation, then, comes after we have taken this leap of faith and hoped in Christ?'. The next verse answers this- &quot;In whom you also believed, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, and were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise&quot;. Human belief / hope in Christ is indeed confirmed from God's side. The promised Holy Spirit confirms and seals that faith.</p><p>Thus we &ldquo;have obtained an inheritance&rdquo; through being &ldquo;in Christ&rdquo;. This is just another way of expressing the great truth of Gal. 3:27-29- that through baptism into Christ, we receive the promise of the inheritance promised to Abraham. But Paul continues in Eph. 1:12: &ldquo;That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Gk. &lsquo;into&rsquo;- through baptism Christ&rdquo;. The fact we are in Christ by baptism and thus have the Abrahamic promises leads to praise of God&rsquo;s grace. Yet we will only achieve this if we firmly grasp the real, pointed relevance of the promises to us; that we who are baptized are each one truly and absolutely in Christ, and the promises apply to <i>me</i> personally.</p>