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         THE EXPOSITOR’S BIBLE

           EDITED BY THE REV.
    W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
    _Editor of “The Expositor,” etc._

      THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS

         BY THE REV. PROFESSOR
          G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
       HEADINGLEY COLLEGE, LEEDS

                London
         HODDER AND STOUGHTON
         27, PATERNOSTER ROW

             MDCCCXCVIII




                 THE
       EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS


         BY THE REV. PROFESSOR
          G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
       HEADINGLEY COLLEGE, LEEDS

             THIRD EDITION

                London
         HODDER AND STOUGHTON
         27, PATERNOSTER ROW

             MDCCCXCVIII


    _Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._




    CONTENTS.


    _INTRODUCTION._

    CHAPTER i. 1, 2.

    CHAPTER I.

    THE WRITER AND READERS.
                                                                  PAGE
    Contrast of Galatians and Ephesians--Pauline qualities of
    Ephesians: intellectual, historical, theological, spiritual,
    ethical--The Idea of the Church--The Person of
    Christ--Ephesians and Colossians--Style of
    Ephesians--Circular Hypothesis--Epistle from
    Laodicea--Designation of the Readers--Faithful Brethren          3


    _PRAISE AND PRAYER._

    CHAPTER i. 3-19.

    CHAPTER II.

    THE ETERNAL PURPOSE.

    The Apostle’s Hymn of Praise--Blessed be God!--Blessing
    spiritual, heavenly, Christian--In the Beginning the
    Election of Grace--The World and its Founder--Redemption
    embedded in Creation--God’s prescient
    Choice--Our Holiness His Purpose--Divine Adoption--Who
    are the Elect?                                                  21

    CHAPTER III.

    THE BESTOWMENT OF GRACE.

    Structure of the Paragraph--Grace an Experience--Christ the
    Beloved--Forgiveness and its Price--The Value of
    Forgiveness--Wisdom a Gift of Grace--The Gospel as an
    intellectual Force--God’s Will the Goal of human
    Thought--Sonship and Heritage--The Fulness of the Times--The
    Christian Inventory of the Universe--Reconciliation and
    Reconstitution--Gathering in and Gathering out                  34

    CHAPTER IV.

    THE FINAL REDEMPTION.

    Mutual Inheritance--Jewish and Gentile Heirs--Uses of the
    Seal--The Stamp of Sanctity--Promise fulfilled and to be
    fulfilled--Hearing and Believing--Salvation by the
    Truth--Salvation for the Gentiles--Faith and the Holy
    Spirit--The two Redemptions--The encumbered Property--The
    Earnest of our consummate Life                                  50

    CHAPTER V.

    FOR THE EYES OF THE HEART.

    Thanksgiving for the Readers--The God of Christ, the Father
    of Glory--Christian Enlightenment--Seeing with the
    Heart--What is our Hope?--God’s Wealth in Men--The true
    Standard of Value--The Power of Christ’s Resurrection           65


    THE DOCTRINE.

    CHAPTER i. 20--iii. 13.

    CHAPTER VI.

    WHAT GOD WROUGHT IN THE CHRIST.

    Prayer and Teaching--Historical Effect of Christ’s
    Resurrection--The Stages of His Exaltation--Christianity
    without Miracles--The efficient Cause of Christianity--The
    perfect Resurrection--The First-begotten out of the
    Dead--The Risen One, the Holy One--Resurrection and
    Ascension--Ascension to Rule--Christ and the Angels--Christ
    glorified God’s Gift to the Church--Christ the Fulness of
    God                                                             81

    CHAPTER VII.

    FROM DEATH TO LIFE.

    Raised with Christ--Sin is Death--Jesus Christ in a dead
    World--Alive in Body, dead in Spirit--Religious
    Difficulties--Antipathy to God--The Power of the Air--God’s
    Anger against Sinners--The Soul’s Awaking--Consciousness of
    God--Fellowship in Salvation                                    95

    CHAPTER VIII.

    SAVED FOR AN END.

    Beginning and End of God’s Plan--Mercy, Love, Kindness,
    Grace and Gift--Not of Works--Boasting excluded--Evangelical
    Assurance--In the heavenly Places--Grace a
    Task-master--Creation and Redemption--The apostolic Church
    and the coming Times                                           109

    CHAPTER IX.

    THE FAR AND NEAR.

    Wherefore remember!--Sudden and gradual Conversion--The
    Gentile World: Godless, hopeless, Christless--Away with the
    Atheists!--The double Pessimism--The Uncircumcision--Nigh in
    the Blood of Christ--Reunion in Guilt and in Pardon            120

    CHAPTER X.

    THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION.

    The Jewish War--The two Parties in the Church--The Jewish
    Enmity typical--The new Christian Humanity--The Church in
    the first Century and the nineteenth--Hindrances to Unity:
    external, internal--The Ground of Reconciliation--Enemies of
    God--The Atonement of the Cross--Moral Communism--Personal
    Faith--The Fraternization of Mankind                           131

    CHAPTER XI.

    GOD’S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY.

    The Divine Occupant--The Service of Man and of God--One
    Temple and many Buildings--The Variety of the apostolic
    Church--The primitive Catholicism--Church and Dissent--Union
    by Approximation--Our Lord’s Prayer for Unity--The apostolic
    Basis--The Builder Spirit--The sure Foundation Stone           143

    CHAPTER XII.

    THE SECRET OF THE AGES.

    St Paul’s Style of Composition--Christ the Mystery of
    God--Christ in the Old Testament--The Exploration of
    Christ--The Portion of the Gentiles in Israel--The Organs of
    the new Revelation--The unique Office and Influence of the
    Apostle Paul                                                   155

    CHAPTER XIII.

    EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN.

    Christ the Bond of Angels and Men--Our Lord and
    theirs--Jesus of Nazareth the Lord of the Ages--The Reality
    of the Angels--Their Interest in the Church--The Peculiarity
    of the human Problem--The Docility of the heavenly
    Potentates--The angelic Standpoint--The Grandeur of
    Christianity inspires Courage                                  167


    _PRAYER AND PRAISE._

    CHAPTER iii. 14-21.

    CHAPTER XIV.

    THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST.

    Contents of St Paul’s Prayer--The Father of Angels and of
    Men--Strength of Spirit and of the Spirit--Christ abiding in
    the Heart--Christ and the Christ--Christ’s Claim on the
    Intellect--Neglect of Theology--Dimensions of God’s
    Building--Strength to grasp the Magnitude of
    Christianity--The true Broad Churchman                         183

    CHAPTER XV.

    KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE.

    Knowledge in the Growth--Paul’s Study of the Love of
    Christ--Christ’s manifested Love--God’s Fulness our
    final Aim--The Fulness more than Love--Praise out-soaring
    Prayer--God’s Gifts beyond our Requests--The
    Divine Power immanent in Men--The Inspirer of Prayer
    its Fulfiller--The Union of the Church and Christ in
    God’s Praise--The eternal Glory                                197


    _THE EXHORTATION.
    ON CHURCH LIFE._

    CHAPTER iv. 1-16.

    CHAPTER XVI.

    THE FUNDAMENTAL UNITIES.

    The Prisoner in the Lord--The Foes of Church Peace:
    Low-mindedness, Ambition, Resentfulness--The Basis of Unity:
    sevenfold, threefold--One Body despite Divisions--One Spirit
    makes one Body--Unity of Life and Hope--One Lord in all
    Churches--Baptism a Sign of Christ’s Rule, the Seal of a
    corporate Life--The one God, and the many                      213

    CHAPTER XVII.

    THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST.

    Unity in Diversities--Christ the Administrator--The
    Ascension of David and of David’s Son--Height and
    Breadth--The Giving of Jesus--Christ’s Descent and
    Ascent--The Warfare of Christ--The Spoils of His
    Victory--The Enlistment of His Prisoners--Apostles and
    Prophets, Evangelists and Pastors--Paul, Augustine, Luther,
    Knox, Wesley--The Demands of the Future--Individual
    Responsibility                                                 227

    CHAPTER XVIII.

    THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH.

    The Aim of the Christian Ministry--A perfect
    Manhood--Sleight or Sport?--Junctures of Supply--Reunion in
    the Knowledge of the Son of God--The Stature of Christ our
    Standard--The Dangers of Childishness--Speculative
    Error--Gnosticism and Agnosticism--Conditions of
    Safety--Church Organization--The Framework of the Body of
    Christ--Its Continuity of Tissue                               244


    _ON CHRISTIAN MORALS._

    CHAPTER iv. 17-v. 21.

    CHAPTER XIX.

    THE WALK OF THE GENTILES.

    The old World and the old Man--Impotence of Gentile
    Reason--Science and Pessimism--Loss of the Life of
    God--Ignorance the Mother of Indevotion--Induration of
    Heart--Impudicity of Paganism                                  261

    CHAPTER XX.

    THE TWO HUMAN TYPES.

    Defective Views of Christ amongst Paul’s Readers--The
    historical Jesus the true Christ--Paul and the Tradition of
    Jesus--Jesus the human Model--Nero a Type of the Pagan
    Order--The Fraud of Sin--The Growth and the Birth of the new
    Man--Righteousness and Holiness                                275

    CHAPTER XXI.

    DISCARDED VICES.

    The seven Gentile Sins--Truthfulness and the Truth--The
    Perils of Anger--The Antidote to Theft--Sinfulness of vain
    Speech--Malice and its Brood--Imitation of the Divine
    Love--Filthiness and Jesting--The golden Leprosy               290

    CHAPTER XXII.

    DOCTRINE AND ETHICS.

    The Intrinsic and Experimental in Morals--Originality of
    Christian Ethics--Ethical Art and Science--Four Principles
    of Pauline Ethics--Personality and Morals--Ethical
    Character of Christ’s Forgiveness--Auguste Comte and the
    Gospel--The moral Import of the Resurrection--And of the
    Atonement                                                      305

    CHAPTER XXIII.

    THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT.

    Right the Fruit of Light--All Virtue from one
    Source--Unbelief and Immorality--Christian Goodness--The Way
    of Righteousness--Truth the Hall-mark of Sanctity--Verity
    and Veracity--Specialists in Virtue--Reproof of open and of
    hidden Sins--Manifestation and Transformation                  321

    CHAPTER XXIV.

    THE NEW WINE OF THE SPIRIT.

    Soberness and Excitement--The heedful Look--Evil Days for
    the Asian Christians--Wisdom to know God’s Will--Wine and
    social Pleasure--The Craving for Excitement--Fulness of the
    Spirit--The Rise of Christian Psalmody--The Music of the
    Heart--Enthusiasm and Order                                    336


    _ON FAMILY LIFE._

    CHAPTER v. 22-vi. 9.

    CHAPTER XXV.

    CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE.

    The Divine Character of Marriage--Religious Equality of the
    Sexes--The Glory of the Man--Women’s Rights--Christ’s
    undivided Headship--Masculine Selfishness--Greek Terms for
    Love--The Husband and the Priest--The double
    Self--Indelibility of Wedlock                                  353

    CHAPTER XXVI.

    CHRIST AND HIS BRIDE.

    Marriage and the Doctrine of the Church--The Individual and
    the Church--The Glory of the vicarious Death--Christ the
    Sanctifier of His Church--The Signification of Baptism--The
    Water and the Word--The Bride made ready--The Church a
    Christocracy--Adam’s Wedding-song--The Church inherent in
    Christ                                                         366

    CHAPTER XXVII.

    THE CHRISTIAN HOUSEHOLD.

    Children in the Church--The initial Form of
    Duty--Commandment and Promise--Gentleness of fatherly
    Rule--Spoilt Children--The Lord’s Nurture--Greek and Roman
    Slaves--The Church and the Slaves--Christ a Pattern for
    Slaves--Servants of Society--Care, Honesty, Heartiness in
    Work--The heavenly Master’s Reward--Responsibility of the
    earthly Master                                                 380


    _ON THE APPROACHING CONFLICT._

    CHAPTER vi. 10-18.

    CHAPTER XXVIII.

    THE FOES OF THE CHURCH.

    Henceforth be strong!--The two Panoplies--The Personality of
    Satan--The Devil and his Angels--Paul’s Demonology--The
    spiritual Combat--Interior Temptations--Persecution and
    Heresy--The Region of the Struggle--The Siege of the
    heavenly City                                                  397

    CHAPTER XXIX.

    THE DIVINE PANOPLY.

    The coming evil Day--Comparison with Revelation ii.,
    iii.--The Girdle of Truth--The Breastplate of
    Righteousness--Shoes of Gospel Readiness--The great Shield
    of Faith--Fire-tipped Darts--The Helmet of Salvation--The
    Spirit’s Sword--The Weapon of All-prayer                       410


    _THE CONCLUSION._

    CHAPTER vi. 19-24.

    CHAPTER XXX.

    REQUEST: COMMENDATION: BENEDICTION.

    Paul’s Need of the Church’s Prayers--Christ’s Ambassador
    before the Emperor--Speaking the Word given--Good News for
    the Asian Churches--Character and Services of
    Tychicus--Peace to the Brethren--Love with Faith--Love
    toward Christ and Grace from God--The Love incorruptible       427




_THE INTRODUCTION_

CHAPTER i. 1, 2.

    Οὐ μόνον Ἐφέσου ἀλλὰ σχεδὸν πάσης τῆς Ἀσίας ὁ Παῦλος οὗτος πείσας
    μετέστησεν ἱκανὸν ὄχλον (Demetrius the Silversmith).

    ACTS xix. 26.




CHAPTER I.

_THE WRITER AND READERS._

    “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the
    saints, who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and
    peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”[1]--EPH. i. 1,
    2.


In passing from the Galatian to the Ephesian epistle we are conscious of
entering a different atmosphere. We leave the region of controversy for
that of meditation. From the battle-field we step into the hush and
stillness of the temple. Verses 3-14 of this chapter constitute the most
sustained and perfect act of praise that is found in the apostle’s
letters. It is as though a door were suddenly opened in heaven; it shuts
behind us, and earthly tumult dies away. The contrast between these two
writings, following each other in the established order of the epistles,
is singular and in some ways extreme. They are, respectively, the most
combative and peaceful, the most impassioned and unimpassioned, the most
concrete and abstract, the most human and divine amongst the great
apostle’s writings.

Yet there is a fundamental resemblance and identity of character. The
two letters are not the expression of different minds, but of different
phases of the same mind. In the Paul of Galatians the Paul of Ephesians
is latent; the contemplative thinker, the devout mystic behind the
ardent missionary and the masterly debater. Those critics who recognize
the genuine apostle only in the four previous epistles and reject
whatever does not conform strictly to their type, do not perceive how
much is needed to make up a man like the apostle Paul. Without the
inwardness, the brooding faculty, the power of abstract and metaphysical
thinking displayed in the epistles of this group, he could never have
wrought out the system of doctrine contained in those earlier writings,
nor grasped the principles which he there applies with such vigour and
effect. That so many serious and able scholars doubt, or even deny, St
Paul’s authorship of this epistle on internal grounds and because of the
contrast to which we have referred, is one of those phenomena which in
future histories of religious thought will be quoted as the curiosities
of a hypercritical age.[2]

Let us observe some of the Pauline qualities that are stamped upon the
face of this document. There is, in the first place, the apostle’s
intellectual note, what has been well called his _passion for the
absolute_. St Paul’s was one of those minds, so discomposing to
superficial and merely practical thinkers, which cannot be content with
half-way conclusions. For every principle he seeks its ultimate basis;
every line of thought he pushes to its furthest limits. His gospel, if
he is to rest in it, must supply a principle of unity that will bind
together all the elements of his mental world.

Hence, in contesting the Jewish claim to religious superiority on the
ground of circumcision and the Abrahamic covenant, St Paul developed in
the epistle to the Galatians a religious philosophy of history; he
arrived at a view of the function of the law in the education of mankind
which disposed not only of the question at issue, but of all such
questions. He established for ever the principle of salvation by faith
and of spiritual sonship to God. What that former argument effects for
the history of revelation, is done here for the gospel in its relations
to society and universal life. The principle of Christ’s headship is
carried to its largest results. The centre of the Church becomes the
centre of the universe. God’s plan of the ages is disclosed, ranging
through eternity and embracing every form of being, and “gathering into
one all things in the Christ.” In Galatians and Romans the thought of
salvation by Christ breaks through Jewish limits and spreads itself over
the field of history; in Colossians and Ephesians the idea of life in
Christ overleaps the barriers of time and human existence, and brings
“things in heaven and things in earth and things beneath the earth”
under its sway.

The second, historical note of original Paulinism we recognize in the
writer’s _attitude towards Judaism_. We should be prepared to stake the
genuineness of the epistle on this consideration alone. The position and
point of view of the Jewish apostle to the Gentiles are unique in
history. It is difficult to conceive how any one but Paul himself, at
any other juncture, could have represented the relation of Jew and
Gentile to each other as it is put before us here. The writer is a Jew,
a man nourished on the hope of Israel (i. 12), who had looked at his
fellow-men across “the middle wall of partition” (ii. 14). In his view,
the covenant and the Christ belong, in the first instance and as by
birthright, to the men of Israel. They are “the near,” who live hard by
the city and house of God. The blessedness of the Gentile readers
consists in the revelation that they are “fellow-heirs and of the same
body and joint-partakers with us of the promise in Christ Jesus” (iii.
6). What is this but to say, as the apostle had done before, that the
branches “of the naturally wild olive tree” were “against nature grafted
into the good olive tree” and allowed to “partake of its root and
fatness,” along with “the natural branches,” the children of the stock
of Abraham who claimed it for “their own”; that “the men of faith are
sons of Abraham” and “Abraham’s blessing has come on the Gentiles
through faith”?[3]

For our author this revelation has lost none of its novelty and
surprise. He is in the midst of the excitement it has produced, and is
himself its chief agent and mouthpiece (iii. 1-9). This disclosure of
God’s secret plans for the world overwhelms him by its magnitude, by the
splendour with which it invests the Divine character, and the sense of
his personal unworthiness to be entrusted with it. We utterly disbelieve
that any later Christian writer could or would have personated the
apostle and mimicked his tone and sentiments in regard to his vocation,
in the way that the “critical” hypothesis assumes. The criterion of
Erasmus is decisive: _Nemo potest Paulinum pectus effingere._

St Paul’s doctrine of _the cross_ is admittedly his specific
theological note. In the shameful sacrificial death of Jesus Christ he
saw the instrument of man’s release from the curse of the broken law;[4]
and through this knowledge the cross which was the “scandal” of Saul the
Pharisee, had become Paul’s glory and its proclamation the business of
his life. It is this doctrine, in its original strength and fulness,
which lies behind such sentences as those of chapter i. 7, ii. 13, and
v. 2: “We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our
trespasses--brought nigh in the blood of Christ--an offering and
sacrifice to God for an odour of sweet smell.”

Another mark of the apostle’s hand, his specific spiritual note, we find
in the _mysticism_ that pervades the epistle and forms, in fact, its
substance. “I live no longer: Christ lives in me.” “He that is joined to
the Lord is one spirit.”[5] In these sentences of the earlier letters we
discover the spring of St Paul’s theology, lying in his own
experience--_the sense of personal union through the Spirit with Christ
Jesus_. This was the deepest fact of Paul’s consciousness. Here it meets
us at every turn. More than twenty times the phrase “in Christ” or its
equivalents recur, applied to Christian acts or states. It is enough to
refer to chapter iii. 17, “that the Christ may make His dwelling in your
hearts through faith,” to show how profoundly this mysterious
relationship is realized in this letter. No other New Testament writer
conceived the idea in Paul’s way, nor has any subsequent writer of whom
we know made the like constant and original use of it. It was the habit
of the apostle’s mind, the index of his innermost life. Kindred to this,
and hardly less conspicuous, is his conception of “God in Christ” (2
Cor. v. 19) saving and operating upon men, who, as we read here, “chose
us in Christ before the world’s foundation--forgave us in Him--made us
in Him to sit together in the heavenly places--formed us in Christ Jesus
for good works.”

The ethical note of the true Paulinism is the conception of the _new
man_ in Christ Jesus, whose sins were slain by His death, and who shares
His risen life unto God (Rom. vi.). From this idea, as from a
fountainhead, the apostle in the parallel Colossian epistle (ch. iii.)
deduces the new Christian morality. The temper and disposition of the
believer, his conduct in all social duties and practical affairs are the
expression of a “life hid with Christ in God.” It is the identical “new
man” of Romans and Colossians who presents himself as our ideal here,
raised with Christ from the dead and “sitting with Him in the heavenly
places.” The newness of life in which he walks, receives its impulse and
direction from this exalted fellowship.

The characteristics of St Paul’s teaching which we have described--his
logical thoroughness and finality, his peculiar historical, theological,
spiritual, and ethical standpoint and manner of thought--are combined in
the conception which is the specific note of this epistle, viz., its
idea of _the Church_ as the body of Christ,--or in other words, of _the
new humanity_ created in Him. This forms the centre of the circle of
thought in which the writer’s mind moves;[6] it is the meeting-point of
the various lines of thought that we have already traced. The doctrine
of personal salvation wrought out in the great evangelical epistles
terminates in that of social and collective salvation. A new and
precious title is conferred on Christ: He is “Saviour of _the body_” (v.
23), _i.e._, of the corporate Christian community. “The Son of God who
loved _me_ and gave up Himself for _me_” becomes “the Christ” who “loved
_the Church_ and gave up Himself for _her_.”[7] “The new man” is no
longer the individual, a mere transformed _ego_; he is the type and
beginning of a new mankind. A perfect society of men, all sons of God in
Christ, is being constituted around the cross, in which the old
antagonisms are reconciled, the ideal of creation is restored, and a
body is provided to contain the fulness of Christ, a holy temple which
God inhabits in the Spirit. Of this edifice, with the cross for its
centre and Christ Jesus for its corner-stone, Jew and Gentile form the
material--“the Jew first,” lying nearest to the site.[8]

The apostle Paul necessarily conceived the reconstruction of humanity
under the form of a reconciliation of Israel and the Gentiles. The
Catholicism we have here is Paul’s Catholicism of _Gentile
engrafting_--not Clement’s, of _churchly order and uniformity_; nor
Ignatius’, of _monepiscopal rule_. It is profoundly characteristic of
this apostle, that in “the law” which had been to his own experience the
barrier and ground of quarrel between the soul and God, “the strength of
sin,” he should come to see likewise the barrier between men and men,
and the strength of the sinful enmity which distracted the Churches of
his foundation (ii. 14-16).

The representation of the Church contained in this epistle is,
therefore, by no means new in its elements. Such texts as 1 Corinthians
iii. 16, 17 (“Ye are God’s temple,” etc.) and xii. 12-27 (concerning the
_one body and many members_) bring us near to its actual expression.
But the figures of the _body_ and _temple_ in these passages, had they
stood alone, might be read as mere passing illustrations of the nature
of Christian fellowship. Now they become proper designations of the
Church, and receive their full significance. While in 1 Corinthians,
moreover, these phrases do not look beyond the particular community
addressed, in Ephesians they embrace the entire Christian society. This
epistle signalizes a great step forwards in the development of the
apostle’s theology--perhaps we might say, the last step. The Pastoral
epistles serve to put the final apostolic seal upon the theological
edifice that is now complete. Their care is with the guarding and
furnishing of the “great house”[9] which our epistle is engaged in
building.

The idea of the Church is not, however, independently developed.
Ephesians and Colossians are companion letters,--the complement and
explanation of each other. Both “speak with regard to Christ and the
Church”; both reveal the Divine “glory in the Church and in Christ
Jesus.”[10] The emphasis of Ephesians falls on the former, of Colossians
on the latter of these objects. The doctrine of the Person of Christ and
that of the nature of the Church proceed with equal step. The two
epistles form one process of thought.

Criticism has attempted to derive first one and then the other of the
two from its fellow,--thus, in effect, stultifying itself. Finally Dr.
Holtzmann, in his _Kritik der Epheser-und Kolosserbriefe_,[11] undertook
to show that each epistle was in turn dependent on the other. There is,
Holtzmann says, a Pauline nucleus hidden in Colossians, which he has
himself extracted. By its aid some ecclesiastic of genius in the second
century composed the Ephesian epistle. He then returned to the brief
Colossian writing of St Paul, and worked it up, with his own Ephesian
composition lying before him, into our existing epistle to the
Colossians. This complicated and too ingenious hypothesis has not
satisfied any one except its author, and need not detain us here. But
Holtzmann has at any rate made good, against his predecessors on the
negative side, the unity of origin of the two canonical epistles, the
fact that they proceed from one mint and coinage. They are _twin_
epistles, the offspring of a single birth in the apostle’s mind. Much of
their subject-matter, especially in the ethical section, is common to
both. The glory of the Christ and the greatness of the Church are truths
inseparable in the nature of things, wedded to each other. To the
confession, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” His
response ever is, “_I will build my Church_.”[12] The same
correspondence exists between these two epistles in the dialectic
movement of the apostle’s thought.

At the same time, there is a considerable difference between the two
writings in point of style. M. Renan, who accepts Colossians from Paul’s
hand, and who admits that “among all the epistles bearing the name of
Paul the epistle to the Ephesians is perhaps that which has been most
anciently cited as a composition of the apostle of the Gentiles,” yet
speaks of this epistle as a “verbose amplification” of the other, “a
commonplace letter, diffuse and pointless, loaded with useless words and
repetitions, entangled and overgrown with irrelevancies, full of
pleonasms and obscurities.”[13]

In this instance, Renan’s literary sense has deserted him. While
Colossians is quick in movement, terse and pointed, in some places so
sparing of words as to be almost hopelessly obscure,[14] Ephesians from
beginning to end is measured and deliberate, exuberant in language, and
obscure, where it is so, not from the brevity, but from the length and
involution of its periods. It is occupied with a few great ideas, which
the author strives to set forth in all their amplitude and significance.
Colossians is a letter of discussion; Ephesians of reflection. The whole
difference of style lies in this. In the reflective passages of
Colossians, as indeed in the earlier epistles,[15] we find the
stateliness of movement and rhythmical fulness of expression which in
this epistle are sustained throughout. Both epistles are marked by those
unfinished sentences and _anacolutha_, the grammatical inconsequence
associated with close continuity of thought, which is a main
characteristic of St Paul’s style.[16] The epistle to the Colossians is
like a mountain stream forcing its way through some rugged defile; that
to the Ephesians is the smooth lake below, in which its chafed waters
restfully expand. These sister epistles represent the moods of conflict
and repose which alternated in St Paul’s mobile nature.

In general, the writings of this group, belonging to the time of the
apostle’s imprisonment and advancing age,[17] display less passion and
energy, but a more tranquil spirit than those of the Jewish controversy.
They are prison letters, the fruit of a time when the author’s mind had
been much thrown in upon itself. They have been well styled “the
afternoon epistles,” being marked by the subdued and reflective temper
natural to this period of life. Ephesians is, in truth, the typical
representative of the third group of Paul’s epistles, as Galatians is of
the second. There is abundant reason to be satisfied that this letter
came, as it purports to do, from _Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus
through God’s will_.

       *       *       *       *       *

But that it was addressed to “the saints which are _in Ephesus_” is more
difficult to believe. The apostle has “heard of the faith which prevails
amongst” his readers; he presumes that they “have heard of the Christ,
and were taught in Him according as truth is in Jesus.”[18] He hopes
that by “reading” this epistle they will “perceive his understanding in
the mystery of Christ” (iii. 2-4). He writes somewhat thus to the
Colossians and Romans, whom he had never seen;[19] but can we imagine
Paul addressing in this distant and uncertain fashion his children in
the faith? In Ephesus he had laboured “for the space of three whole
years” (Acts xx. 31), longer than in any other city of the Gentile
mission, except Antioch. His speech to the Ephesian elders at Miletus,
delivered four years ago, was surcharged with personal feeling, full of
pathetic reminiscence and the signs of interested acquaintance with the
individual membership of the Ephesian Church. In the epistle such signs
are altogether wanting. The absence of greetings and messages we could
understand; these Tychicus might convey by word of mouth. But how the
man who wrote the epistles to the Philippians and Corinthians could have
composed this long and careful letter to his own Ephesian people without
a single word of endearment or familiarity,[20] and without the least
allusion to his past intercourse with them, we cannot understand. It is
in the destination that the only serious difficulty lies touching the
authorship. Nowhere do we see more of _the apostle_ and less of _the
man_ in St Paul; nowhere more of _the_ Church, and less of _this or
that_ particular church.

It agrees with these internal indications that the local designation is
wanting in the oldest Greek copies of the letter that are extant. The
two great manuscripts of the fourth century, the Vatican and Sinaitic
codices, omit the words “in Ephesus.” Basil in the fourth century did
not accept them, and says that “the old copies” were without them.
Origen, in the beginning of the third century, seems to have known
nothing of them. And Tertullian, at the end of the second century, while
he condemns the heretic Marcion (who lived about fifty years earlier)
for entitling the epistle “To the Laodiceans,” quotes only the _title_
against him, and not the text of the address, which he would presumably
have done, had he read it in the form familiar to us. We are compelled
to suppose, with Westcott and Hort and the textual critics generally,
that these words form no part of the original address.

Here the _circular hypothesis_ of Beza and Ussher comes to our aid. It
is supposed that the letter was destined for a number of Churches in
Asia Minor, which Tychicus was directed to visit in the course of the
journey which took him to Colossæ.[21] Along with the letters for the
Colossians and Philemon, he was entrusted with this more general
epistle, intended for the Gentile Christian communities of the
neighbouring region at large. During St Paul’s ministry at Ephesus, we
are told that “all those that dwell in Asia heard the word of the Lord,
both Jews and Greeks” (Acts xix. 10). In so large and populous an area,
amongst the Churches founded at this time there were doubtless others
beside those of the Lycus valley “which had not seen Paul’s face in the
flesh,” some about which the apostle had less precise knowledge than he
had of these through Epaphras and Onesimus, but for whom he was no less
desirous that their “hearts should be comforted, and brought into all
the wealth of the full assurance of the understanding in the knowledge
of the mystery of God” (Col. ii. 1, 2).

To which or how many of the Asian Churches Tychicus would be able to
communicate the letter was, presumably, uncertain when it was written at
Rome; and the designation was left open. Its conveyance by Tychicus
(vi. 21, 22) supplied the only limit to its distribution. Proconsular
Asia was the richest and most peaceful province of the Empire, so
populous that it was called “the province of five hundred cities.”
Ephesus was only the largest of many flourishing commercial and
manufacturing towns.

At the close of his epistle to the Colossians St Paul directs this
Church to procure “from Laodicea,” in exchange for their own, a letter
which he is sending there (iv. 16). Is it possible that we have the lost
Laodicean document in the epistle before us? So Ussher suggested; and
though the assumption is not essential to his theory, it falls in with
it very aptly. Marcion may, after all, have preserved a reminiscence of
the fact that Laodicea, as well as Ephesus, shared in this letter. The
conjecture is endorsed by Lightfoot, who says, writing on Colossians iv.
16: “There are good reasons for the belief that St Paul here alludes to
the so-called epistle to the Ephesians, which was in fact a circular
letter, addressed to the principal Churches of proconsular Asia.
Tychicus was obliged to pass through Laodicea on his way to Colossæ, and
would leave a copy there before the Colossian letter was delivered.”[22]
The two epistles admirably supplement each other. The Apocalyptic letter
“to the seven churches which are in Asia,” ranging from Ephesus to
Laodicea (Rev. ii., iii.), shows how much the Christian communities of
this region had in common and how natural it would be to address them
collectively. For the same region, with a yet wider scope, the “first
catholic epistle of Peter” was destined, a writing that has many points
of contact with this. Ephesus being the metropolis of the Asian
Churches, and claiming a special interest in St Paul, came to regard the
epistle as specially her own. Through Ephesus, moreover, it was
communicated to the Church in other provinces. Hence it came to pass
that when Paul’s epistles were gathered into a single volume and a title
was needed for this along with the rest, “To the Ephesians” was written
over it; and this reference standing in the title, in course of time
found its way into the text of the address. We propose to read this
letter as _the general epistle of Paul to the Churches of Asia_, or _to
Ephesus and its daughter Churches_.

       *       *       *       *       *

But how are we to read the address, with the local definition wanting?
There are two constructions open to us:--(1) We might suppose that a
space was left blank in the original to be filled in afterwards by
Tychicus with the names of the particular Churches to which he
distributed copies, or to be supplied by the voice of the reader. But if
that were so, we should have expected to find some trace of this variety
of designation in the ancient witnesses. As it is, the documents either
give Ephesus in the address, or supply no local name at all. Nor is
there, so far as we are aware, any analogy in ancient usage for the
proceeding suggested. Moreover, the order of the Greek words[23] is
against this supposition.--(2) We prefer, therefore, to follow
Origen[24] and Basil, with some modern exegetes, in reading the sentence
straight on, as it stands in the Sinaitic and Vatican copies. It then
becomes: _To the saints, who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus_.

“The saints” is the apostle’s designation for Christian believers
generally,[25] as men consecrated to God in Christ (1 Cor. i. 2). The
qualifying phrase “those who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus,” is
admonitory. As Lightfoot says with reference to the parallel
qualification in Colossians i. 2, “This unusual addition is full of
meaning. Some members of the [Asian] Churches were shaken in their
allegiance, even if they had not fallen from it. The apostle therefore
wishes it to be understood that, when he speaks of the saints, he means
those who are true and steadfast members of the brotherhood. In this way
he obliquely hints at the defection.” By this further definition “he
does not directly exclude any, but he indirectly warns all.” We are
reminded that we are in the neighbourhood of the Colossian heresy.
Beneath the calm tenor of this epistle, the ear catches an undertone of
controversy. In chapter iv. 14 and vi. 10-20 this undertone becomes
clearly audible. We shall find the epistle end with the note of warning
with which it begins.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Salutation is according to St Paul’s established form of greeting.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The translation given in this volume is based upon the Revised
Version, but deviates from it in some particulars. These deviations will
be explained in the exposition.

[2] The case against authenticity is ably stated in Dr. S. Davidson’s
_Introduction to the N. T._; see also Baur’s _Paul_, Pfleiderer’s
_Paulinism_, Hilgenfeld’s _Einleitung_, Hatch’s article on “Paul” in the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_. The case for the defence may be found in
Weiss’, Salmon’s, Bleek’s, or Dods’ _N. T. Introduction_--the last
brief, but to the point; in Reuss’ _History of the N. T._; Milligan’s
article on “Ephesians” in _Encycl. Brit._; Gloag’s _Introduction to the
Pauline Epp._; Meyer’s, or Beet’s, or Eadie’s _Commentary_; Sabatier’s
_The Apostle Paul_.

[3] Rom. xi. 16-24; Acts xiii. 26; Gal. iii. 7, 14.

[4] Gal. iii. 10-13; 2 Cor. v. 20, 21, etc.

[5] Gal. ii. 20; 1 Cor. vi. 17.

[6] See ch. i. 9-13, ii. 11-22, iii. 5-11, iv. 1-16, v. 23-32.

[7] Gal ii. 20; Eph. v. 25.

[8] Rom. i. 16; Eph. ii. 17-20.

[9] 1 Tim. iii. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii. 20, 21.

[10] Eph. iii. 21, v. 32.

[11] _Kritik d. Epheser-u. Kolosserbriefe auf Grund einer Analyse ihres
Verwandtschaftsverhältnisses_ (Leipzig, 1872). A work more subtle and
scientific, more replete with learning, and yet more unconvincing than
this of Holtzmann, we do not know.

Von Soden, the latest interpreter of this school and Holtzmann’s
collaborateur in the new _Hand-Commentar_, accepts Colossians in its
integrity as the work of Paul, retracting previous doubts on the
subject. Ephesians he believes to have been written by a Jewish disciple
of Paul in his name, about the end of the first century.

[12] Matt. xvi. 15-18; John xvii. 10: _I am glorified in them._

[13] See his _Saint Paul_, Introduction, pp. xii.-xxiii.

[14] See Col. ii. 15, 18, 20-23.

[15] _E.g._, in Rom. i. 1-7, viii. 28-30, xi. 33-36, xvi. 25-27.

[16] See the Winer-Moulton _N. T. Grammar_, p. 709: “It is in writers of
great mental vivacity--more taken up with the thought than with the mode
of its expression--that we may expect to find anacolutha most
frequently. Hence they are especially numerous in the epistolary style
of the apostle Paul.”

[17] Eph. iii. 1; Phil. i. 13; Philem. 9.

[18] Ch. i. 15, iv. 20, 21.

[19] Col. i. 4, ii. 1; Rom. xv. 15, 16.

[20] “My brethren” in ch. vi. 10 is an insertion of the copyists. Even
the closing benediction, ch. vi. 23, 24, is in the _third person_--a
thing unexampled in St Paul’s epistles.

[21] Ch. vi. 21, 22; Col. iv. 7-9.

[22] Compare Maclaren on _Colossians and Philemon_, p. 406, in this
series.

[23] Τοῖς ἁγίοις τοῖς οὖσιν ... καὶ πιστοῖς ἐν Χριστῳ Ἰησοῦ. The
interposition of the heterogeneous attributive between ἁγίοις and
πιστοῖς is harsh and improbable--not to say, with Hofmann, “quite
incredible.” The two latest German commentaries to hand, that of Beck
and of von Soden (in the _Hand-Commentar_), interpreters of opposite
schools, agree with Hofmann in rejecting the local adjunct and regarding
πιστοῖς as the complement of τοῖς οὖσιν.

[24] Origen, in his fanciful way, makes of τοῖς οὖσιν a predicate by
itself: “the saints _who are_,” who possess real being like God Himself
(Exod. iii. 14)--“called from non-existence into existence.” He compares
1 Cor. i. 28.

[25] See, _e.g._, ver. 18, ii. 19, iii. 18, iv. 12, v. 3.




PRAISE AND PRAYER.

CHAPTER i. 3-19.

        Οὓς προέγνω, καὶ προώρισεν
    συμμόρφους τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ,
    εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν πρωτότοκον ἐν πολλοῖς ἀδέλφοις;
      οὕς δὲ προώρισεν, τούτους καὶ ἐκάλεσεν;
      καὶ οὓς ἐκάλεσεν, τούτους καὶ ἐδικαίωσεν;
      οὓς δὲ ἐδικαίωσεν, τούτους καὶ ἐδόξασεν.

    ROM. viii. 29, 30.




CHAPTER II.

_THE ETERNAL PURPOSE._


We enter this epistle through a magnificent gateway. The introductory
Act of Praise, extending from verse 3 to 14, is one of the most sublime
of inspired utterances, an overture worthy of the composition that it
introduces. Its first sentence compels us to feel the insufficiency of
our powers for its due rendering.

The apostle surveys in this thanksgiving the entire course of the
revelation of grace. Standing with the men of his day, the new-born
community of the sons of God in Christ, midway between the ages past and
to come,[26] he looks backward to the source of man’s salvation when it
lay a silent thought in the mind of God, and forward to the hour when it
shall have accomplished its promise and achieved our redemption. In this
grand evolution of the Divine plan three stages are marked by the
refrain, thrice repeated, _To the praise of His glory, of the glory of
His grace_ (vv. 6, 12, 14). St Paul’s psalm is thus divided into three
strophes, or stanzas: he sings the glory of redeeming love in its past
designs, its present bestowments, and its future fruition. The
paragraph, forming but one sentence and spun upon a single golden
thread, is a piece of thought-music,--a sort of _fugue_, in which from
eternity to eternity the counsel of love is pursued by Paul’s bold and
exulting thought.

Despite the grammatical involution of the style here carried to an
extreme, and underneath the apparatus of Greek pronouns and participles,
there is a fine Hebraistic lilt pervading the doxology. The refrain is
in the manner of Psalms xlii.-xliii., and xcix., where in the former
instance “health of countenance,” and in the latter “holy is He” gives
the key-note of the poet’s melody and parts his song into three balanced
stanzas. In such poetry the strophes may be unequal in length, each
developing its own thought freely, and yet there is harmony in their
combination. Here the central idea, that of God’s actual bounty to
believers, fills a space equal to that of the other two. But there is a
pause within it, at verse 10, which in effect resumes the idea of the
first strophe and works it in as a _motif_ to the second, carrying on
both in a full stream till they lose themselves in the third and
culminating movement. Throughout the piece there runs in varying
expression the phrase “in Christ--in the Beloved--in Him--in whom,”
weaving the verses into subtle continuity. The theme of the entire
composition is given in verse 3, which does not enter into the threefold
division we have described, but forms a prelude to it.

    “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: who hath
        blessed us,
    In every blessing of the spirit, in the heavenly places, in Christ.”

_Blessed be God!_--It is the song of the universe, in which heaven and
earth take responsive parts. “When the morning stars sang together and
all the sons of God shouted for joy,” this concert began, and continues
still through the travail of creation and the sorrow and sighing of men.
The work praises the Master. All sinless creatures, by their order and
harmony, by the variety of their powers and beauty of their forms and
delight of their existence, declare their Creator’s glory. That praise
to the Most High God which the lower creatures act instrumentally, it is
man’s privilege to utter in discourse of reason and music of the heart.
Man is Nature’s high priest; and above other men, the poet. Time will
be, as it has been, when it shall be accounted the poet’s honour and the
crown of his art, that he should take the high praises of God into his
mouth, making hymns to the glory of the Supreme Maker and giving voice
to the dumb praise of inanimate nature and to the noblest thoughts of
his fellows concerning the Blessed God.

_Blessed be God!_--It is the perpetual strain of the Old Testament, from
Melchizedek down to Daniel,--of David in his triumph, and Job in his
misery. But not hitherto could men say, Blessed be _the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ_! He was “the Most High God, the God of
heaven,”--“Jehovah, God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous
things,”--“the Shepherd” and “the Rock” of His people,--“the true God,
the living God, and an everlasting King”; and these are glorious titles,
which have raised men’s thoughts to moods of highest reverence and
trust. But the name of _Father_, and _Father of our Lord Jesus Christ_,
surpasses and outshines them all. With wondering love and joy
unspeakable St Paul pronounced this _Benedictus_. God was not less to
him the Almighty, the High and Holy One dwelling in eternity, than in
the days of his youthful Jewish faith; but the Eternal and All-holy One
was now his Father in Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name: and let the
whole earth be filled with His glory!

The apostle’s psalm is a psalm of thanksgiving to God _blessing and
blessed_. The second clause rhythmically answers to the first. True, our
blessing of Him is far different from His blessing of us: ours in
thought and words; His in mighty deeds of salvation. Yet in the fruit of
lips giving thanks to His name there is a revenue of blessing paid to
God which He delights in, and requires. “O Thou that inhabitest the
praises of Israel,” grant us to bless Thee while we live and to lift up
our hands in Thy name!

By three qualifying adjuncts the blessing which the Father of Christ
bestowed upon us is defined: in respect of its _nature_, its _sphere_,
and its _personal ground_.

The blessings that prompt the apostle’s praise are not such as those
conspicuous in the Old Covenant: “Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and
in the field; in the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and
the increase of thy kine; blessed shall be thy basket, and thy
kneading-trough” (Deut. xxviii. 3-5). The gospel pronounces beatitudes
of another style: “Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed the meek, the
merciful, the pure in heart, the persecuted.” St Paul had small share
indeed in the former class of blessings,--a childless, landless,
homeless man. Yet what happiness and wealth are his! Out of his poverty
he is making all the ages rich! From the gloom of his prison he sheds a
light that will guide and cheer the steps of multitudes of earth’s sad
wayfarers. Not certainly in the earthly places where he finds himself is
Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus blessed; but “in spiritual blessing”
and “in heavenly places” how abundantly! His own blessedness he claims
for all who are in Christ.

Blessing _spiritual_ in its nature is, in St Paul’s conception of
things, blessing in and of the Holy Spirit.[27] In His quickening our
spirit lives; through His indwelling health, blessedness, eternal life
are ours. In this verse justly the theologians recognize the Trinity of
the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.--Blessing _in the heavenly
places_ is not so much blessing coming from those places--from God the
Father who sits there--as it is blessing which lifts us into that
supernal region, giving to us a place and heritage in the world of God
and of the angels. Two passages of the companion epistles interpret this
phrase: “Your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. iii. 3); and again,
“Our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. iii. 20).--The decisive note of St
Paul’s blessedness lies in the words “in Christ.” For him all good is
summed up there. Spiritual, heavenly, and Christian: these three are
one. In Christ dying, risen, reigning, God the Father has raised
believing men to a new heavenly life. From the first inception of the
work of grace to its consummation, God thinks of men, speaks to them and
deals with them _in Christ_. To Him, therefore, with the Father be
eternal praise!

    “As He chose us in Him before the world’s foundation,
      That we should be holy and unblemished before Him:
    When in love He foreordained us
      To filial adoption through Jesus Christ for Himself,
          According to the good pleasure of His will,--
                To the praise of the glory of His grace” (vv. 4-6a).

Here is St Paul’s first chapter of Genesis. _In the beginning was the
election of grace._ There is nothing unprepared, nothing unforeseen in
God’s dealings with mankind. His wisdom and knowledge are as deep as His
grace is wide (Rom. xi. 33). Speaking of his own vocation, the apostle
said: “It pleased God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb, to reveal
His Son in me” (Gal. i. 15, 16). He does but generalize this conception
and carry it two steps further back--from the origin of the individual
to the origin of the race, and from the beginning of the race to the
beginning of the world--when he asserts that the community of redeemed
men was chosen in Christ before the world’s foundation.

“The world” is a work of time, the slow structure of innumerable yet
finite ages. Science affirms on its own grounds that the visible
universe had a beginning, as it has its changes and its certain end. Its
structural plan, its unity of aim and movement, show it to be the
creation of a vast Intelligence. Harmony and law, all that makes science
possible is the product of thought. Reason extracts from nature what
Reason has first put there. The longer, the more intricate and grand the
process, the farther science pushes back the beginning in our thoughts,
the more sublime and certain the primitive truth becomes: “In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

The world is a system; it has a method and a plan, therefore a
foundation. But before the foundation, there was _the Founder_. And man
was in His thoughts, and the redeemed Church of Christ. While yet the
world was not and the immensity of space stretched lampless and
unpeopled, _we_ were in the mind of God; His thought rested with
complacency upon His human sons, whose “name was written in the book of
life from the foundation of the world.” This amazing statement is only
the logical consequence of St Paul’s experience of Divine grace, joined
to his conviction of the infinite wisdom and eternal being of God.

When he says that God “chose us in Christ _before the foundation of the
world_”--or _before founding the world_--this is not a mere mark of
time. It intimates that in laying His plans for the world the Creator
had the purpose of redeeming grace in view. The kingdom which the
“blessed children” of the Father of Christ “inherit,” is the kingdom
“_prepared_ for them _from the foundation of the world_” (Matt. xxv.
34). Salvation lies as deep as creation. The provision for it is
eternal. For the universe of being was conceived, fashioned, and built
up “in Christ.” The argument of Colossians i. 13-22 lies behind these
words. The Son of God’s love, in whom and for whom the worlds were made,
always was potentially the Redeemer of men, as He was the image of God
(Col. i. 14, 15). He looked forward to this mission from eternity, and
was in spirit “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev.
xiii. 8). Creation and redemption, Nature and the Church, are parts of
one system; and in the reconciliation of the cross all orders of being
are concerned, “whether the things upon the earth or the things in the
heavens.”

Evil existed before man appeared on the earth to be tempted and to fall.
Through the geological record we hear the voice of creation groaning for
long æons in its pain.

            “Dragons of the prime,
    That tare each other in their slime,”

grim prophets of man’s brutal and murderous passions, bear witness to a
war in nature that goes back far towards the foundation of the world.
And this rent and discord in the frame of things it was His part to
reconcile “in whom and for whom all things were created.” This universal
deliverance, it seems, is dependent upon ours. “The creation itself
lifts up its head, and is looking out for the revelation of the sons of
God” (Rom. viii. 19). In founding the world, foreseeing its bondage to
corruption, God prepared through His elect sons in Christ a deliverance
the glory of which will make its sufferings to seem but a light thing.
“In thee,” said God to Abraham, “shall all the kindreds of the earth be
blessed”: so in the final “adoption,--to wit, the redemption of our
body” (Rom. viii. 23), all creatures shall exult; and our mother earth,
still travailing in pain with us, will remember her anguish no more.

The Divine election of men in Christ is further defined in the words of
verse 5: “Having in love predestined us,” and “according to the good
pleasure of His will.” _Election_ is selection; it is the antecedent in
the mind of God in Christ of the preference which Christ showed when He
said to His disciples, “I have chosen you out of the world.” It is,
moreover, a _fore-ordination in love_: an expression which indicates on
the one hand the disposition in God that prompted and sustains His
choice, and on the other the determination of the almighty Will whereby
the all-wise Choice is put into operation and takes effect. In this
pre-ordaining control of human history God “determined the
fore-appointed seasons and the bounds of human habitation” (Acts xvii.
26). The Divine prescience--that “depth of the wisdom and knowledge of
God”--as well as His absolute righteousness, forbids the treasonable
thought of anything arbitrary or unfair cleaving to this
pre-determination--anything that should override our free-will and make
our responsibility an illusion. “Whom He did _foreknow_, He also did
predestinate” (Rom. viii. 29). He foresees everything, and allows for
everything.

The consistence of foreknowledge with free-will is an enigma which the
apostle did not attempt to solve. His reply to all questions touching
the justice of God’s administration in the elections of grace--questions
painfully felt and keenly agitated then as they are now, and that
pressed upon himself in the case of his Jewish kindred with a cruel
force (Rom. ix. 3)--his answer to his own heart, and to us, lies in the
last words of verse 5: “according to the good pleasure of His will.” It
is what Jesus said concerning the strange preferences of Divine grace:
“Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.” What pleases Him
can only be wise and right. What pleases Him, must content us.
Impatience is unbelief. Let us wait to see the end of the Lord. In
numberless instances--such as that of the choice between Jacob and Esau,
and that of Paul and the believing remnant of Israel as against their
nation--God’s ways have justified themselves to after times; so they
will universally. Our little spark of intelligence glances upon one spot
in a boundless ocean, on the surface of immeasurable depths.

The purpose of this loving fore-ordination of believing men in Christ is
twofold; it concerns at once their _character_ and their _state_: “He
chose us out--that we should be holy and without blemish in His sight,”
and “unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ for Himself.” These two
purposes are one. God’s sons must be holy; and holy men are His sons.
For this end “we” were elected of God in the beginning. Nay, with this
end in view the world was founded and the human race came into being, to
provide God with such sons[28] and that Christ might be “the firstborn
among many brethren” (Rom. viii. 28-30).

“That we should be holy”--should be _saints_. This the readers are
already: “To the saints” the apostle writes (ver. 1). They are men
devoted to God by their own choice and will, meeting God’s choice and
will for them. Imperfect saints they may be, by no means as yet “without
blemish”; but they are already, and abidingly, “sanctified in Christ
Jesus” (1 Cor. i. 2) and “sealed” for God’s possession “by the Holy
Spirit” (vv. 13, 14). In this fact lies their hope of moral perfection
and the impulse and power to attain it. Their task is to “perfect” their
existing “holiness” (2 Cor. vii. 1), “cleansing themselves from all
defilement of flesh and spirit.” Let no Christian say, “I do not pretend
to be a saint.” This is to renounce your calling. You _are_ a saint if
you are a true believer in Christ; and you are to be an unblemished
saint.

Thus the Church is at last to be presented, and every man in his own
order, “faultless before the presence of His glory, with exceeding
joy.”[29] God could not invite us in His grace to anything inferior. A
blemished saint--a smeared picture, a flawed marble--this is not like
His work; it is not like Himself. Such saintship cannot approve itself
“before Him.” He must carry out His ideal, must fashion the new man as
he was created in Christ after His own faultless image, and make human
holiness a transcript of the Divine (1 Peter i. 16).

Now, this Divine character is native to the sons of God. The ideal
which God had for men was always the same. The father of the race was
made in His image. In the Old Testament Israel receives the command:
“You shall be holy, for I, Jehovah your God, am holy.” But it was in
Jesus Christ that the breadth of this command was disclosed, and the
possibility of our personal obedience to it. The law of Christian
sonship, manifest only in shadow in the Levitical sanctity, is now
pronounced by Jesus: “You shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is
perfect.” Verses 4 and 5 are therefore strictly parallel: God elected us
in Christ to be perfect saints; for He predestined us through Jesus
Christ to be His sons.

Sonship to Himself is the Christian status, the rank and standing which
God confers on those who believe in His Son; it accrues to them by the
fact that they are in Christ.[30] It is defined by the term _adoption_,
which St Paul employs in this sense in Romans viii. 15, 23, as well as
in Galatians iv. 5. Adoption was a peculiar institution of Roman law,
familiar to Paul as a citizen of Rome; and it aptly describes to Gentile
believers their relation to the family of God. “By adoption under the
Roman law an entire stranger in blood became a member of the family into
which he was adopted, exactly as if he had been born in it. He assumed
the family name, partook in its system of sacrificial rites, and became,
not on sufferance or at will, but to all intents and purposes a member
of the house of his adopter.... This metaphor was St Paul’s translation
into the language of Gentile thought of Christ’s great doctrine of the
New Birth. He exchanges the physical metaphor of regeneration for the
legal metaphor of adoption. The adopted becomes in the eye of the law a
new creature. He was born again into a new family. By the aid of this
figure the Gentile convert was enabled to realize in a vivid manner the
fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of the faithful, the obliteration of
past penalties, the right to the mystic inheritance. He was enabled to
realize that upon this spiritual act ‘Old things passed away and all
things became new.’”[31]

This exalted status belonged to men in the purpose of God from eternity;
but as a matter of fact it was instituted “through Jesus Christ,” the
historical Redeemer. Whether previously (Jewish) servants in God’s house
or (Gentile) aliens excluded from it (ii. 12), those who believed in
Jesus as the Christ received a spirit of adoption and dared to call God
_Father_! This unspeakable privilege had been preparing for them through
the ages past in God’s hidden wisdom. Throughout the wild course of
human apostasy the Father looked forward to the time when He might again
through Jesus Christ make men His sons; and His promises and
preparations were directed to this one end. The predestination having
such an end, how fitly it is said: “_in love_ having foreordained us.”

Four times, in these three verses, with exulting emphasis, the apostle
claims this distinction for “us.” _Who_, then, are the objects of the
primordial election of grace? Does St Paul use the pronoun
distributively, thinking of individuals--you and me and so many others,
the personal recipients of saving grace? or does he mean the Church, as
that is collectively the family of God and the object of His loving
ordination? In this epistle, the latter is surely the thought in the
apostle’s mind.[32] As Hofmann says: “The body of Christians is the
object of this choice, not as composed of a certain number of
individuals--a sum of ‘the elect’ opposed to a sum of the non-elect--but
as the Church taken out of and separated from the world.”

On the other hand, we may not widen the pronoun further; we cannot allow
that the sonship here signified is man’s natural relation to God, that
to which he was born by creation. This robs the word “adoption” of its
distinctive force. The sonship in question, while grounded “in Christ”
from eternity, is conferred “through” the incarnate and crucified “Jesus
Christ”; it redounds “to the praise of the glory of His _grace_.” Now,
grace is God’s redeeming love toward sinners. God’s purpose of grace
toward mankind, embedded, as one may say, in creation, is realized in
the body of redeemed men. But this community, we rejoice to believe, is
vastly larger than the visible aggregate of Churches; for how many who
knew not His name, have yet walked in the true light which lighteth
every man.

There lies in the words “in Christ” a principle of exclusion, as well as
of wide inclusion. Men cannot be in Christ against their will, who
persistently put Him, His gospel and His laws, away from them. When we
close with Christ by faith, we begin to enter into the purpose of our
being. We find the place prepared for us before the foundation of the
world in the kingdom of Divine love. We live henceforth “to the praise
of the glory of His grace!”

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Ch. ii. 7, iii. 5, 21; Col. i. 26.

[27] Vv. 13, 14; Rom. viii. 2-6, 16; 1 Cor. ii. 12; Gal v. 16, 22-25.

[28] εἰς αὐτόν, _for Him_; not αὐτῳ, _to Him_.

[29] Ch. v. 25-27; Col. i. 27-29; Jude 24.

[30] On _sonship_, see Chapters XV.-XVII. and XIX. in _The Epistle to
the Galatians_ (Expositor’s Bible).

[31] From a valuable and suggestive paper by W. E. Ball, LL.D., on “St
Paul and the Roman Law,” in the _Contemporary Review_, August 1891.

[32] See vv. 12, 13, where Jews and Gentiles, collectively, are
distinguished; and ch. ii. 11, 12, iii. 2-6, 21, iv. 4, 5, v. 25-27.




CHAPTER III.

_THE BESTOWMENT OF GRACE._

          “Which grace He bestowed on us, in the Beloved One:
    In whom we have the redemption through His blood, the forgiveness
        of our trespasses,
                  According to the riches of His grace:
        Which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence,
            making known to us the mystery of His will,
                  According to His good pleasure:
          Which He purposed in Him, for dispensation in the fulness
              of the times,
          _Purposing_ to gather into one body all things in the Christ--
          The things belonging to the heavens, and the things upon the
              earth--yea, in Him,
    In whom also we received our heritage, as we had been foreordained,
                  According to purpose of Him who worketh all things
                  According to the counsel of His will,--
                      That we might be to the praise of His glory.”[33]

    EPH. i. 6_b_-12_a_.


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.

In Romans iii. 22-26 “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” is
declared to be the means by which we are acquitted in the judgement of
God from the guilt of past transgressions. And this redemption consists
in the “propitiatory sacrifice” which Christ offered in shedding His
blood--a sacrifice wherein we participate “through faith.” The language
of this verse contains by implication all that is affirmed there. In
this connexion, and according to the full intent of the word,
redemption is _release by ransom_. The life-blood of Jesus Christ was
the _price_ that He paid in order to secure our lawful release from the
penalties entailed by our trespasses.[36] This Jesus Christ implied
beforehand, when He spoke of “giving His life a ransom for many”; and
when He said, in handing to His disciples the cup of the Last Supper:
“This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is shed for many for
the remission of sins.” Using another synonymous term, St Paul tells us
that “Christ _bought us out of_ the curse of the law”; and he bases on
this expression a strong practical appeal: “You are not your own, for
you were bought with a price.”[37] These sayings, and others like them,
point unmistakably to the fact that our trespasses as men against God’s
inflexible law, apart from Christ’s intervention, must have issued in
our eternal ruin. By His death on the cross Christ has made such amends
to the law, that the awful sentence is averted, and our complete release
from the power of sin is rendered possible.

On rising from the dead our Saviour commissioned the apostles to
“proclaim in His name repentance and remission of sins to all nations”
(Luke xxiv. 47). It was thus He proposed to save the world. This
proclamation is the “good news” of the gospel. The announcement meets
the first need of the serious and awakened human spirit. It answers the
question which arises in the breast of every man who thinks earnestly
about his personal relations to God and to the laws of his being. We
cannot wonder that St Paul sets the remission of sins first amongst the
bestowments of God’s grace, and makes it the foundation of all the rest.

Does it occupy the like position in modern Christian teaching? Do we
realize the criminality of sin, the fearfulness of God’s displeasure,
the infinite worth of His forgiveness and the obligations under which it
places us, as St Paul and his converts did? or even as our fathers did a
few generations ago? “It is my impression,” writes Dr. R. W. Dale,[38]
“that both religious people and those who do not profess to be religious
must be conscious that God’s Forgiveness, if they ever think of it at
all, does not create any deep and strong emotion.... The difference
between the way in which we think of the Divine Forgiveness and the way
in which it was thought of by David and Isaiah, by Christ Himself, by
Peter, Paul, and John; by the saints of all Christian Churches in past
times, both in the East and in the West; ... by the leaders of the
Evangelical Revival in the last century--the difference, I say, between
the way in which the Forgiveness of sins was thought of by them, and the
way in which we think of it, is very startling. The difference is so
great, it affects so seriously the whole system of the religious thought
and life, that we may be said to have invented a new religion.... The
difference between our religion and the religion of other times is
this--that we do not believe that God has any strong resentment against
sin or against those who are guilty of sin. And since His resentment has
gone, His mercy has gone with it. We have not a God who is more merciful
than the God of our fathers, but a God who is less righteous; and a God
who is not righteous, a God who does not glow with fiery indignation
against sin, is no God at all.”

These are solemn words, to be deeply pondered. They come from one of the
most sagacious observers and justly revered teachers of our time. We
have made a real advance in breadth and human sympathy; and there has
been throughout our Churches a genuine and much needed awakening of
philanthropic activity. But if we are _departing from the living God_,
what will this avail us? If “the redemption through Christ’s blood, the
forgiveness of our trespasses,” is no longer to us the momentous and
glorious fact that it was to the apostles, then it is time to ask
whether our God is in truth the same as theirs, whether He is still the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ--whether we are not, haply,
fabricating for ourselves another gospel. Without a piercing sense of
the shame and ruin involved in human sin, we shall not put its remission
where St Paul does, at the foundation of God’s benefits to men. Without
this sentiment, we can only wonder at the passionate gratitude with
which he receives the atonement and measures by its completeness the
riches of God’s grace.

II. Along with this chief blessing of forgiveness, there came another to
the apostolic Church. With the heart the mind, with the conscience the
intellect was quickened and endowed: “which [grace] He shed abundantly
upon us _in all wisdom and intelligence_.”

This sequel to verse 7 is somewhat of a surprise. The reader is apt to
slur over verse 8, half sensible of some jar and incongruity between it
and the context. It scarcely occurs to us to associate wisdom and good
sense with the pardon of sin, as kindred bestowments of the gospel.
Minds of the evangelical order are often supposed, indeed, to be wanting
in intellectual excellencies and indifferent to their value. Is it not
true that “not many wise after the flesh were called”? Do we not glory
above everything in preaching a “simple gospel”?

But there is another side to all this. “Christ was made of God unto us
_wisdom_.” This attribute the apostle even sets first when he writes to
the wisdom-seeking Greeks, mocked by their worn-out and confused
philosophies (1 Cor. i. 30). To a close observer of the primitive
Christian societies few things must have been more noticeable than the
powerful mental stimulus imparted by the new faith. These epistles are a
witness to the fact. That such letters could be addressed to communities
gathered mainly from the lower ranks of society--consisting of slaves,
common artizans, poor women--shows that the moral regeneration effected
in St Paul’s converts was accompanied by an extraordinary excitement and
activity of thought. In this the apostle recognised the work of the Holy
Spirit, a mark of God’s special favour and blessing. “I give thanks
always for you,” he writes to the Corinthians, “for the grace of God
that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched
by Him, in all word and all knowledge.” The leaders of the apostolic
Church were the profoundest thinkers of their day; though at the time
the world held them for babblers, because their dialect was not of its
schools. They drew from stores of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ,
which none of the princes of this world knew.

Of such wisdom our epistle is full, and God “has made it to abound” to
the readers in these inspired pages. Paul’s “understanding in the
mystery of Christ” was always deepening. In his lonely prison musings
the length and breadth of the Divine counsels are disclosed to him as
never before. He sees the course of the ages and the universe of being
illuminated by the light of the knowledge of Christ. And what he sees,
all men are to see through him (iii. 9). Blessed be God who has given to
His Church through His apostles, and through the great Christian
teachers of every age, His precious gifts of wisdom and prudence, and
made His grace richly to overflow from the heart into the mind and
understanding of men!

This intellectual gift is twofold: _phronēsis_ as well as _sophia_,--the
bestowment not only of deep spiritual thought, but of moral sagacity,
good sense and thoughtfulness. This is a choice _charism_--a mercy of
the Lord. For want of it how sadly is the fruit of other graces spoilt
and wasted. How brightly it shines in St Paul himself! What luminous and
wholesome views of life, what a fund of practical sense there is in the
teaching of this letter.

St Paul rejoices in these gifts of the understanding and claims them for
the Church, having in his view the false knowledge, the “philosophy and
vain deceit” that was making its appearance in the Asian Churches (Col.
ii. 4, 8, etc.). Our safeguard against intellectual perils lies not in
ignorance, but in deeper heart-knowledge. When the grace that bestows
redemption through Christ’s blood adds its concomitant blessing of
enlightenment, when it elevates the mind as it cleanses the heart, and
abounds to us in all wisdom and prudence, the winds of doctrine and the
waves of speculation blow and beat in vain; they can but bring health to
a Church thus established in its faith.

Verses 9 and 10 describe the object of this new knowledge. They state
the doctrine which gave this powerful mental impulse to the apostolic
Church, disclosing to it a vast field of view, and supplying the most
fertile and vigorous principles of moral wisdom. This impulse lay in the
revelation of God’s purpose to reconstitute the universe in Christ. The
declaration of “the mystery of His will” comes in at this point
episodically, and by the way; and we reserve it for consideration to the
end of the present Chapter.

But let us observe here that our wisdom and prudence lie in the
knowledge of God’s will. Truth is not to be found in any system of
logical notions, in schemes and syntheses of the laws of nature or of
thought. The human mind can never rest for long in abstractions. It will
not accept for its basis of thought that which is less real and positive
than itself. By its rational instincts it is compelled to seek a Reason
and a Conscience at the centre of things,--a living God. It craves to
know _the mystery of His will_.

III. Verse 11 fills up the measure of the bestowment of grace on sinful
men. The present anticipates the future; faith and love are lifted to a
glorious hope. “In whom also--_i.e._, in Christ--_we received our
heritage_, predestinated [to it], according to His purpose who works all
things according to the counsel of His will.”

Following Meyer and other great interpreters, we prefer in this passage
the rendering of the English Authorized Version (_we obtained an
inheritance_) to that of the Revised (_we were made a heritage_).[39]
“Foreordained” carries us back to verse 5--to the phrase “foreordained
to sonship.” The believer cannot be predestinated to sonship without
being predestinated to an inheritance.[40] “If children, then heirs”
(Rom. viii. 17). But while in the parallel passage we are designated
heirs _with_ Christ, we appear in this place, according to the tenor of
the context, as heirs _in_ Him. Christ is Himself the believer’s wealth,
both in possession and hope: all his desire is to gain Christ (Phil.
iii. 8). The apostle gives thanks here in the same strain as in
Colossians i. 12-14, “to the Father who qualified us [by making us His
sons] to partake of the inheritance of the saints in the light.” In that
thanksgiving we observe the same connexion as in this between our
_forgiveness_ (ver. 7) and our _enfeoffment_, or investment with the
forfeited rights of sons of God (vv. 5, 11).[41]

The heritage of the saints in Christ is theirs already, by actual
investiture. The liberty of sons of God, access to the Father, the
treasures of Christ’s wisdom and knowledge, the sanctifying Spirit and
the moral strength and joy that He imparts, these form a rich estate of
which ancient saints had but foretastes and promises. In the
all-controlling “counsel of His will,” God wrought throughout the
course of history to convey this heritage to us. We are children of “the
fulness of the times,” heirs of all the past. For us God has been
working from eternity. On us the ends of the world have come. Thus from
the summit of our exaltation in Christ the apostle looks backward to the
beginning of Divine history.

From the same point his gaze sweeps onward to the end. God’s purpose
embraces the ages to come with those that are past. His working will not
cease till the whole counsel is fulfilled. What we have of our
inheritance, though rich and real, holds in it the promise of infinitely
more; and the Holy Spirit is the “earnest of our inheritance” (ver. 14).
God intends “that we should be to the praise of His glory.” As things
are, His glory is but obscurely visible in His saints. “It doth not yet
appear what we shall be,”--and it will not appear until the unveiling of
the sons of God (Rom. viii. 18-25). One day God’s glory in us will burst
forth in its splendour. All beholders in heaven and earth will then sing
_to the praise of His glory_, when it is seen in His redeemed and
godlike sons.

       *       *       *       *       *

Verses 9 and 10 (_which He purposed ... upon the earth_) are, as we have
said, a parenthesis or episode in the passage just reviewed. Neither in
structure nor in sense would the paragraph be defective, had this clause
been wanting. With the “in Him” repeated at the end of verse 10, St Paul
resumes the main current of his thanksgiving, arrested for a moment
while he dwells on “the mystery of God’s will.”

This last expression (ver. 9), notwithstanding what he has said in
verses 4 and 5, still needs elucidation. He will pause for an instant to
set forth once more the eternal purpose, to the knowledge of which the
Church is now admitted. The communication of this mystery is, he says,
“according to God’s good pleasure which He purposed in Christ [comp.
ver. 4], for a dispensation of the fulness of the times, intending to
gather up again all things in the Christ--the things in the heavens, and
the things upon the earth.”

God formed in Christ the purpose, by the dispensation of His grace, in
due time to re-unite the universe under the headship of Christ. This
mysterious design, hitherto kept secret, He has “made known unto us.”
Its manifestation imparts a wisdom that surpasses all the wisdom of
former ages.[42] Such is the drift of this profound deliverance.

The first clause of verse 10 supplies a datum for its interpretation.
The _fulness of the times_, in St Paul’s dialect, can only be the time
of Christ.[43] The dispensation which God designed of old is that in
which the apostle himself is now engaged;[44] it is the dispensation, or
administration (_economy_), of the grace and truth that came by Jesus
Christ, whether God be conceived as Himself the Dispenser, or through
the stewards of His mysteries. The Messianic end was to Paul’s Jewish
thought the dénouement of antecedent history. How long this age would
continue, into what epochs it might unfold itself, he knew not; but for
him the fulness of the times had arrived. The Son of God was come; the
kingdom of God was amongst men. It was the beginning of the end. It is
a mistake to relegate this text to the dim and distant future, to some
far-off consummation. We are in the midst of the Christian
reconstruction of things, and are taking part in it. The decisive epoch
fell when “God sent forth His Son.” All that has followed, and will
follow, is the result of this mission. Christ is all things, and in all;
and we are already complete in Him.

What, then, signifies this _gathering-into-one_ or _summing-up_ of all
things in the Christ? Our _recapitulate_ is the nearest equivalent of
the Greek verb, in its etymological sense. In Romans xiii. 8, 9 the same
word is used, where the several commands of the second table of the
Decalogue are said to be “comprehended in this word, namely, Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself.” This summing up is not a generalization
or compendious statement of the commands of God; it signifies their
reduction to a fundamental principle. They are unified by the discovery
of a law that underlies them all. And while thus theoretically
explained, they are made practically effective: “For love is the
fulfilling of the law.”

Similarly, St Paul finds in Christ the fundamental principle of the
creation. For those who think with him, God has by the Christian
revelation already brought all things to their unity. This summing
up--the Christian inventory and recapitulation of the universe--the
apostle has formally stated in Colossians i. 15-20: “Christ is God’s
image and creation’s firstborn. In Him, through Him, for Him all things
were made. He is before them all; and in Him they have their basis and
uniting bond. He is equally the Head of the Church and the new creation,
the firstborn out of the dead, that He might hold a universal
presidence--charged with all the fulness, so that in Him is the ground
of the reconciliation no less than of the creation of all things in
heaven and earth.” What can we desire more comprehensive than this? It
is the theory and programme of the world revealed to God’s holy apostles
and prophets.

The “gathering into one” of this text includes the “reconciliation” of
Colossians i. 20, and more. It signifies, beside the removal of the
enmities which are the effect of sin (ii. 14-16), the subjection of all
powers in heaven and earth to the rule of Christ (vv. 21, 22),[45] the
enlightenment of the angelic magnates as to God’s dealings with men
(iii. 9, 10),--in fine, the rectification and adjustment of the several
parts of the great whole of things, bringing them into full accord with
each other and with their Creator’s will. What St Paul looks forward to
is, in a word, the organization of the universe upon a Christian basis.
This reconstitution of things is provided for and is being effected “in
the Christ.” He is the rallying point of the forces of peace and
blessing. The organic principle, the organizing Head, the creative
nucleus of the new creation is there. The potent germ of life eternal
has been introduced into the world’s chaos; and its victory over the
elements of disorder and death is assured.

Observe that the apostle says “in _the Christ_.”[46] He is not speaking
of Christ in the abstract, considered in His own Person or as He dwells
in heaven, but in His relations to men and to time. The Christ manifest
in Jesus (iv. 20, 21), the Christ of prophets and apostles, the Messiah
of the ages, the Husband of the Church (v. 23), is the author and
finisher of this grand restoration.

Christ’s work is essentially a work of _restoration_. We must insist,
with Meyer, upon the significance of the Greek preposition in Paul’s
compound verb (_ana_-, equal to _re_-in _restore_ or _resume_). The
Christ is not simply the climax of the past--the Son of man and the
recapitulation of humanity, as man is of the creatures below him,
summing up human development and lifting it to a higher stage--though He
is all that. Christ _rehabilitates_ man and the world. He re-asserts the
original ground of our being, as that exists in God. He carries us and
the world forward out of sin and death, by carrying us back to God’s
ideal. The new world is the old world repaired, and in its reparation
infinitely enhanced--rich in the memories of redemption, in the fruit of
penitence and the discipline of suffering, in the lessons of the cross.

_All things_ in heaven and earth it was God’s good pleasure in the
Christ to gather again into one. Is this a general assertion concerning
the universe as a whole, or may we apply it with distributive exactness
to each particular thing? Is there to be, as we fain would hope, no
single exception to the “all things”--no wanderer lost, no exile finally
shut out from the Holy City and the tree of life? Are all evil men and
demons, willing or against their will, to be embraced somehow and at
last--at last--in the universal peace of God?

It is impossible that the first readers should have so construed Paul’s
words (comp. v. 5). He has not forgotten the “unquenchable fire,” the
“eternal punishment”; nor dare we. “If anything is certain about the
teaching of Christ and His apostles, it is that they warned men not to
reject the Divine mercy and so to incur irrevocable exile from God’s
presence and joy. They assumed that some men would be guilty of this
supreme crime, and would be doomed to this supreme woe” (Dale). There is
nothing in this text to warrant any man in presuming on the mercy or the
sovereignty of God, nothing to justify us in supposing that,
deliberately refusing to be reconciled to God in Christ, we shall yet be
reconciled in the end, despite ourselves.

St Paul assures us that God and the world will be reunited, and that
peace will reign through all realms and orders of existence. He does
not, and he could not say that none will exclude themselves from the
eternal kingdom. Making men free, God has made it possible for them to
contradict Him, so long as they have any being. The apostle’s words have
their note of warning, along with their boundless promise. There is no
place in the future order of things for aught that is out of Christ.
There is no standing-ground anywhere for the unclean and the unjust, for
the irreconcilable rebel against God. “The Son of man shall send forth
His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that
offend and them that do iniquity.”

FOOTNOTES:

[33] The arrangement above made of the lines of this intricate passage
is designed to guide the eye to its elucidation. Our disposition of the
verses has not been determined by any preconceived interpretation, but
by the parallelism of expression and cadences of phrase. The rhythmical
structure of the piece, it seems to us, supplies the key to its
explanation, and reduces to order its long-drawn and heaped-up relative
and prepositional clauses, which are grammatically so unmanageable.

[34] Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη. It is impossible to reproduce in English the
beautiful assonance--the _play_ of sound and sense--in Gabriel’s
greeting, as St Luke renders it.

[35] See Rom. i. 16-18, iii. 19-v. 21, vi. 7, vii. 1-6, viii. 1-4,
31-34, x. 6-9; 1 Cor. xv. 3, 4, 17, 56, 57; 2 Cor. v. 18-21; Gal. ii.
14-iii. 14, vi. 12-14. The latter passages the writer has endeavoured to
expound in Chapters X. to XII. and XXVIII. of his Commentary on
_Galatians_ in this series.

[36] It is an error to suppose, as one sometimes hears it said, that
_trespasses_ or _transgressions_ are a light and comparatively trivial
form of sin. Both words denote, in the language of Scripture, definite
offences against known law, departures from known duty. Adam’s sin was
the typical “transgression” and “trespass” (Rom. v. 14, 15, etc.; comp.
ii. 23; Gal. iii. 19).

[37] Gal. iii. 13; 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.

[38] See _The Evangelical Revival, and other Sermons_, pp. 149-170, on
“The Forgiveness of Sins.”

[39] Bishop Ellicott, who advocates the latter rendering, objects to
Meyer’s interpretation that it is “doubtful in point of usage.” _Pace
tanti viri_, we must retort this objection upon the new translation. _To
obtain by lot, to have (a thing) allotted to one_, is the meaning
regularly given to κληροῦσθαι in the classical dictionaries; and in O.T.
usage the _lot_ (κλῆρος) becomes the _inheritance_ (the thing
_allotted_). The verb is repeatedly used by Philo with the meaning _to
obtain_, or _receive an inheritance_; whereas there seems to be no real
parallel to the other rendering. It is true that κληροῦσθαι in the sense
of the A.V. requires an object; but that is virtually supplied by ἐν ᾧ:
“we had our inheritance allotted _in Christ_.” Comp. Col. i. 12, “the
lot of the saints _in the light_,” which signifies not the locality, but
the nature and content of the saints’ heritage.

[40] See Gal. iii. 22--iv. 7; and Chapters XV.--XVII. in the
_Expositor’s Bible_ (Galatians), on Sonship and Inheritance in St Paul.

[41] Compare Acts xxvi. 18, which also speaks to this association of
ideas in St Paul’s mind, with vers. 4, 5, 7, and 11 in this chapter.

[42] Vv. 8, 9, ch. iii. 4, 5; comp. Col. ii. 2, 3; 1 Cor. ii. 6-9.

[43] “The fulness of the time,” Gal. iv. 4; “in due season,” Rom. v. 6;
“in its own times,” 1 Tim. ii. 6. These are all synonymous expressions
for the Messianic era. Comp. Heb. i. 2, ix. 26; 1 Pet. i. 20.

[44] Ch. iii. 8, 9; Col. i. 25; 1 Cor. iv. 1; 1 Tim. i. 4, i. 7; 2 Tim.
i. 9-11; and especially Rom. xvi. 25, 26.

[45] Comp. ch. v. 5; 1 Cor. xv. 24-28; Phil. ii. 9-12; Heb. ii. 8; Rev.
i. 5, xi. 15, xvii. 14; Dan. vii. 13, 14.

[46] One wonders that our Revisers, so attentive to all points of Greek
idiom, did not think it worth while to discriminate between _Christ_ and
_the Christ_ in such passages as this. In Ephesians this distinction is
especially conspicuous and significant. See vv. 12, 20 iii. 17, iv. 20,
v. 23; similarly in 1 Cor. xv. 22; Rom. xv. 3.




CHAPTER IV.

_THE FINAL REDEMPTION._

          “[That we might be to the praise of His glory:]
    We who had before hoped in the Christ, in whom also ye _have hoped_,
      Since ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation,--
    In whom indeed, when ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy
        Spirit of the promise,
      Which is the earnest of our inheritance, till the redemption of
        _God’s_ possession,--
                                 To the praise of His glory.”

    EPH. i. 12-14.


When the apostle reaches the “heritage” conferred upon us in Christ
(ver. 11), he is on the boundary between the present and the future.
Into that future he now presses forward, gathering from it his crowning
tribute “to the praise of God’s glory.” We shall find, however, that
this heritage assumes a twofold character, as did the conception of the
inheritance of the Lord in the Old Testament. If the saints have their
heritage in Christ, partly possessed and partly to be possessed, God has
likewise, and antecedently, His inheritance in them, of which He too has
still to take full possession.[47]

Opening upon this final prospect, St Paul touches on a subject of
supreme interest to himself and that could not fail to find a place in
his great Act of Praise--viz., _the admission of the Gentiles_ to the
spiritual property of Israel. The thought of the heirship of believers
and of God’s previous counsel respecting it (ver. 11), brought before
his mind the distinction between Jew and Gentile and the part assigned
to each in the Divine plan. Hence he varies the general refrain in verse
12 by saying significantly, “that _we_ might be to the praise of His
glory.” This emphatic _we_ is explained in the opening phrase of the
last strophe: “that have beforehand fixed our hope on the Christ,”--the
heirs of Israel’s hope in “Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets
did write.” With this “we” of Paul’s Jewish consciousness the “ye also”
of verse 13 is set in contrast by his vocation as Gentile apostle. This
second pronoun, by one of Paul’s abrupt turns of thought, is deprived of
its predicating verb; but that is given already by the “hoped” of the
last clause. “The Messianic hope, Israel’s ancient heirloom, in its
fulfilment is _yours_ as much as ours.”

This hope of Israel pointed Israelite and Gentile believer alike to the
completion of the Messianic era, when the mystery of God should be
finished and His universe redeemed from the bondage of corruption (vv.
10, 14). By the “one hope” of the Christian calling the Church is now
made one. From this point of view the apostle in chapter ii. 12
describes the condition in which the gospel found his Gentile readers as
that of men cut off from Christ, strangers to the covenants of
promise,--in a word, “having no hope”; while he and his Jewish
fellow-believers held the priority that belonged to those whose are the
promises. The apostle stands precisely at the juncture where the wild
shoot of nature is grafted into the good olive tree. A generation later
no one would have thought of writing of “the Christ in whom _you_
(Gentiles) _also_ have found hope”; for then Christ was the established
possession of the Gentile Church.

To these Christless heathen Christ and His hope came, when they “heard
the word of truth, the gospel of their salvation.” A great light had
sprung up for them that sat in darkness; the good tidings of salvation
came to the lost and despairing. “To the Gentiles,” St Paul declared,
addressing the obstinate Jews of Rome, “this salvation of God was sent:
they indeed will hear it” (Acts xxviii. 28). Such was his experience in
Ephesus and all the Gentile cities. There were hearing ears and open
hearts, souls longing for the word of truth and the message of hope. The
trespass of Israel had become the riches of the world. For this on his
readers’ behalf he gives joyful thanks,--that his message proved to be
“the gospel of _your_ salvation.”

Salvation, as St Paul understands it, includes our uttermost
deliverance, the end of death itself (1 Cor. xv. 26). He renders praise
to God for that He has sealed Gentile equally with Jewish believers with
the stamp of His Spirit, which makes them His property and gives
assurance of absolute redemption.

       *       *       *       *       *

There are three things to be considered in this statement: _the seal_
itself, _the conditions_ upon which, and _the purpose_ for which it is
affixed.

I. A seal is a token of proprietorship put by the owner upon his
property;[48] or it is the authentication of some statement or
engagement, the official stamp that gives it validity;[49] or it is the
pledge of inviolability guarding a treasure from profane or injurious
hands.[50] There is the protecting seal, the ratifying seal, and the
proprietary seal. The same seal may serve each or all of these purposes.
Here the thought of possession predominates (comp. ver. 4); but it can
scarcely be separated from the other two. The witness of the Holy Spirit
marks men out as God’s _purchased right_ in Christ (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20).
In that very fact it guards them from evil and wrong (iv. 30), while it
ratifies their Divine sonship (Gal. iv. 6) and guarantees their personal
share in the promises of God (2 Cor. i. 20-22). It is a bond between God
and men; a sign at once of what we are and shall be to God, and of what
He is and will be to us. It secures, and it assures. It stamps us for
God’s possession, and His kingdom and glory as our possession.

This seal is constituted by _the Holy Spirit of the promise_,--in
contrast with the material seal, “in the flesh, wrought by hand,”[51]
which marked the children of the Old Covenant from Abraham downwards,
previously to the fulfilment of the promise (Gal. iii. 14). We bear it
in the inmost part of our nature, where we are nearest to God: “The
Spirit witnesseth to our spirit.” “The Israelites also were sealed, but
by circumcision, like cattle and irrational animals. We were sealed by
the Spirit, as sons” (Chrysostom). The stamp of God is on the
consciousness of His children. “We know that Christ abides in us,”
writes St John, “from the Spirit which He gave us” (1 Ep. iii. 24).
Under this seal is conveyed the sum of blessing comprised in our
salvation. Jesus promised, “Your heavenly Father will give His Holy
Spirit to them that ask” (Luke xi. 13), as if there were nothing else to
ask. Giving us this, God gives everything, gives us Himself! In
substance or anticipation, this one bestowment contains all good things
of God.

The apostle writes “the Spirit of the promise, _the Holy_ [Spirit],”
with emphasis on the word of quality; for the testifying power of the
seal lies in its character. “Beloved, believe not every spirit; but try
the spirits, whether they are of God” (1 John iv. 1). There are false
prophets, deceiving and deceived; there are promptings from “the spirit
that works in the sons of disobedience,” diabolical inspirations, so
plausible and astonishing that they may deceive the very elect. It is a
most perilous error to identify the supernatural with the Divine, to
suppose mere miracles and communications from the invisible sphere a
sign of the working of God. Antichrist can mimic Christ by his “lying
wonders and deceit of unrighteousness” (2 Thess. ii. 8-12). Jesus never
appealed to the power of His works in proof of His mission, apart from
their ethical quality. God’s Spirit works after His kind, and makes ours
a holy spirit. There is an objective and subjective witness--the obverse
and reverse of the medal (2 Tim. ii. 19). To be sealed by the Holy
Spirit is, in St Paul’s dialect, the same thing as to be _sanctified_;
only, the phrase of this text brings out graphically the promissory
aspect of sanctification, its bearing on our final redemption.[52]

When the sealing Spirit is called the Spirit _of promise_, does the
expression look backward or forward? Is the apostle thinking of the past
promise now fulfilled, or of some promise still to be fulfilled? The
former, undoubtedly, is true. _The_ promise (the article is
significant[53]) is, in the words of Christ, “the promise of the
Father.” On the day of Pentecost St Peter pointed to the descent of the
Holy Spirit as God’s seal upon the Messiahship of Jesus, fulfilling what
was promised to Israel for the last days. When this miraculous effusion
was repeated in the household of Cornelius, the Jewish apostle saw its
immense significance. He asked, “Can any one forbid water that these
should be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?”
(Acts x. 47). This was the predicted criterion of the Messianic times.
Now it was _given_, and with an abundance beyond hope,--_poured out_, in
the full sense of Joel’s words, _upon all flesh_.

Now, if God has done so much--for this is the implied argument of verses
13, 14--He will surely accomplish the rest. The attainment of past hope
is the warrant of present hope. He who gives us His own Spirit, will
give us the fulness of eternal life. The earnest implies the sum. In the
witness of the Holy Spirit there is for the Christian man the power of
an endless life, a spring of courage and patience that can never fail.

II. But there are very definite conditions, upon which this assurance
depends. “When you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your
salvation”--there is the outward condition: “when you believed”--there
is the inward and subjective qualification for the affixing of the seal
of God to the heart.

How characteristic is this antithesis of _hearing_ and _faith_![54] St
Paul delights to ring the changes upon these terms. The gospel he
carried about with him was a message from God to men, the good news
about Jesus Christ. It needs, on the one hand, to be effectively
uttered, proclaimed so as to be heard with the understanding; and, on
the other hand, it must be trustfully received and obeyed. Then the due
result follows. There is salvation,--conscious, full.

If they are to believe unto salvation, men must be made to _hear_ the
word of truth. Unless the good news reaches their ears and their heart,
it is no good news to them. “How shall they believe in Him of whom they
have not heard? how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Rom. x. 14).
The light may be true, and the eyes clear and open; but there is no
vision till both meet, till the illuminating ray falls on the sensitive
spot and touches the responsive nerve. How many sit in darkness, groping
and wearying for the light, ready for the message if there were any to
speak it to them! Great would Paul’s guilt have been, if when Christ
called him to preach to the heathen, he had refused to go, if he had
withheld the gospel of salvation from the multitudes waiting to receive
it at his lips. Great also is our fault and blame, and heavy the
reproach against the Church to-day, when with means in her hand to make
Christ known to almost the whole world, she leaves vast numbers of men
within her reach in ignorance of His message. She is not the proprietor
of the Christian truth: it is God’s gospel; and she holds it as God’s
trustee for mankind,--that through her “the message might be fully
preached, and that all the nations might hear” (2 Tim. iv. 17). She has
St Paul’s programme in hand still to complete, and loiters over it.

The nature of the message constitutes our duty to proclaim it. It is
“the word _of truth_.” If there be any doubt upon this, if our certainty
of the Christian truth is shaken and we can no longer announce it with
full conviction, our zeal for its propagation naturally declines.
Scepticism chills and kills missionary fervour, as the breath of the
frost the young growth of spring. At home and amongst our own people
evangelistic agencies are supported by many who have no very decided
personal faith, from secondary motives,--with a view to their social and
reformatory benefits, out of philanthropic feeling and love to “the
brother whom we have seen.” The foreign missions of the Church, like the
work of the Gentile apostle, gauge her real estimate of the gospel she
believes and the Master she serves.

But if we have no sure word of prophecy to speak, we had better be
silent. Men are not saved by illusion or speculation. Christianity did
not begin by offering to mankind a legend for a gospel, or win the ear
of the world for a beautiful romance. When the apostles preached Jesus
and the resurrection, they declared what they knew. To have spoken
otherwise, to have uttered cunningly devised fables or pious phantasies
or conjectures of their own, would have been, in their view, to bear
false witness against God. Before the hostile scrutiny of their
fellow-men, and in prospect of the awful judgement of God, they
testified the facts about Jesus Christ, the things that they had “heard,
and seen with their eyes, and which their hands had handled concerning
the word of life.” They were as sure of these things as of their own
being. Standing upon this ground and with this weapon of truth alone in
their hands, they denounced “the wiles of error” and the “craftiness of
men who lie in wait to deceive” (iv. 14).

And they could always speak of this word of truth, addressing whatsoever
circle of hearers or of readers, as “the good news of _your salvation_.”
The pronoun, as we have seen, is emphatic. The glory of Paul’s apostolic
mission was its universalism. His message was to every man he met. His
latest writings glow with delight in the world-wide destination of his
gospel.[55] It was his consolation that the Gentiles in multitudes
received the Divine message to which his countrymen closed their ears.
And he rejoiced in this the more, because he foresaw that ultimately the
gospel would return to its native home, and at last amid “the fulness of
the Gentiles all Israel would be saved” (Rom. xi. 13-32). At present
Israel was not prepared to seek, while the Gentiles were seeking
righteousness by the way of faith (Rom. ix. 30-33).

For it is upon this question of _faith_ that the whole issue turns.
Hearing is much, when one hears the word of truth and news of salvation.
But faith is the point at which salvation becomes ours--no longer a
possibility, an opportunity, but a fact: “in whom indeed, _when you
believed_, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit.” So characteristic is
this act of the new life to which it admits, that St Paul is in the
habit of calling Christians, without further qualification, simply
_believers_ (“those who believe,” or “who believed”). Faith and the gift
of the Holy Spirit are associated in his thoughts, as closely as Faith
and Justification. “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
was the question he put to the Baptist’s disciples whom he found at
Ephesus on first arriving there (Acts xix. 2). This was the test of the
adequacy of their faith. He reminds the Galatians that they “received
the Spirit from the hearing of faith,” and tells them that in this way
the blessing and the promise of Abraham were theirs already (Gal. iii.
2, 7, 14). Faith in the word of Christ admits the Spirit of Christ, who
is in the word waiting to enter. Faith is the trustful surrender and
expectancy of the soul towards God; it sets the heart’s door open for
Christ’s incoming through the Spirit This was the order of things from
the beginning of the new dispensation. “God gave to them,” says St Peter
of the first baptized Gentiles, “the like gift as He did also unto us,
when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Ghost fell on them,
as on us at the beginning” (Acts xi. 15-18). Upon our faith in Jesus
Christ, the Holy Spirit enters the soul and announces Himself by His
message of adoption, crying in us to God, _Abba, Father_ (Gal. iv. 6,
7).

In the chamber of our spirit, while we abide in faith, the Spirit of the
Father and the Son dwells with us, witnessing to us of the love of God
and leading us into all truth and duty and divine joy, instilling a deep
and restful peace, breathing an energy that is a fire and fountain of
life within the breast, which pours out itself in prayer and labour for
the kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit is no mere gift to receive, or
comfort to enjoy; He is an almighty Force in the believing soul and the
faithful Church.

III. The end for which the seal of God was affixed to Paul’s Gentile
readers, along with their Jewish brethren in Christ, appears in the
last verse, with which the Act of Praise terminates: “sealed,” he says,
“with the Holy Spirit, which is the earnest of our inheritance, _until
the redemption of the possession_.”

The last of these words is the equivalent of the Old Testament phrase
rendered in Exodus xix. 5, and elsewhere, “_a peculiar treasure_ unto
me”; in Deuteronomy vii. 6, etc., “a _peculiar_ people” (_i.e._, people
of _possession_). The same Greek term is employed by the Septuagint
translators in Malachi iii. 17, where our Revisers have substituted “a
peculiar treasure” for the familiar, but misleading “jewels” of the
older Version. St Peter in his first epistle (ii. 9, 10) transfers the
title from the Jewish people to the new Israel of God, who are “an elect
race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people _for God’s own
possession_.” In that passage, as in this, the Revisers have inserted
the word _God’s_ in order to signify whose possession the term signifies
in Biblical use. In the other places in the New Testament where the same
Greek noun occurs,[56] it retains its primary active force, and denotes
“_obtaining_ of the glory,” etc., “_saving_ of the soul.” The word
signifies not the possessing so much as the _acquiring_ or _securing_ of
its object. The Latin Vulgate suitably renders this phrase, _in
redemptionem acquisitions_,--“till the redemption of the acquisition.”

God has “redeemed unto Himself a people”; He has “bought us with a
price.” His rights in us are both natural and _acquired_; they are
redemptional rights, the recovered rights of the infinite love which in
Jesus Christ saved mankind by extreme sacrifice from the doom of death
eternal. This redemption “we have, in the remission of our trespasses”
(ver. 7). But this is only the beginning. Those whose sin is cancelled
and on whom God now looks with favour in Christ, are thereby redeemed
and saved (ii. 5, 8).[57] They are within the kingdom of grace; they
have passed out of death into life. They have but to persist in the
grace into which they have entered, and all will be well. “Now,” says
the apostle to the Romans, “you are made free from sin and made servants
to God; you have your fruit unto holiness, and the end eternal life.”

Our salvation is come; but, after all, it is still to come. We find the
apostle using the words “save” and “redeem” in this twofold sense,
applying them both to the commencement and the consummation of the new
life.[58] The last act, in Romans viii. 23, he calls “the redemption of
the body.” This will reinstate the man in the integrity of his twofold
being as a son of God. Hence our bodily redemption is there called an
_adoption_. For as Jesus Christ by His resurrection was “marked out
[_or_ instated] as Son of God in power” (Rom. i. 4), not otherwise will
it be with His many brethren. Their reappearance in the new “body of
glory” will be a “revelation” to the universe “of the sons of God.”

But this last redemption--or rather this last act of the one
redemption--like the first, is through the blood of the cross. Christ
has borne for us in His death the entire penalty of sin; the remission
of that penalty comes to us in two distinct stages. The shadow of death
is lifted off from our spirits now, in the moment of forgiveness. But
for reasons of discipline it remains resting upon our bodily frame.
Death is a usurper and trespasser in the bounds of God’s heritage.
Virtually and in principle, he is abolished; but not in effect. “I will
ransom them from the power of the grave,”[59] the Lord said of His
Israel, with a meaning deeper than His prophet knew. When that is done,
then God will have redeemed, in point of fact, those possessions in
humanity which He so much prizes, that for their recovery He spared not
His Son.

So long as mortality afflicts us, God cannot be satisfied on our
account. His children are suffering and tortured; His people mourn under
the oppression of the enemy. They sigh, and creation with them, under
the burdensome and infirm tabernacle of the flesh, this body of our
humiliation for which the hungry grave clamours. God’s new estate in us
is still encumbered with the liabilities in which the sin of the race
involved us, with the “ills that flesh is heir to.” But this
mortgage--that we call, with a touching euphemism, _the debt of
nature_--will at last be discharged. Soon shall we be free for ever from
the law of sin and death. “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and
come with singing to Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their
heads: they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall
flee away.”

To God, as He looks down upon men, the seal of His Spirit upon their
hearts anticipates this full emancipation. He sees already in the
redeemed spirit of His children what will be manifest in their glorious
heavenly form. The same token is to ourselves as believing men the
“earnest of our inheritance.” Note that at this point the apostle drops
the “you” by which he has for several sentences distinguished between
Jewish and Gentile brethren. He identifies them with himself and speaks
of “_our_ inheritance.” This sudden resumption of the first person, the
self-assertion of the filial consciousness in the writer breaking
through the grammatical order, is a fine trait of the Pauline
manner.[60]

_Arrhabon_, the _earnest_ (_fastening penny_), is a Phœnician word of
the market, which passed into Greek and Latin,--a monument of the daring
pioneers of Mediterranean commerce. It denotes the part of the price
given by a purchaser in making a bargain, or of the wages given by the
hirer concluding a contract of service, by way of assurance that the
stipulated sum will be forthcoming. Such pledge of future payment is at
the same time a bond between those concerned, engaging each to his part
in the transaction.

The earnest is the seal, and something more. It is an instalment, a
_token in kind_, a foretaste of the feast to come. In the parallel
passage, Romans viii. 23, the same earnest is called “the firstfruit of
the Spirit.” What the earliest sheaf is to the harvest, that the
entrance of the Spirit of God into a human soul is to the glory of its
ultimate salvation. The sanctity, the joy, the sense of recovered life
is the same in kind then and now, differing only in degree and
expression.

Of the “earnest of the Spirit” St Paul has spoken twice already, in 2
Corinthians i. 22 and v. 5, where he cites this inner witness to assure
us, in the first instance, that God will fulfil to us His promises, “how
many soever they be”; and in the second, that our mortal nature shall be
“swallowed up of life”--assimilated to the living spirit to which it
belongs--and that “God has wrought us for this very thing.” These
earlier sayings explain the apostle’s meaning here. God has made us His
sons, in accordance with His purpose formed in the depths of eternity
(ver. 5). As sons, we are His heirs in fellowship with Christ, and
already have received rich blessings out of this heritage (ver. 11). But
the richest part of it, including that which concerns the bodily form of
our life, is still unredeemed, notwithstanding that the price of its
redemption is paid.

For this we wait till the time appointed of the Father,--the time when
He will reclaim His heritage in us, and give us full possession of our
heritage in Christ. We do not wait, as did the saints of former ages,
ignorant of the Father’s purpose for our future lot. “Life and
immortality are brought to light through the gospel.” We see beyond the
chasm of death. We enjoy in the testimony of the Holy Spirit the
foretaste of an eternal and glorious life for all the children of
God--nay, the pledge that the reign of evil and death shall end
throughout the universe.

With this hope swelling their hearts, the apostle’s readers once more
triumphantly join in the refrain: TO THE PRAISE OF HIS GLORY.

FOOTNOTES:

[47] Exod. xix. 3-6; Deut. iv. 20, 21; 1 Kings viii. 51, 53; Ps.
lxxviii. 71, etc. With the above comp. Gen. xv. 8; Numb. xviii. 20; Jos.
xiii. 33; Ps. xvi. 5.

[48] Ch. iv. 30. The “seal” of 2 Tim. ii. 19 has both the first and
third of these meanings.

[49] Rom. iv. 11; 1 Cor. ix. 2; John iii. 33, vi. 27.

[50] Matt. xxvii. 66; Rev. v. 1, etc.

[51] Ch. ii. 11; comp. Rom. i. 28, 29; Gal. v, 5, 6; Phil. iii. 2, 3.

[52] Comp. Rom. viii. 9-11; 2 Cor. v. 1-5.

[53] Acts i. 4, ii. 33, 39, xiii. 32, xxvi. 6; Rom. iv. 13-20; Gal. iii.
14-29.

[54] See Rom. x. 14-18; Gal. iii. 2, 5; Col. i. 6, 23; 1 Thess. ii. 13;
2 Tim. i. 13.

[55] 1 Tim. ii. 1-7, iv. 10; Tit. ii. 11.

[56] 1 Thess. v. 9; 2 Thess. ii. 14; Heb. x. 39.

[57] Comp. Chapter VIII.

[58] For the former usage see, along with ver. 7 and ch. ii. 5, 8; Rom.
iii, 24, x. 9; Titus iii. 5; 2 Tim. i. 9; Col. i. 14; Heb. ix. 15; for
the latter, ch. iv. 30; Luke xxi. 28; Rom. v. 9, 10, viii. 23; Phil. ii.
12; 1 Thess. v. 8, 9; 2 Tim. ii. 10, iv. 18. It may be doubted whether
St Paul ever uses these terms to denote present salvation or redemption
without the final issue being also in his thoughts. Perhaps he would
have called the redemption of ver. 7, in contrast with that of Rom.
viii. 23, “the redemption of the spirit.”

[59] Hosea xiii. 14; Isa. xxv. 8.

[60] The same incoherence occurs in Gal. iv. 5-7: “that _we_ might
receive the adoption of sons. And because _ye_ are sons, God sent forth
the Spirit of His Son into _our_ hearts.”




CHAPTER V.

_FOR THE EYES OF THE HEART._

    “For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus
    which is among you, and which _ye shew_ toward all the saints, cease
    not to give thanks for you, making mention _of you_ in my prayers:

    “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; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know
    what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His
    inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His
    power toward us who believe, according to that working of the might
    of His strength, which He wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him
    from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly
    _places_.”--EPH. i. 15-20.


_Because of this_: because you have heard the glad tidings, and
believing it have been sealed with the Holy Spirit (vv. 13, 14). _I
too_: I your apostle, with so great an interest in your salvation, in
return give thanks for you. Thus St Paul, having extolled to the
uttermost God’s counsel of redemption unfolded through the ages, claims
to offer especial thanksgiving for the faith of those who belong to his
Gentile province and are, directly or indirectly, the fruit of his own
ministry (iii. 1-13).

The intermediate clause of verse 15, describing the readers’ faith, is
obscure. This form of expression occurs nowhere else in St Paul; but the
construction is used by St Luke,--_e.g._, in Acts xxi. 21: “All the
Jews _which are among_ the Gentiles,” where it implies diffusion over a
wide area. This being a circular letter, addressed to a number of
Churches scattered through the province of Asia, of whose faith in many
cases St Paul knew only by report, we can understand how he writes:
“having heard of the faith that is [spread] amongst you.”--_The love_,
completing _faith_ in the ordinary text (as in Col. i. 4), is relegated
by the Revisers to the margin, upon evidence that seems conclusive.[61]
The commentators, however, feel so strongly the harshness of this
ellipsis that, in spite of the ancient witnesses, they read, almost with
one consent,[62] “_your love_ toward all the saints.” The variation of
the former clause prepares us, however, for something peculiar in this.
In verse 13 we found St Paul’s thought fixed on the decisive fact of his
readers’ _faith_. On this he still dwells lingeringly. The grammatical
link needed between “faith” and “unto all the saints” is supplied in the
Revised Version by _ye show_, after the analogy of Philemon 5. Perhaps
it might be supplied as grammatically, and in a sense better suiting the
situation, by _is come_. Then the co-ordinate prepositional phrases
qualifying “faith” have both alike a local reference, and we paraphrase
the clause thus: “since I heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is
spread amongst you, and whose report has reached all the saints.”

We are reminded of the thanksgiving for the Roman Church, “that your
faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world.”[63] The success of the
gospel in Asia gave encouragement to believers in Christ everywhere. St
Paul loves in this way to link Church to Church, to knit the bonds of
faith between land and land: in this letter most of all; for it is his
catholic epistle, the epistle of the Church œcumenical.

In verse 16 we pass from praise to prayer. God is invoked by a double
title peculiar to this passage, as “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of glory.” The former expression is in no way difficult. The
apostle often speaks, as in verse 3, of “the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ”: intending to qualify the Divine Fatherhood by another
epithet, he writes for once simply of “_the God_ of our Lord Jesus
Christ.” This reminds us of the dependence of the Lord Jesus upon the
eternal Father, and accentuates the Divine sovereignty so conspicuous in
the foregoing Act of Praise. Christ’s constant attitude towards the
Father was that of His cry of anguish on the cross, “My God, my God!”
Yet He never speaks to men of _our_ God. To us God is “the God of our
Lord Jesus Christ,” as He was to the men of old time “the God of Abraham
and of Isaac and of Jacob.”

The key to the designation _Father of glory_ is in Romans vi. 4: “Christ
was raised from the dead through _the glory of the Father_.” In the
light of this august manifestation of God’s power to save His lost sons
in Christ, we are called to see light (vv. 19, 20). Its glory shines
already about God’s blessed name of Father, thrice glorified in the
apostle’s praise (vv. 3-14). The title is the counterpart of “the Father
of compassions” in 2 Corinthians i. 3.

And now, what has the apostle to ask of the Father of men under these
glorious appellations? He asks “a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
full-knowledge[64] of Him,--the eyes of your heart enlightened, in order
that you may know,” etc. This recalls the emphasis with which in verses
8 and 9 he set “wisdom and intelligence” amongst the first blessings
bestowed by Divine grace upon the Church. It was the gift which the
Asian Churches at the present juncture most needed; this is just now the
burden of the apostle’s prayers for his people.

The _spirit of wisdom and revelation_ desired will proceed from the Holy
Spirit dwelling in these Gentile believers (ver. 13). But it must belong
to their own spirit and direct their personal mental activity, the
spirit of revelation becoming “the spirit of their mind” (iv. 23). When
St Paul asks for “a spirit of wisdom and _revelation_,” he desires that
his readers may have amongst themselves a fountain of inspiration and
share in the prophetic gifts diffused through the Church.[65] And “the
knowledge--the full, deep knowledge of God” is the sphere “in” which
this richer inspiration and spiritual wisdom are exercised and
nourished. “Philosophy, taking man for its centre, says, _Know thyself_:
only the inspired word, which proceeds from God, has been able to say,
_Know God_.”[66]

The connexion of the first clause of verse 18 with the last of verse 17
is not very clear in St Paul’s Greek; there is a characteristic
incoherence of structure. The continuity of thought is unmistakable. He
prays that through this inspired wisdom his readers may have their
reason enlightened to see the grandeur and wealth of their religion.
This is a vision for “the eyes of the heart.” It is disclosed to the eye
behind the eye, to the heart which is the true discerner.

                  “The seeing eyes
    See best by the light in the heart that lies.”

Yonder is an ox grazing in the meadow on a bright summer’s day. Round
him is spread the fairest landscape,--a broad stretch of herbage
embroidered with flowers, the river gleaming in and out amongst the
distant trees, the hills on both sides bounding the quiet valley,
sunshine and shadows chasing each other as they leap from height to
height. But of all this what sees the grazing ox? So much lush pasture
and cool shade and clear water where his feet may plash when he has done
feeding. In the same meadow there stands a poet musing, or a painter
busy at his easel; and on the soul of that gifted man there descends,
through eyes outwardly discerning no more than those of the beast at his
side, a vision of wonder and beauty which will make all time richer. The
eyes of the man’s heart are opened, and the spirit of wisdom and
revelation is given him in the knowledge of God’s work in nature.

Like differences exist amongst men in regard to the things of religion.
“So foolish was I and ignorant,” says the Psalmist, speaking of his
former dejection and unbelief, “I was as a beast before Thee!” There
shall be two men sitting side by side in the same house of prayer, at
the same gate of heaven. The one sees heaven opened; he hears the
eternal song; his spirit is a temple filled with the glory of God. The
other sees the place and the aspect of his fellow-worshippers; he hears
the music of organ and choir, and the sound of some preacher’s voice.
But as for anything besides, any influence from another world, it is no
more to him at that moment than is the music in the poet’s soul or the
colours on the painter’s canvas to the ox that eateth grass.

It is not the strangeness and distance of Divine things alone that cause
insensibility; their familiarity has the same effect. We know all this
gospel so well. We have read it, listened to it, gone over its points of
doctrine a hundred times. It is trite and easy to us as a worn glove. We
discuss without a tremor of emotion truths the first whisper and dim
promise of which once lifted men’s souls into ecstasy, or cast them down
into depths of shame and bewilderment so that they forgot to eat their
bread. The awe of things eternal, the mystery of our faith, the Spirit
of glory and of God rest on us no longer. So there come to be, as one
hears it said, _gospel-hardened_ hearers--and gospel-hardened preachers!
The eyes see--and see not; the ears hear--and hear not; the lips speak
without feeling; _the heart is waxen fat_. This is the nemesis of grace
abused. It is the result that follows by an inevitable psychological
law, where outward contact with spiritual truth is not attended with an
inward apprehension and response. How do we need to pray, in handling
these dread themes, for a true sense and savour of Divine things,--that
there may be given, and ever given afresh to us “a spirit of wisdom and
revelation in the knowledge of God.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Three things the apostle desires that his readers may see with the
heart’s enlightened eyes: the _hope to which God calls them_, the
_wealth that He possesses in them,_ and the _power which He is prepared
to exert upon them as believing men_.

I. What, then, is our _hope_ in God? What is the ideal of our faith? For
what purpose has God called us into the fellowship of His Son? What is
our religion going to do for us and to make of us?

It will bring us safe home to heaven. It will deliver us from the
present evil world, and preserve us unto Christ’s heavenly kingdom. God
forbid that we should make light of “the hope laid up for us in the
heavens,” or cast it aside. It is an anchor of the soul, both sure and
steadfast. But is it _the_ hope of our calling? Is this what St Paul
here chiefly signifies? We are very sure that it is not. But it is the
one thing which stands for the hope of the gospel in many minds. “We
trust that our sins are forgiven: we hope that we shall get to heaven!”
The experience of how many Christian believers begins and ends there. We
make of our religion a harbour of refuge, a soothing anodyne, an escape
from the anguish of guilt and the fear of death; not a life-vocation, a
grand pursuit. The definition we have quoted may suffice for the
beginning and the end; but we need something to fill out that formula,
to give body and substance, meaning and movement to the life of faith.

Let the apostle tell us what he regarded, for himself, as the end of
religion, what was the object of his ambition and pursuit. “One thing I
do,” he writes to the Philippians, opening to them all his heart,--“One
thing I do. I press towards the mark for the prize of my high calling of
God in Christ Jesus.” And what, pray, was that mark?--“that I may gain
Christ and be found in Him!--that I may know Him, and the power of His
resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to
His death, if by any means I may attain unto the final resurrection from
the dead.” Yes, Paul hopes for heaven; but he hopes for something else
first, and most. It is through Christ that he sees heaven. To know
Christ, to love Christ, to serve Christ, to follow Christ, to be like
Christ, to be with Christ for ever!--that is what St Paul lived for.
Whatever aim he pursues or affection he cherishes, Christ lies in it and
reaches beyond it. In doing or in suffering, in his intellect and his
heart, in his thoughts for himself or for others, Christ is all things
to him and in all. When life is thus filled with Christ, heaven becomes,
as one may say, a mere circumstance, and death but an incident upon the
way,--in the soul’s everlasting pursuit of Christ.

Behold, then, brethren, the hope of our calling. God could not call us
to any destiny less or lower than this. It would have been unworthy of
Him,--and may we not say, unworthy of ourselves, if we are in truth His
sons? From eternity the Father of spirits has predestined you and me to
be holy and without blemish before Him,--in a word, to be conformed to
the image of His Son. Every other hope is dross compared to this.

II. Another vision for the heart’s eyes, still more amazing than that we
have seen: “what is,” St Paul writes, “the riches of the glory of God’s
inheritance in the saints.”

We saw, in considering the eleventh and fourteenth verses, how the
apostle, in characteristic fashion, plays upon the double aspect of the
_inheritance_, regarding it now as the heritage of the saints in God and
again as His heritage in them. The former side of this relationship was
indicated in the “hope of the Divine calling,”--which we live and strive
for as it is promised us by God; and the latter comes out, by way of
contrast, in this second clause. Verse 18 repeats in another way the
antithesis of verse 14 between our inheritance and God’s acquisition. We
must understand that God sets great store by us His human children, and
counts Himself rich in our affection and our service. How deeply it must
affect us to know this, and to see the glory that in God’s eyes belongs
to His possession in believing men.

What presumption is all this, some one says. How preposterous to imagine
that the Maker of the worlds interests Himself in atoms like
ourselves,--in the ephemera of this insignificant planet! But moral
magnitudes are not to be measured by a foot-rule. The mind which can
traverse the immensities of space and hold them in its grasp, transcends
the things it counts and weighs. As it is amongst earthly powers, so the
law may hold betwixt sphere and sphere in the system of worlds, in the
relations of bodies terrestrial and celestial to each other, that “God
has chosen the weak things to put to shame the mighty, and the things
that are not to bring to nought the things that are.” Through the Church
He is “making known to the potentates in the heavenly places His
manifold wisdom” (iii, 10). The lowly can sing evermore with Mary in the
Magnificat: “He that is mighty hath magnified me.” If it be true that
God spared not His Son for our salvation and has sealed us with the seal
of His Spirit, if He chose us before the world’s foundation to be His
saints, He must set upon those saints an infinite value. We may despise
ourselves; but He thinks great things of us.

And is this, after all, so hard to understand? If the alternative were
put to some owner of wide lands and houses full of treasure: “Now, you
must lose that fine estate, or see your own son lost and ruined! You
must part with a hundred thousand pounds--or with your best friend!”
there could be no doubt in such a case what the choice would be of a man
of sense and worth, one who sees with the eyes of the heart. Shall we
think less nobly of God than of a right-minded man amongst
ourselves?--Suppose, again, that one of our great cities were so full of
wealth that the poorest were housed in palaces and fared sumptuously
every day, though its citizens were profligates and thieves and cowards!
What would its opulence and luxury be worth? Is it not evident that
_character_ is the only possession of intrinsic value, and that this
alone gives worth and weight to other properties? “The saints that are
in the earth and the excellent” are earth’s riches.

So far as we can judge of His ways, the great God who made us cares
comparatively little about the upholstery and machinery of the universe;
but He cares immensely about men, about the character and destiny of
men. There is nothing in all that physical science discloses for God to
_love_, nothing kindred to Himself. “Hast thou considered my servant
Job?” the Hebrew poet pictures Him saying before heaven and hell!--“Hast
thou considered my servant Job?--a perfect man and upright: there is
none like him in the earth.” How proud God is of a man like that, in a
world like this. Who can tell the value that the Father of glory sets
upon the tried fidelity of His humblest servant here on earth; the
intensity with which He reciprocates the confidence of one timid,
trembling human heart, or the simple reverence of one little child that
lisps His awful name? “He _taketh pleasure_ in them that fear Him, in
those that hope in His mercy!” Beneath His feet all the worlds lie
spread in their starry splendour, our sun with its train of planets no
more than one glimmering spot of light amongst ten thousand. But amidst
this magnificence, what is the sight that wins His tender fatherly
regard? “To that man will I look, that is poor and of a contrite spirit,
and that trembles at my word.” Thus saith the High and Lofty One that
inhabiteth eternity. The Creator rejoices in His works as at the
beginning, the Lord of heaven and earth in His dominion. But these are
not His “inheritance.” That is in the love of His children, in the
character and number of His saints. _We_ are to be the praise of His
glory.

Let us learn, then, to respect ourselves. Let us not take the world’s
tinsel for wealth, and spend our time, like the man in Bunyan’s dream,
scraping with “the muck-rake” while the crown of life shines above our
head. The riches of a Church--nay, of any human community--lies not in
its moneyed resources, but in the men and women that compose it, in
their godlike attributes of mind and heart, in their knowledge, their
zeal, their love to God and man, in the purity, the gentleness, the
truthfulness and courage and fidelity that are found amongst them. These
are the qualities which give distinction to human life, and are
beautiful in the eyes of God and holy angels. “Man that is in honour and
understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish.”

III. One thing more we need to understand, or what we have seen already
will be of little practical avail. We may see glorious visions, we may
cherish high aspirations; and they may prove to be but the dreams of
vanity. Nay, it is conceivable that God Himself might have wealth
invested in our nature, a treasure beyond price, shipwrecked and sunk
irrecoverably through our sin. What means exist for realizing this
inheritance? what power is there at work to recover these forfeited
hopes, and that glory of God of which we have come so miserably short?

The answer lies in the apostle’s words: “That ye may know what is the
exceeding greatness of His power toward us that believe,”--a power
measured by “the energy of the might of His strength[67] which He
wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at
His right hand in the heavenly places.” This is the power that we have
to count upon, the force that is yoked to the world’s salvation and is
at the service of our faith. Its energy has turned the tide and reversed
the stream of nature--in the person of Jesus Christ and in the course of
human history. It has changed death to life. Above all, it certifies the
forgiveness of sin and releases us from its liabilities; it transforms
the law of sin and death into the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus.

We preachers hear it said sometimes: “You live in a speculative world.
Your doctrines are ideal and visionary,--altogether too high for men as
they are and the world as we find it. Human nature and experience, the
coarse realities of life are all against you.”

What would our objectors have said at the grave-side of Jesus? “The
beautiful dreamer, the sublime idealist! He was too good for a world
such as ours. It was sure to end like this. His ideas of life were
utterly impracticable.” So they would have moralized. “And the good
prophet talked--strangest fanaticism of all--of rising again on the
third day! One thing at least we know, that the dead are dead and gone
from us. No, we shall never see Jesus or His like again. Purity cannot
live in this infected air. The grave ends all hope for men.” But,
despite human nature and human experience, He has risen again, He lives
for ever! That is the apostle’s message and testimony to the world. For
those “who believe” it, all things are possible. A life is within our
reach that seemed far off as earth from heaven. _You_ may become a
perfect saint.

From His open grave Christ breathed on His disciples, and through them
on all mankind, the Holy Spirit. This is the efficient cause of
Christianity,--the Spirit that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. The
limit to its efficacy lies in the defects of our faith, in our failure
to comprehend what God gave us in His Son. Is anything now too hard for
the Lord? Shall anything be called impossible, in the line of God’s
promise and man’s spiritual need? Can we put an arrest upon the working
of this mysterious force, upon the Spirit of the new life, and say to
it: Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther?

Look at Jesus where He was--the poor, tortured, wounded body, slain by
our sins, lying cold and still in Joseph’s grave: then lift up your eyes
and see Him _where He is_,--enthroned in the worship and wonder of
heaven! Measure by that distance, by the sweep and lift of that almighty
Arm, the strength of the forces engaged to your salvation, the might of
the powers at work through the ages for the redemption of humanity.

FOOTNOTES:

[61] See Westcott and Hort’s _New Testament in Greek_, vol. ii., pp.
124, 125.

[62] Dr. Beet abides by the critical text. He solves the difficulty by
giving πίστις a double sense: “the faith among you in the Lord Jesus,
and the _faithfulness_ towards all the saints.” See his Commentary on
_Ephesians, etc._, pp. 284-6.

[63] In 1 Thess. i. 7-9; 2 Thess. i. 4, the same thought enters into
Paul’s thanksgiving; comp. 2 Cor. ix. 2.

[64] This is the emphatic ἐπιγνῶσις, so frequent in the later epistles.
See Lightfoot’s _note_ on Col. i. 9; or Cremer’s _Lexicon to N.T.
Greek_.

[65] See ch. iii. 3-5, iv. 11; and comp. 1 Cor. xiv. 26-40, etc.

[66] Adolphe Monod: _Explication de l’épître de S. Paul aux Éphésiens_.
A deeply spiritual and suggestive Commentary.

[67] In this amplitude of expression there is no idle heaping up of
words. The four synonyms for _power_ have each a distinct force in the
sentence. Δύναμις is _power_ in general, as that which is able to effect
some purpose; ἐνέργεια is _energy_, power in effective action and
operation; κράτος is _might_, _mastery_, sovereign power,--in the New
Testament used chiefly of the power of God; ἰσχύς is _force_,
_strength_, power resident in some person and belonging to him. This is
the order in which the words follow each other. Compare vi. 10 in the
Greek.




THE DOCTRINE.

CHAPTER i. 20-iii. 13.

    Ὑψηλῶν σφόδρα γέμει τῶν νοημάτων καὶ ὑπερόγκων. Ἃ γὰρ μηδαμοῦ σχέδον
    ἐφθέγξατο, ταῦτα ἐνταῦθά φησιν.

    JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: _In epistolam ad Ephesios._




CHAPTER VI.

_WHAT GOD WROUGHT IN THE CHRIST._

    “He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand
    in the heavenly _places_, far above all rule, and authority, and
    power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this
    world, but also in that which is to come: and He put all things in
    subjection under His feet, and Him He gave--the head over all
    things--to the Church which is His body,--the fulness of Him that
    filleth all in all.”--EPH. i. 20-23.


The division that we make at verse 20, marking off at this point the
commencement of the Doctrine of the epistle, may appear somewhat forced.
The great doxology of the first half of the chapter is intensely
theological; and the prayer which follows it, like that of the letter to
the Colossians, melts into doctrine imperceptibly. The apostle teaches
upon his knees. The things he has to tell his readers, and the things he
has asked on their behalf from God, are to a great extent the same.
Still the writer’s attitude in the second chapter is manifestly that of
teaching; and his doctrine there is so directly based upon the
concluding sentences of his prayer, that it is necessary for logical
arrangement to place these verses within the doctrinal section of the
epistle.

The resurrection of Christ made men sensible that a new force of life
had come into the world, of incalculable potency. This power was in
existence before. In prelusive ways, it has wrought in the world from
its foundation, and since the fall of man. By the incarnation of the Son
of God it took possession of human flesh; by His sacrificial death it
won its decisive triumph. But the virtue of these acts of Divine grace
lay in their hiding of power, in the self-abnegation of the Son of God
who emptied Himself and took a servant’s form, and became obedient unto
death.

With what a rebound did the “energy of the might of God’s strength” put
forth itself in Him, when once this sacrifice was accomplished! Even His
disciples who had seen Jesus still the tempest and feed the multitude
from a handful of bread and call back the spirit to its mortal frame,
had not dreamed of the might of Godhead latent in Him, until they beheld
Him risen from the dead. He had promised this in words; but they
understood His words only when they saw the fact, when He actually stood
before them “alive after His passion.” The scene of Calvary--the cruel
sufferings of their Master, His helpless ignominy and abandonment by
God, the malignant triumph of his enemies--gave to this revelation an
effect beyond measure astonishing and profound in its impression. From
the stupor of grief and despair they were raised to a boundless hope, as
Jesus rose from the death of the cross to glorious life and Godhead.

Of the same nature was the effect produced by His manifestation to Paul
himself. The Nazarene prophet known to Saul by report as an attractive
teacher and worker of miracles, had made enormous pretensions,
blasphemous if they were not true. He put Himself forward as the Messiah
and the very Son of God! But when brought to the test, His power utterly
failed. God disowned and forsook Him; and He “was crucified of
weakness.” His followers declared, indeed, that He had returned from the
grave. But who could believe them, a handful of Galilean enthusiasts,
desperately clinging to the name of their disgraced leader! If He has
risen, why does He not show Himself to others? Who can accept a
crucified Messiah? The new faith is a madness, and an insult to our
common Judaism! Such were Saul’s former thoughts of the Christ. But when
his challenge was met and the Risen One confronted him in the way to
Damascus, when from that Form of insufferable glory there came a voice
saying, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest!” it was enough. Instantly
the conviction penetrated his soul, “He liveth by the power of God.”
Saul’s previous reasonings against the Messiahship of Jesus by the same
rigorous logic were now turned into arguments for Him.

It is “_the_ Christ,” let us observe, in whom God “wrought raising Him
from the dead”: the Christ of Jewish hope (ver. 12), the centre and sum
of the Divine counsel for the world (ver. 10),[68] the Christ whom in
that moment never to be forgotten the humbled Saul recognized in the
crucified Nazarene.

The demonstration of the power of Christianity Paul had found in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. The power which raised Him from the dead
is the working energy of our faith. Let us see what this mysterious
power wrought in the Redeemer Himself; and then we will consider how it
bears upon us. There are two steps indicated in Christ’s exaltation: He
was raised _from the death of the cross to new life amongst men_; and
again from the world of men He was raised _to the throne of God in
heaven_. In the enthronement of Jesus Christ at the Father’s right
hand, verses 22, 23 further distinguish two separate acts: there was
conferred on Him _a universal Lordship_; and He was made specifically
_Head of the Church_, being given to her for her Lord and Life, He who
contains the fulness of the Godhead. Such is the line of thought marked
out for us.


I. _God raised the Christ from the dead._

This assertion is the corner-stone of St Paul’s life and doctrine, and
of the existence of Christendom. Did the event really take place? There
were Christians at Corinth who affirmed, “There is no resurrection of
the dead.” And there are followers of Jesus now who with deep sadness
confess, like the author of _Obermann once more_:

    “Now He is dead! Far hence He lies
      In the lorn Syrian town;
    And on His grave, with shining eyes,
      The Syrian stars look down.”

If we are driven to this surrender, compelled to think that it was an
apparition, a creation of their own passionate longing and heated fancy
that the disciples saw and conversed with during those forty days, an
apparition sprung from his fevered remorse that arrested Saul on the
Damascus road--if we no longer believe in Jesus and the resurrection, it
is in vain that we still call ourselves Christians. The foundation of
the Christian creed is struck away from under our feet. Its spell is
broken; its energy is gone.

Individual men may and do continue to believe in Christ, with no faith
in the supernatural, men who are sceptics in regard to His resurrection
and miracles. They believe in Himself, they say, not in His legendary
wonders; in His character and teaching, in His beneficent influence--in
the _spiritual_ Christ, whom no physical marvel can exalt above His
intrinsic greatness. And such trust in Him, where it is sincere, He
accepts for all that it is worth, from the believer’s heart. But this is
not the faith that saved Paul, and built the Church. It is not the faith
which will save the world. It is the faith of compromise and transition,
the faith of those whose conscience and heart cling to Christ while
their reason gives its verdict against Him. Such belief may hold good
for the individuals who profess it; but it must die with them. No skill
of reasoning or grace of sentiment will for long conceal its
inconsistency. The plain, blunt sense of mankind will decide again, as
it has done already, that Jesus Christ was either a blasphemer, or He
was the Son of the eternal God; either He rose from the dead in very
truth, or His religion is a fable. Christianity is not bound up with the
infallibility of the Church, whether in Pope or Councils, nor with the
inerrancy of the letter of Scripture: it stands or falls with the
reality of the facts of the gospel, with the risen life of Christ and
His presence in the Spirit amongst men.

The fact of Christ’s resurrection is one upon which modern science has
nothing new to say. The law of death is not a recent discovery. Men were
as well aware of its universality in the first century as they are in
the nineteenth, and as little disposed as we are ourselves to believe in
the return of the dead to bodily life. The stark reality of death makes
us all sceptics. Nothing is clearer from the narratives than the utter
surprise of the friends of Jesus at His reappearance, and their complete
unpreparedness for the event. They were not eager, but “_slow_ of heart
to believe.” Their very love to the Master, as in the case of Thomas,
made them fearful of self-deception. It is a shallow and an unjust
criticism that dismisses the disciples as interested witnesses and
predisposed to faith in the resurrection of their dead Master. Should we
be thus credulous in the case of our best-beloved dead? The instinctive
feeling that meets any thought of the kind, after the fact of death is
once certain, is rather that of deprecation and aversion, such as Martha
expressed when Jesus went to call her brother from his grave. In all the
long record of human imposture and illusion, no resurrection story has
ever found general credence outside of the Biblical revelation. No
system of faith except our own has ever been built on the allegation
that a dead man rose from the grave.

Christ’s was not the only resurrection; but it is the only _final_
resurrection. Lazarus of Bethany left his tomb at the word of Jesus, a
living man; but he was still a mortal man, doomed to see corruption. He
returned from the grave on this side, as he had entered it, “bound hand
and foot with grave-clothes.” Not so with the Christ. He passed through
the region of death and issued on the immortal side, escaped from the
bondage of corruption. Therefore He is called the “firstfruits” and “the
firstborn _out of_ the dead.”[69] Hence the alteration manifest in the
risen form of Jesus. He was “changed,” as St Paul conceives those will
be who await on earth their Lord’s return (1 Cor. xv. 51). The mortal in
Him was swallowed up of life. The corpse that was laid in Joseph’s tomb
was there no longer. From it another body has issued, recognized for the
same person by look and voice and movement, but indescribably
transfigured. Visible and tangible as the body of the Risen One
was--“Handle me, and see,” He said--it was superior to material
limitations; it belonged to a state whose laws transcend the range of
our experience, in which the body is the pliant instrument of the
animating spirit. From the Person of the risen Saviour the apostle
formed his conception of the “spiritual body,” the “house from heaven”
with which, as he teaches, each of the saints will be clothed--the
wasted form that we lay down in the grave being transformed into the
semblance of His “body of glory, according to the mighty working whereby
He is able to subdue all things to Himself” (Phil. iii. 20, 21).

The resurrection of the Christ inaugurated a new order of things. It was
like the appearance of the first living organism amidst dead matter, or
of the first rational consciousness in the unconscious world. He “is,”
says the apostle, the “beginning, first-begotten out of the dead” (Col.
i. 18). With the harvest filling our granaries, we cease to wonder at
the firstfruits; and in the new heavens and earth Christ’s resurrection
will seem an entirely natural thing. Immortality will then be the normal
condition of human existence.

That resurrection, nevertheless, did homage to the fundamental law of
science and of reason, that every occurrence, ordinary or extraordinary,
shall have an adequate cause. The event was not more singular and unique
than the nature of Him to whom it befell. Looking back over the Divine
life and deeds of Jesus, St Peter said: “It was not possible that He
should be holden of death.” How unfitting and repugnant to thought, that
the common death of all men should come upon Jesus Christ! There was
that in His Person, in its absolute purity and godlikeness, which
repelled the touch of corruption. He was “marked out,” writes our
apostle, “as Son of God, _according to His spirit of holiness_, by His
resurrection from the dead” (Rom. i. 4). These two signs of Godhead
agree in Jesus; and the second is no more superhuman than the first. For
Him the supernatural was natural. There was a mighty working of the
being of God latent in Him, which transcended and subdued to itself the
laws of our physical frame, even more completely than they do the laws
and conditions of the lower realms of nature.

II. The power which raised Jesus our Lord from the dead could not leave
Him in the world of sin and death. Lifting Him from hades to earth, by
another step it exalted the risen Saviour above the clouds, and _seated
Him at God’s right hand in the heavens_.

The forty days were a halt by the way, a condescending pause in the
operation of the almighty power that raised Him. “I ascend,” He said to
the first that saw Him,--“I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my
God and your God.” He must see His own in the world again; He must “show
Himself alive after His passion by infallible proofs,” that their hearts
may be comforted and knit together in the assurance of faith, that they
may be prepared to receive His Spirit and to bear their witness to the
world. Then He will ascend up where He was before, returning to the
Father’s bosom. It was impossible that a spiritual body should tarry in
a mortal dwelling; impossible that the familiar relations of
discipleship should be resumed. No new follower can now ask of Him,
“Rabbi, where dwellest Thou,” under what roof amid the homes of men? For
He dwells with those that love Him always and everywhere, like the
Father (John xiv. 23). From this time Christ will not be known after the
flesh, but as the “Lord of the Spirit” (2 Cor. iii. 18).

“In the heavenlies” now abides the Risen One. This expression, so
frequent in the epistle as to be characteristic of it,[70] denotes not
locality so much as condition and sphere. It speaks of the bright and
deathless world of God and the angels, of which the sky has always been
to men the symbol. Thither Christ ascended in the eyes of His apostles
on the fortieth day from His rising. Once before His death its
brightness for a moment had irradiated His form upon the Mount of
Transfiguration. Clad in the like celestial splendour He showed Himself
to His future apostle Paul, as to one born out of due time, to make him
His minister and witness. Since then, of all the multitudes that have
loved His appearing, no other has looked upon Him with bodily eyes. He
dwells with the Father in light unapproachable.

But rest and felicity are not enough for Him. Christ sits at the right
hand of power, that He may _rule_. In those heavenly places, it seems,
there are thrones higher and lower, names more or less eminent, but His
stands clear above them all. In the realms of space, in the epochs of
eternity there is none to rival our Lord Jesus, no power that does not
owe Him tribute. God “hath put all things under His feet.” _The Christ_,
who died on the cross, who rose in human form from the grave, is exalted
to share the Father’s glory and dominion, is filled with God’s own
fulness, and made without limitation or exception “Head over all
things.”

In his enumeration of the angelic orders in verse 21, the apostle
follows the phraseology current at the time, without giving any precise
dogmatic sanction to it. The epistle to the Colossians furnishes a
somewhat different list (ch. i. 16); and in 1 Corinthians xv. 24 we find
the “principality, dominion, and power” without the “lordship.” As
Lightfoot says,[71] St Paul “brushes away all these speculations” about
the ranks and titles of the angels, “without inquiring how much or how
little truth there may be in them.... His language shows a spirit of
impatience with this elaborate angelology.” There is, perhaps, a passing
reproof conveyed by this sentence to the “worshipping of the angels”
inculcated at the present time in Colossæ, to which other Asian Churches
may have been drawn. “Paul’s faith saw the Risen and Rising One passing
through and beyond and above successive ranks of angelic powers, until
there was in heaven no grandeur which He had not left behind. Then,
after naming heavenly powers known to him, he uses a universal phrase
covering ‘not only’ those known by men living on earth ‘in the’ present
‘age, but also’ those names which will be needed and used to describe
men and angels throughout the eternal future” (Beet).

The apostle appropriates here two sentences of Messianic prophecy, from
Psalms cx. and viii. The former was addressed to the Lord’s Anointed,
the King-Priest enthroned in Zion: “Sit thou on my right hand, until I
make thine enemies thy footstool!” The latter text describes man in his
pristine glory, as God formed him after His likeness and set him in
command over His creation. This saying St Paul applies, with an
unbounded scope, to the God-man raised from the dead, Founder of the new
creation: “Thou madest Him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under His feet.” To the former of these
passages St Paul repeatedly alludes; indeed, since our Lord quoted it in
this sense, it became the standing designation of His heavenly
dignity.[72] The words of Psalm viii. are brought in evidence again in
Hebrews ii. 5-10, and expounded from a somewhat different standpoint. As
the writer of the other epistle shows, this coronation belongs to the
human race, and it falls to the Son of man to win it. St Paul in quoting
the same Psalm is not insensible of its human reference. It was a
prophecy for Jesus and His brethren, for Christ and the Church. So it
forms a natural transition from the thought of Christ’s dominion over
the universe (ver. 21) to that of His union with the Church (ver.
22_b_).

III. The second clause of verse 22 begins with an emphasis upon the
_object_ which the English Version fails to recognize: “and _Him_ He
gave”--the Christ exalted to universal authority--“_Him_ God gave, Head
over all things [as He is], to the Church which is His body,--the
fulness of Him who fills all things in all.”

At the topmost height of His glory, with thrones and princedoms beneath
His feet, _Christ is given to the Church_! The Head over all things, the
Lord of the created universe, He--and none less or lower--is the Head of
redeemed humanity. For the Church “is His body” (this clause is
interjected by way of explanation): she is the vessel of His Spirit, the
organic instrument of His Divine-human life. As the spirit belongs to
its body, by the like fitness the Christ in His surpassing glory is the
possession of the community of believing men. The body claims its head,
the wife her husband. No matter where Christ is, however high in heaven,
He belongs to us. Though the Bride is lowly and of poor estate, He is
hers! and she knows it, and holds fast His heart. She recks little of
the people’s ignorance and scorn, if their Master is her affianced Lord,
and she the best-beloved in His eyes.

How rich is this gift of the Father to the Church in the Son of His
love, the concluding words of the paragraph declare: “Him He gave ... to
the Church ... [gave] the fulness of Him that fills all in all.” In the
risen and enthroned Christ God bestowed on men a gift in which the
Divine plenitude that fills creation is embraced. For this last clause,
it is clear to us, does not qualify “the Church which is His body,” and
expositors have needlessly taxed their ingenuity with the incongruous
apposition of “body” and “fulness”; it belongs to the grand Object of
the foregoing description, to “the Christ” whom God raised from the dead
and invested with His own prerogatives. The two separate designations,
“Head over all things” and “Fulness of the All-filler,” are parallel,
and alike point back to _Him_ who stands with a weight of gathered
emphasis--heaped up from verse 19 onwards--at the front of this last
sentence (ver. 22_b_). There has been nothing to prepare the reader to
ascribe the august title of the _pleroma_, the Divine fulness, to the
Church--enough for her, surely, if she is His body and He God’s gift to
her--but there has been everything to prepare us to crown the Lord Jesus
with this glory. To that which God had wrought in Him and bestowed on
Him, as previously related, verse 23 adds something more and greater
still; for it shows what God makes the Christ to be, not to the
creatures, to the angels, to the Church, _but to God Himself_![73]

Our text is in strict agreement with the sayings about “the fulness” in
Colossians i. 15-20 and ii. 9, 10; as well as with the later references
of this epistle, in chapter iii. 19, iv. 13; and with John i. 16. This
title belongs to Christ as God is in Him and communicates to Him all
Divine powers. It was, in the apostle’s view, a new and distinct act by
which the Father bestowed on the incarnate Son, raised by His power from
the dead, the functions of Deity. Of this glory Christ had of His own
accord “emptied Himself” in becoming man for our salvation (Phil. ii. 6,
7). Therefore when the sacrifice was effected and the time of
humiliation past, it “was the Father’s pleasure that all the fulness
should make its dwelling in Him” (Col. i. 19). At no point did Christ
exalt Himself, or arrogate the glory once renounced. He prayed, when the
hour was come: “Now, Father, _glorify Thou me_ with Thine own self, with
the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.” It was for the
Father to say, as He raised and enthroned Him: “Thou art my Son; I
to-day have begotten Thee!” (Acts xiii. 33).

Again there was poured into the empty, humbled and impoverished form of
the Son of God the brightness of the Father’s glory and the infinitude
of the Father’s authority and power. The majesty that He had foregone
was restored to Him in undiminished measure. But how great a change
meanwhile in Him who received it! This plenitude devolves not now on the
eternal Son in His pure Godhead, but on the Christ, the Head and
Redeemer of mankind. God who fills the universe with His presence, with
His cherishing love and sustaining power, has conferred the fulness of
all that He is upon our Christ. He has given Him, so replenished and
perfected, to the body of His saints, that He may dwell and work in them
for ever.

FOOTNOTES:

[68] See the note upon this definite article on p. 47.

[69] Πρωτότοκος ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν, Col. i. 18: comp. Rom. vi. 13, x. 7, for
the force of the preposition. Hence the peculiar ἐξανάστασιν τὴν ἐκ
νεκρῶν of Phil. iii. 10, 11,--the _out-and-out_ resurrection, which will
utterly remove us from the sphere of death.

[70] Ver. 3, ch. ii. 6, iii. 10, vi. 12; nowhere else in the New
Testament. Comp., however, 1 Cor. xv. 40, 48; Phil. ii. 10; Heb. viii.
5, ix. 23, xi. 16, xii. 22, where the adjective has the same kind of
use.

[71] _Note_ on Col. i. 16.

[72] Matt. xxii. 41-46, also in Mark and Luke; Acts ii. 34, 35; Rom.
viii. 34; Col. iii. 1; Heb. i. 13; 1 Peter iii. 22, etc.

[73] The reader of the Old Testament, unless otherwise advertized, must
inevitably have referred the words _who filleth all things in all_ to
the Supreme God. See Jer. xxiii. 24; Isai. vi. 1, 3; Hag. ii. 7; Ps.
xxxiii. 5, etc.; Exod. xxxi. 3. “That filleth all in all” is an
attribute belonging to “the same God, that worketh all in all” (1 Cor.
xii. 6). Comp. iv. 6.




CHAPTER VII.

_FROM DEATH TO LIFE._

    “And you _did He quicken_, when ye were dead through your trespasses
    and sins, wherein aforetime ye walked according to the course of
    this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the
    spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience; among whom we
    also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of
    the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath,
    even as the rest:--but God, being rich in mercy, for His great love
    wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our
    trespasses, quickened us together with the Christ (by grace have ye
    been saved), and raised us up together and made us to sit together
    in the heavenly _places_ in Christ Jesus.”--EPH. ii. 1-6.


We pass by a sudden transition, just as in Colossians i. 21, 22, from
the thought of that which God wrought in Christ Himself to that which He
works through Christ in believing men. So God raised, exalted, and
glorified His Son Jesus Christ (i. 19-23)--_and you_! The finely woven
threads of the apostle’s thought are frequently severed, and awkward
chasms made in the highway of his argument by our chapter and verse
divisions. The words inserted in our Version (_did He quicken_) are
borrowed by anticipation from verse 5; but they are more than supplied
already in the foregoing context. “The same almighty Hand that was laid
upon the body of the dead Christ and lifted Him from Joseph’s grave to
the highest seat in heaven, is now laid upon your soul. It has raised
_you_ from the grave and death of sin to share by faith His celestial
life.”

The apostle, in verse 3, pointedly includes amongst the “dead in
trespasses and sins” himself and his Jewish fellow-believers as they
“once lived,” when they obeyed the motions and “volitions of the flesh,”
and so were “by birth” not children of favour, as Jews presumed, but
“children of anger, even as the rest.”[74]

       *       *       *       *       *

This passage gives us a sublime view of the event of our conversion. It
associates that change in us with the stupendous miracle which took
place in our Redeemer. The one act is a continuation of the other. There
is an acting over again in us of Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection and
ascension, when we realize through faith that which was done for mankind
in Him. At the same time, the redemption which is in Christ Jesus is no
mere legacy, to be received or declined; it is not something done once
for all, and left to be appropriated passively by our individual will.
It is a “_power_ of God unto salvation,” unceasingly operative and
effective, that works “of faith and _unto faith_” that summons men to
faith, challenging human confidence wherever its message travels and
awakening the spiritual possibilities dormant in our nature.

It is a supernatural force, then, which is at work upon us in the word
of Christ. It is a resurrection-power, that turns death into life. And
it is a power instinct with love. The love which went out towards the
slain and buried Jesus when the Father stooped to raise Him from the
dead, bends over us as we lie in the grave of our sins, and exerts
itself with a might no less transcendent, that it may raise us from the
dust of death to sit with Him in the heavenly places (vv. 4-6).

Let us look at the two sides of the change effected in men by the
gospel--at the death they leave, and the life into which they enter. Let
us contemplate the task to which this unmatched power has set itself.

I. _You that were dead_, the apostle says.

Jesus Christ came into a dead world--He the one living man, alive in
body, soul, and spirit--alive to God in the world. He was, like none
besides, aware of God and of God’s love, breathing in His Spirit,
“living not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded from His
mouth.” “This,” He said, “is life eternal.” If His definition was
correct, if it be life to know God, then the world into which Christ
entered by His human birth, the world of heathendom and Judaism, was
veritably dying or dead--“dead indeed unto God.”

Its condition was visible to discerning eyes. It was a world rotting in
its corruption, mouldering in its decay, and which to His pure sense had
the moral aspect and odour of the charnel-house. We realize very
imperfectly the distress, the inward nausea, the conflict of disgust and
pity which the fact of being in such a world as this and belonging to it
caused in the nature of Jesus Christ, in a soul that was in perfect
sympathy with God. Never was there loneliness such as His, the solitude
of life in a region peopled with the dead. The joy which Christ had in
His little flock, in those whom the Father had given Him out of the
world, was proportionately great. In them He found companionship,
teachableness, signs of a heart awakening towards God--men to whom life
was in some degree what it was to Him. He had come, as the prophet in
his vision, into “the valley full of dry bones,” and He “prophesied to
these slain, that they might live.” What a comfort to see, at His first
words, a shaking in the valley,--to see some who stirred at His voice,
who stood upon their feet and gathered round Him--not yet a great army,
but a band of living men! In their breasts, inspired from His, was the
life of the future. “I am come,” He said, “that they might have life.”
It was the work of Jesus Christ to breathe His vital spirit into the
corpse of humanity, to reanimate the world.

When St Paul speaks of his readers in their heathen condition as “dead,”
it is not a figure of speech. He does not mean that they were like dead
men, that their state resembled death; “nor only that they were in peril
of death; but he signifies a real and present death” (Calvin). They
were, in the inmost sense and truth of things, _dead men_. We are
twofold creatures, two-lived,--spirits cased in flesh. Our human nature
is capable, therefore, of strange duplicities. It is possible for us to
be alive and flourishing upon one side of our being, while we are
paralyzed or lifeless upon the other. As our bodies live in commerce
with the light and air, in the environment of house and food and daily
exercise of the limbs and senses under the economy of material nature,
so our spirits live by the breath of prayer, by faith and love towards
God, by reverence and filial submission, by communion with things unseen
and eternal. “With Thee,” says the Psalmist to his God, “is the fountain
of life: in Thy light we see light.” We must daily resort to that
fountain and drink of its pure stream, we must faithfully walk in that
light, or there is no such life for us. The soul that wants a true faith
in God, wants the proper spring and principle of its being. It sees not
the light, it bears not the voices, it breathes not the air of that
higher world where its origin and its destiny lie.

The man who walks the earth a sinner against God, becomes by the act and
fact of his transgression a dead man. He has imbibed the fatal poison;
it runs in his veins. The doom of sin lies on his unforgiven spirit. He
carries death and judgement about with him. They lie down with him at
night and wake with him in the morning; they take part in his
transactions; they sit by his side in the feast of life. His works are
“dead works”; his joys and hopes are all shadowed and tainted. Within
his living frame he bears a coffined soul. With the machinery of life,
with the faculties and possibilities of a spiritual being, the man lies
crushed under the activity of the senses, wasted and decaying for want
of the breath of the Spirit of God. In its coldness and
powerlessness--too often in its visible corruption--his nature shows the
symptoms of advancing death. It is dead as the tree is dead, cut off
from its root; as the fire is dead, when the spark is gone out; dead as
a man is dead, when the heart stops.

As it is with the departed saints sleeping in Christ,--“put to death,
indeed, in the flesh, but living in the spirit,”--so by a terrible
inversion with the wicked in this life. They are put to death, indeed,
in the spirit, while they live in the flesh. They may be and often are
powerfully alive and active in their relations to the world of sense,
while on the unseen and Godward side utterly paralyzed. Ask such a man
about his business or family concerns; touch on affairs of politics or
trade,--and you deal with a living mind, its powers and susceptibilities
awake and alert. But let the conversation pass to other themes; sound
him on questions of the inner life; ask him what he thinks of Christ,
how he stands towards God, how he fares in the spiritual conflict,--and
you strike a note to which there is no response. You have taken him out
of his element. He is a practical man, he tells you; he does not live in
the clouds, or hunt after shadows; he believes in hard facts, in things
that he can grasp and handle. “The natural man perceiveth not the things
of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him.” They are pictures to
the eye of the blind, heavenly music to the stone-deaf.

And yet that hardened man of the world--starve and ignore his own spirit
and shut up its mystic chambers as he will--cannot easily destroy
himself. He has not extirpated his religious nature, nor crushed out,
though he has suppressed, the craving for God in his breast. And when
the callous surface of his life is broken through, under some unusual
stress, some heavy loss or the shock of a great bereavement, one may
catch a glimpse of the deeper world within of which the man himself was
so little conscious. And what is to be seen there? Haunting memories of
past sin, fears of a conscience fretted already by the undying worm,
forms of weird and ghostly dread flitting amid the gloom and dust of
death through that closed house of the spirit,--

    “The bat and owl inhabit here:
      The snake nests on the altar stone:
    The sacred vessels moulder near:
      The image of the God is gone!”

In this condition of death the word of life comes to men. It is the
state not of heathendom alone; but of those also, favoured with the
light of revelation, who have not opened to it the eyes of the heart, of
all who are “doing the desires of the flesh and the thoughts”--who are
governed by their own impulses and ideas and serve no will above the
world of sense.[75] Without distinction of birth or formal religious
standing, “all” who thus live and walk are dead while they live. Their
_trespasses and sins_ have killed them. From first to last Scripture
testifies: “Your sins have separated between you and your God.” We find
a hundred excuses for our irreligion: there is the cause. There is
nothing in the universe to separate any one of us from the love and
fellowship of his Maker but his own unforsaken sin.

It is true, there are other hindrances to faith, intellectual
difficulties of great weight and seriousness, that press upon many
minds. For such men Christ has all possible sympathy and patience. There
is a real, though hidden faith that “lives in honest doubt.” Some men
have more faith than they suppose, while others certainly have much
less. One has a name to live, and yet is dead; another, perchance, has a
name to die, and yet is alive to God through Jesus Christ. There are
endless complications, self-contradictions, and misunderstandings in
human nature. “Many are first” in the ranks of religious profession and
notoriety, “which shall be last, and the last first.” We make the
largest allowance for this element of uncertainty in the line that
bounds faith from unfaith; “The Lord knoweth them that are His.” No
intellectual difficulty, no mere misunderstanding, will ultimately or
for long separate between God and the soul that He has made.

It is _antipathy_ that separates. “They did not like to retain God in
their knowledge”; that is Paul’s explanation of the ungodliness and vice
of the ancient world. And it holds good still in countless instances.
“Numbers in this bad world talk loudly against religion in order to
encourage each other in sin, because they need encouragement. They know
that they ought to be other than they are; but are glad to avail
themselves of anything that looks like argument, to overcome their
consciences withal” (Newman). The fashionable scepticism of the day too
often conceals an inner revolt against the moral demands of the
Christian life; it is the pretext of a carnal mind, which is “enmity
against God, because it is not subject to His law.” Christ’s sentence
upon unbelief as He knew it was this: “Light is come into the world; and
men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.” So
said the keenest and the kindest judge of men. If we are refusing Him
our faith, let us be very sure that this condemnation does not touch
ourselves. Is there no passion that bribes and suborns the intellect? no
desire in the soul that dreads His entrance? no evil deeds that shelter
themselves from His accusing light?

When the apostle says of his Gentile readers that they “once walked in
the way of the age, according to the course of this world,[76] according
to the prince of the power of the air,” the former part of his statement
is clear enough. The age in which he lived was godless to the last
degree; the stream of the world’s life ran in turbid course toward moral
ruin. But the second clause is obscure. The “prince” (or “ruler”) who
guides the world along its career of rebellion is manifestly Satan, the
spirit of darkness and hate whom St Paul entitles “the god of this
world” (2 Cor. iv. 4), and in whom Jesus recognized, under the name of
“the prince of the world,” His great antagonist (John xiv. 30).

But what has this spirit of evil to do with “the air”? The Jewish rabbis
supposed that the terrestrial atmosphere was Satan’s abode, that it was
peopled by demons flitting about invisibly in the encompassing element.
But this is a notion foreign to Scripture--certainly not contained in
chapter vi. 12--and, in its bare physical sense, without point or
relevance to this passage. There follows in immediate apposition to “the
domain of the air, _the spirit_ that now works in the sons of
disobedience.” Surely, _the air_ here partakes (if it be only here) of
the figurative significance of _spirit_ (i.e. _breath_). St Paul refines
the Jewish idea of evil spirits dwelling in the surrounding atmosphere
into an ethical conception of _the atmosphere of the world_, as that
from which the sons of disobedience draw their breath and receive the
spirit that inspires them. Here lies, in truth, the dominion of Satan.
In other words, Satan constituted the _Zeitgeist_.

As Beck profoundly remarks upon this text:[77] “The Power of the air is
a fitting designation for the prevailing spirit of the times, whose
influence spreads itself like a miasma through the whole atmosphere of
the world. It manifests itself as a contagious nature-power; and a
_spiritus rector_ works within it, which takes possession of the world
of men, alike in individuals and in society, and assumes the direction
of it. The form of expression here employed is based on the conception
of evil peculiar to Scripture. In Scripture, evil and the principle of
evil are not conceived in a purely spiritual way; nor could this be the
case in a world of fleshly constitution, where the spiritual has the
sensuous for its basis and its vehicle. Spiritual evil exists as a power
immanent in cosmical nature.”[78] Concerning great tracts of the earth,
and large sections even of Christianized communities, we must still
confess with St John: “The world lieth in the Evil One.” The air is
impregnated with the infection of sin;[79] its germs float about us
constantly, and wherever they find lodgement they set up their deadly
fever. Sin is the malarial poison native to our soil; it is an epidemic
that runs its course through the entire “age of this world.”

Above this feverous, sin-laden atmosphere the apostle sees God’s anger
brooding in threatening clouds. For our trespasses and sins are, after
all, not forced on us by our environment. Those offences by which we
provoke God, lie in our nature; they are no mere casual acts, they
belong to our bias and disposition. Sin is a constitutional malady.
There exists a bad element in our human nature, which corresponds but
too truly to the course and current of the world around us. This the
apostle acknowledges for himself and his law-honouring Jewish kindred:
“We were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” So he wrote in
the sad confession of Romans vii. 14-23: “I see a different law in my
members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into
captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.”

It is upon this “other law,” the contradiction of His own, upon the
sinfulness beneath the sin, that God’s displeasure rests. Human law
notes the overt act: “the Lord looketh upon the heart.” There is
nothing more bitter and humiliating to a conscientious man than the
conviction of this penetrating Divine insight, this detection to himself
of his incurable sin and the hollowness of his righteousness before God.
How it confounds the proud Pharisee to learn that he _is_ as other men
are,--and even as this publican!

“The sons of disobedience” must needs be “children of wrath.” All sin,
whether in nature or practice, is the object of God’s fixed displeasure.
It cannot be matter of indifference to our Father in heaven that His
human children are disobedient toward Himself. Children of His favour or
anger we are each one of us, and at every moment. We “keep His
commandments, and abide in His love”; or we do not keep them, and are
excluded. It is His smile or frown that makes the sunshine or the gloom
of our inner life. How strange that men should argue that God’s love
forbids His wrath! It is, in truth, the cause of it. I could neither
love nor fear a God who did not care enough about me to be angry with me
when I sin. If my child does wilful wrong, if by some act of greed or
passion he imperils his moral future and destroys the peace and
well-being of the house, shall I not be grieved with him, with an anger
proportioned to the love I bear him? How much more shall your heavenly
Father--how much more justly and wisely and mercifully!

St Paul feels no contradiction between the words of verse 3 and those
that follow. The same God whose wrath burns against the sons of
disobedience while they so continue, is “rich in mercy” and “loved us
even when we were dead in our trespasses!” He pities evil men, and to
save them spared not His Son from death; but Almighty God, the Father of
glory, hates and loathes the evil that is in them, and has determined
that if they will not let it go they shall perish with it.

II. Such was the death in which Paul and his readers once had lain. But
God in His “great love” has “_made them to live_ along with the Christ.”

How wonderful to have witnessed a resurrection: to see the pale cheek of
the little maid, Jairus’ daughter, flush again with the tints of life,
and the still frame begin to stir, and the eyes softly open--and she
looks upon the face of Jesus! or to watch Lazarus, four days dead,
coming out of his tomb, slowly, and as one dreaming, with hands and feet
bound in the grave-clothes. Still more marvellous to have beheld the
Prince of Life at the dawn of the third day issue from Joseph’s grave,
bursting His prison-gates and stepping forth in new-risen glory as one
refreshed from slumber.

But there are things no less divine, had we eyes for their marvel, that
take place upon this earth day by day. When a human soul awakes from its
trespasses and sins, when the love of God is poured into a heart that
was cold and empty, when the Spirit of God breathes into a spirit lying
powerless and buried in the flesh, there is as true a rising from the
dead as when Jesus our Lord came out from His sepulchre. It was of this
spiritual resurrection that He said: “The hour cometh, and now is, when
the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear
shall live.” Having said that, He added, concerning the bodily
resurrection of mankind: “Marvel not at this; for the hour cometh, in
which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come
forth!” The second wonder only matches and consummates the first (John
v. 24-28).

“This is life eternal, to know God the Father,”--the life, as the
apostle elsewhere calls it, that is “life indeed.” It came to St Paul by
a new creation, when, as he describes it, “God who said, Light shall
shine out of darkness, shined in our hearts, to give the light of the
knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ.” We are born
again--the God-consciousness is born within us: an hour mysterious and
decisive as that in which our personal consciousness first emerged and
the soul knew itself. Now it knows God. Like Jacob at Peniel it says: “I
have seen God face to face; and my life is preserved.” God and the soul
have met in Christ--and are reconciled.

The words the apostle uses--_gave us life_--_raised us up_--_seated us
in the heavenly places_--embrace the whole range of salvation. “Those
united with Christ are through grace delivered from their state of
death, not only in the sense that the resurrection and exaltation of
Christ redound to their benefit as Divinely imputed to them; but by the
life-giving energy of God they are brought out of their condition of
death into a new and actual state of life. The act of grace is an act of
the Divine power and might, not a mere judicial declaration” (Beck).
This comprehensive action of the Divine grace upon believing men takes
place by a constant and constantly deepening union of the soul with
Christ. This is well expressed by A. Monod: “The entire history of the
Son of man is reproduced in the man who believes in Him, not by a simple
moral analogy, but by a spiritual communication which is the true secret
of our justification as well as of our sanctification, and indeed of our
whole salvation.”

There is no repetition in the three verbs employed, which are alike
extended by the Greek preposition _with_ (_syn_). The first sentence
(raised us up _with the Christ_) virtually includes everything; it shows
us one with Christ who lives evermore to God. The second sentence
gathers into its scope all believers--the _you_ of verse 1 and the _we_
of verse 3: “He raised us up together, and together made us sit in the
heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Nothing is more characteristic of our
epistle than this turn of thought. To the conception of our _union with
Christ_ in His celestial life, it adds that of our _union with each
other in Christ_ as sharers in common of that life. Christ “reconciles
us in one body unto God” (ver. 16). We sit not alone, but together in
the heavenly places. This is the fulness of life; this completes our
salvation.

FOOTNOTES:

[74] For the antithesis of “you” and “we,” comp. vv. 11-18, ch. i, 12,
13; also Rom. iii. 19, 23 (_For there is no distinction_), Gal. ii. 15.

[75] Ποιοῦντες τὰ θελήματα τῆς σαρκὸς καὶ τῶν διανοιῶν (ver. 3).

[76] Perhaps this double rendering may bring out the force of κατὰ τὸν
αἰῶνα τοῦ κόσμου τούτου.

[77] In the posthumous _Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Epheser_--a
valuable exposition, marked by Beck’s theological acumen and lucidity.

[78] The φύσει of verse 3 thus corresponds to the ἐξουσία τοῦ ἀέρος of
verse 2. “Sin entered into _the world_” (κόσμος), Rom. v. 12, which
signifies more than the nature of individual men.

[79] I John iii. 8; comp. John viii. 41-44.




CHAPTER VIII.

_SAVED FOR AN END._

    “That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His
    grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace have ye
    been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, _it is_ the
    gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory. For we are His
    workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore
    prepared that we should walk in them.”--EPH. ii. 7-10.


The plan which God has formed for men in Christ is of great dimensions
every way,--in its length no less than in its breadth and height. He
“raised us up and seated us together [Gentiles with Jews] in the
heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that _in the ages which are coming on_
He might show the surpassing riches of His grace.” All the races of
mankind and all future ages are embraced in the redeeming purpose, and
are to share in its boundless wealth. Nor are the ages past excluded
from its operations. God “afore prepared the good works in which” He
summons us to walk. The highway of the new life has been in building
since time began.

Thus large and limitless is the range of “the purpose and grace given us
in Christ Jesus before times eternal” (2 Tim. i. 9). But what strikes us
most in this passage is the exuberance of the grace itself. Twice over
the apostle exclaims, “By grace you are saved”: once in verse 5, in an
eager, almost jealous parenthesis, where he hastens to assure the
readers of their deliverance from the fearful condition just described
(vv. 1-3, 5). Again, deliberately and with full definition he states the
same fact, in verse 8: “For by grace you are saved, through faith; and
this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. It does not come of
works, to the end that none may boast.”

These words place us on familiar ground. We recognize the Paul of
Galatians and Romans, the dialect and accent of the apostle of salvation
by faith. But scarcely anywhere do we find this wonder-working grace so
affluently described. “God being rich in mercy, for the great love
wherewith He loved us--the exceeding riches of His grace, shown in
kindness toward us--the gift of God.” _Mercy_, _love_, _kindness_,
_grace_, _gift_: what a constellation is here! These terms present the
character of God in the gospel under the most delightful aspects, and in
vivid contrast to the picture of our human state outlined in the
beginning of the chapter.

_Mercy_ denotes the Divine pitifulness towards feeble, suffering men,
akin to those “compassions of God” to which the apostle repeatedly
appeals.[80] It is a constant attribute of God in the Old Testament, and
fills much the same place there that grace does in the New. “Of mercy
and judgement” do the Psalmists sing--of mercy most. Out of the thunder
and smoke of Sinai He declared His name: “Jehovah, a God full of
compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and
truth, keeping mercy for thousands.” The dread of God’s justice, the
sense of His dazzling holiness and almightiness threw His mercy into
bright relief and gave to it an infinite preciousness. It is the
contrast which brings in “mercy” here, in verse 4, by antithesis to
“wrath” (ver. 3).[81] These qualities are complementary. The sternest
and strongest natures are the most compassionate. God is “_rich_ in
mercy.” The wealth of His Being pours itself out in the exquisite
tendernesses, the unwearied forbearance and forgivingness of His
compassion towards men. The Judge of all the earth, whose hate of evil
is the fire of hell, is gentler than the softest-hearted mother,--rich
in mercy as He is grand and terrible in wrath.

God’s mercy regards us as we are weak and miserable: His _love_ regards
us as we are, in spite of trespass and offence, His offspring,--objects
of “much love” amid much displeasure, “even when we were dead through
our trespasses.” What does the story of the prodigal son mean but this?
and what Christ’s great word to Nicodemus (John iii. 16)?--_Grace_ and
_kindness_ are love’s executive. Grace is love in administration, love
counteracting sin and seeking our salvation. Christ is the embodiment of
grace; the cross its supreme expression; the gospel its message to
mankind; and Paul himself its trophy and witness.[82] The “overpassing
riches” of grace is that affluence of wealth in which through Christ it
“superabounded” to the apostolic age and has outdone the magnitude of
sin (Rom. v. 20), in such measure that St Paul sees future ages gazing
with wonder at its benefactions to himself and his fellow-believers.
Shown “in _kindness_ toward us,” he says,--in a condescending
fatherliness, that forgets its anger and softens its old severity into
comfort and endearment. God’s kindness is the touch of His hand, the
accent of His voice, the cherishing breath of His Spirit. Finally, this
generosity of the Divine grace, this infinite goodwill of God toward
men, takes expression in _the gift_--the gift of Christ, the gift of
righteousness (Rom. v. 15-18), the gift of eternal life (Rom. vi. 23);
or--regarded, as it is here, in the light of experience and
possession--_the gift of salvation_.

The opposition of _gift_ and _debt_, of gratuitous salvation through
faith to salvation earned by works of law, belongs to the marrow of St
Paul’s divinity. The teaching of the great evangelical epistles is
condensed into the brief words of verses 8 and 9. The reason here
assigned for God’s dealing with men by way of gift and making them
absolutely debtors--“lest any one should boast”--was forced upon the
apostle’s mind by the stubborn pride of legalism; it is stated in terms
identical with those of the earlier letters. Men will glory in their
virtues before God; they flaunt the rags of their own righteousness, if
any such pretext, even the slightest, remains to them. We sinners are a
proud race, and our pride is oftentimes the worst of our sins. Therefore
God humbles us by His compassion. He makes to us a free gift of His
righteousness, and excludes every contribution from our store of merit;
for if we could supply anything, we should inevitably boast as though
all were our own. We must be content to receive mercy, love, grace,
kindness--everything, without deserving the least fraction of the
immense sum. How it strips our vanity; how it crushes us to the
dust--“the weight of pardoning love!”

Concerning the office of _faith_ in salvation we have already spoken in
Chapter IV.[83] It is on the objective fact rather than the subjective
means of salvation that the apostle lays stress in this passage. His
readers do not seem to have realized sufficiently what God has given
them and the greatness of the salvation already accomplished. They
measured inadequately the power which had touched and changed their
lives (i. 19). St Paul has shown them the depth to which they were
formerly sunk, and the height to which they have been raised (vv. 1-6).
He can therefore assure them, and he does it with redoubled emphasis:
“You _are saved_; By grace you are saved men!”[84] Not, “You will be
saved”; nor, “You were saved”; nor, “You are in course of
salvation,”--for salvation has many moods and tenses,--but, in the
perfect passive tense, he asserts the glorious accomplished _fact_. With
the same reassuring emphasis in chapter i. 7 he declared, “We have
redemption in His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.”

Here is St Paul’s doctrine of Assurance. It was laid down by Christ
Himself when He said: “He that believeth on the Son of God hath eternal
life.” This sublime confidence is the ruling note of St John’s great
epistle: “We know that we are in Him.... We know that we have passed out
of death into life.... This is the victory that overcometh the world,
even our faith.” It was this confidence of present salvation that made
the Church irresistible. With its foundation secure, the house of life
can be steadily and calmly built up. Under the shelter of the full
assurance of faith, in the sunshine of God’s love felt in the heart, all
spiritual virtues bloom and flourish. But with a faith hesitant,
distracted, that is sure of no doctrine in the creed and cannot plant a
firm foot anywhere, nothing prospers in the soul or in the Church. Oh
for the clear accent, the ringing, joyous note of apostolic assurance!
We want a faith not loud, but deep; a faith not born of sentiment and
human sympathy, but that comes from the vision of the living God; a
faith whose rock and corner-stone is neither the Church nor the Bible,
but Christ Jesus Himself.

Greatly do we need, like the Asian disciples of Paul and John, to
“assure our hearts” before God. With death confronting us, with the
hideous evil of the world oppressing us; when the air is laden with the
contagion of sin; when the faith of the strongest wears the cast of
doubt; when the word of promise shines dimly through the haze of an
all-encompassing scepticism and a hundred voices say, in mockery or
grief, Where is now thy God? when the world proclaims us lost, our faith
refuted, our gospel obsolete and useless,--then is the time for the
Christian assurance to recover its first energy and to rise again in
radiant strength from the heart of the Church, from the depths of its
mystic life where it is hid with Christ in God.

_You are saved!_ cries the apostle; not forgetting that his readers have
their battle to fight, and many hazards yet to run (vi. 10-13). But they
hold the earnest of victory, the foretaste of life eternal. In spirit
they sit with Christ in the heavenly places. Pain and death, temptation,
persecution, the vicissitudes of earthly history, by these God means to
perfect that which He has begun in His saints--“if you continue in the
faith, grounded and firm” (Col. i. 23). That condition is expressed, or
implied, in all assurance of final salvation. It is a condition which
excites to watchfulness, but can never cause misgiving to a loyal heart.
God is for us! He justifies us, and counts us His elect. Christ Jesus
who died is risen and seated at the right hand of God, and there
intercedes for us. _Quis separabit?_[85]

       *       *       *       *       *

This is the epistle of the Church and of humanity. It dwells on the
grand, objective aspects of the truth, rather than upon its subjective
experiences. It does not invite us to rest in the comforts and delights
of grace, but to lift up our eyes and see whither Christ has translated
us and what is the kingdom that we possess in Him. God “quickened us
together with the Christ”: He “raised us up, He made us to sit _in the
heavenly places in Christ Jesus_.” Henceforth “our citizenship is in
heaven” (Phil. iii. 20).

This is the inspiring thought of the third group of St Paul’s epistles;
we heard it in the first note of his song of praise (i. 3). It supplies
the principle from which St Paul unfolds the beautiful conception of the
Christian life contained in the third chapter of the companion letter to
the Colossians: “Your life is hid with the Christ in God”; therefore
“seek the things that are above, where He is.” We live in two worlds at
once. Heaven lies about us in this new mystic childhood of our spirit.
There our names are written; thither our thoughts and hopes resort. Our
treasure is there; our heart we have lodged there, with Christ in God.
_He_ is there, the Lord of the Spirit, from whom we draw each moment
the life that flows into His members. In the greatness of His love
conquering sin and death, time and space, He is with us to the world’s
end. May we not say that we, too, are with Him and shall be with Him
always? So we reckon in the logic of our faith and at the height of our
high calling, though the soul creeps and drudges upon the lower levels.

    “With Him we are gone up on high,
      Since He is ours and we are His;
    With Him we reign above the sky,
      We walk upon our subject seas!”

In his lofty flights of thought the apostle always has some practical
and homely end in view. The earthly and heavenly, the mystical and the
matter-of-fact were not distant and repugnant, but interfused in his
mind. From the celestial heights of the life hidden with Christ in God
(ver. 6), he brings us down in a moment and without any sense of
discrepancy to the prosaic level of “good works” (ver. 10). The love
which viewed us from eternity, the counsels of Him who works all things
in all, enter into the humblest daily duties.

Grace, moreover, sets us great tasks. There should be something to show
in deed and life for the wealth of kindness spent upon us, some visible
and commensurate result of the vast preparations of the gospel plan. Of
this result the apostle saw the earnest in the work of faith wrought by
his Gentile Churches.

St Paul was the last man in the world to undervalue human effort, or
disparage good work of any sort. It is, in his view, the end aimed at in
all that God bestows on His people, in all that He Himself works in
them. Only let this end be sought in God’s way and order. Man’s doings
must be the fruit and not the root of his salvation. “Not _of_ works,”
but “_for_ good works” were believers chosen. “This little word _for_”
says Monod, “reconciles St Paul and St James better than all the
commentators.” God has not raised us up to sit idly in the heavenly
places lost in contemplation, or to be the useless pensioners of grace.
He sends us forth to “walk in the works, prepared for us,”--equipped to
fight Christ’s battles, to till His fields, to labour in the service of
building His Church.

The “workmanship” of our Version suggests an idea foreign to the
passage. The apostle is not thinking of the Divine art or skill
displayed in man’s creation; but of the simple fact that “God made man”
(Gen. i. 27). “We are His _making_, created in Christ Jesus.” The
“preparation” to which he refers in verse 10 leads us back to that
primeval election of God’s sons in Christ for which we gave thanks at
the outset (i. 3). There are not two creations, the second formed upon
the ruin and failure of the first; but one grand design throughout.
Redemption is creation re-affirmed. The new creation, as we call it,
restores and consummates the old. When God raised His Son from the dead,
He vindicated His original purpose in raising man from the dust a living
soul. He has not forsaken the work of His hands nor forgone His original
plan, which took account of all our wilfulness and sin. God in making us
meant us to do good work in His world. From the world’s foundation down
to the present moment He who worketh all in all has been working for
this end--most of all in the revelation of His grace in Jesus Christ.

Far backward in the past, amid the secrets of creation, lay the
beginnings of God’s grace to mankind. Far onward in the future shines
its lustre revealed in the first Christian age. The apostle has gained
some insight into those “times and seasons” which formerly were veiled
from him. In his earliest letters, to the Thessalonians and Corinthians,
St Paul echoes our Lord’s warning, never out of season, that we should
“watch, for the hour is at hand.” _Maran atha_ is his watchword: “Our
Lord cometh; the time is short.” Nor does that note cease to the end.
But when in this epistle he writes of “the ages that are coming on,” and
of “all the generations of the age of the ages” (iii. 21), there is
manifestly some considerable period of duration before his eyes. He sees
something of the extent of the world’s coming history, something of the
magnitude of the field that the future will afford for the unfolding of
God’s designs.

In those approaching æons he foresees that the apostolic dispensation
will play a conspicuous part. Unborn ages will be blessed in the
blessing now descending upon Jews and Gentiles through Christ Jesus. So
marvellous is the display of God’s kindness toward them, that all the
future will pay homage to it. The overflowing wealth of blessing poured
upon St Paul and the first Churches had an end in view that reached
beyond themselves, an end worthy of the Giver, worthy of the magnitude
of His plans and of His measureless love. If all this was theirs--this
fulness of God exceeding the utmost they had asked or thought--it is
because God means to convey it through them to multitudes besides! There
is no limit to the grace that God will impart to men and to Churches who
thus reason, who receive His gifts in this generous and communicative
spirit. The apostolic Church chants with Mary at the Annunciation:
“For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed!”

Never was any prediction better fulfilled. This spot of history shines
with a light before which every other shows pale and commonplace. The
companions of Jesus, the humble fraternities of the first Christian
century have been the object of reverent interest and intent research on
the part of all centuries since. Their history is scrutinized from all
sides with a zeal and industry which the most pressing subjects of the
day hardly command. For we feel that these men hold the secret of the
world’s life. The key to the treasures we all long for is in their
hands. As time goes on and the stress of life deepens, men will turn
with yet fonder hope to the age of Jesus Christ. “And many nations will
say: Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of
the God of Jacob. And He will teach us of His ways; and we will walk in
His paths.”

The stream will remember its fountain; the children of God will gather
to their childhood’s home. The world will hear the gospel in the
recovered accents of its prophets and apostles.

FOOTNOTES:

[80] Rom. xii. 1; 2 Cor. i. 3; Phil. i. 8, ii. 1; comp. Luke i. 78. The
οἰκτιρμοὶ τοῦ Θεοῦ, σπλάγχνα καὶ οἰκτιρμοί, rendered in our Version
“mercies of God,” denotes something even more affecting,--God’s sense of
the woefulness of human life,--“the pitying tenderness Divine.”

[81] Comp. Rom. ix. 22, 23.

[82] On _grace_, comp. _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor’s
Bible), Chapter X.

[83] Compare also, on Faith, _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor’s
Bible), Chapters X.-XII. and XV.

[84] Ἐστὲ σεσωσμένοι: for the peculiar emphasis of this form of the
verb, implying a settled fact, an assured state, compare ver. 12, ἢτε
... ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι; Col. ii. 10; Gal. ii. 11, iv. 3; 2 Cor. iv. 3, etc.

[85] Rom. viii. 31-39; comp. vv. 9-17; also 1 Thess. v. 23, 24; 2 Thess.
iii. 3-5; 1 Cor. i. 4-9; Phil. i. 6, iii. 13, 14; 2 Tim. i. 12, iv. 18,
for St Paul’s doctrine of Assurance.




CHAPTER IX.

_THE FAR AND NEAR._

    “Wherefore remember, that aforetime ye, the Gentiles in the flesh,
    who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision
    in the flesh, made by hands; that ye were at that time separate from
    Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers
    from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in
    the world: but now in Christ Jesus ye who sometime were far off are
    made nigh in the blood of Christ.”--EPH. ii. 11-13.


The apostle’s _Wherefore_ sums up for his readers the record of their
salvation rehearsed in the previous verses. “You were buried in your
sins, sunk in their corruption, ruined by their guilt, living under
God’s displeasure and in the power of Satan. All this has passed away.
The almighty Hand has raised you with Christ into a heavenly life. God
has become your Father; His love is in your heart; by the strength of
His grace you are enabled to walk in the way marked out for you from
your creation. _Wherefore remember_: think of what you were, and of what
you are!”

To such recollections we do well to summon ourselves. The children of
grace love to recall, and on fit occasions recount for God’s glory and
the help of their fellows, the way in which God led them to the
knowledge of Himself. In some the great change came suddenly. He “made
speed” to save us. It was a veritable resurrection, as signal and
unlooked for as the rising of Christ from the dead. By a swift passage
we were “translated from the power of darkness into the kingdom of the
Son of His love.” Once living without God in the world, we were arrested
by a strange providence--through some overthrow of fortune or shock of
bereavement, or by a trivial incident touching unaccountably a hidden
spring in the mind--and the whole aspect of life was altered in a
moment. We saw revealed, as by a lightning flash at night, the emptiness
of our own life, the misery of our nature, the folly of our unbelief,
the awful presence of _God_--God whom we had forgotten and despised! We
sought, and found His mercy. From that hour the old things passed away:
we lived who had been dead,--made alive to God through Jesus Christ.

This instant conversion, such as Paul experienced, this sharp and abrupt
transition from darkness to light, was common in the first generation of
Christians, as it is wherever religious awakening takes place in a
society that has been largely dead to God. The advent of Christianity in
the Gentile world was much after this fashion,--like a tropical sunrise,
in which day leaps on the earth full-born. This experience gives a stamp
of peculiar decision to the convictions and character of its subjects.
The change is patent and palpable; no observer can fail to mark it. And
it burns itself into the memory with an ineffaceable impression. The
violent throes of such a spiritual birth cannot be forgotten.

But if our entrance into the life of God was gradual, like the dawn of
our own milder clime, where the light steals by imperceptible advances
upon the darkness--if the glory of the Lord has thus risen upon us, our
certainty of its presence may be no less complete, and our remembrance
of its coming no less grateful and joyous. One leaps into the new life
by a single eager bound; another reaches it by measured, thoughtful
steps: but both are _there_, standing side by side on the common ground
of salvation in Christ. Both walk in the same light of the Lord, that
floods the sky from east to west. The recollections which the latter has
to cherish of the leading of God’s kindly light--how He touched our
childish thought, and checked gently our boyish waywardness, and mingled
reproof with the first stirrings of passion and self-will, and wakened
the alarms of conscience and the fears of another world, and the sense
of the beauty of holiness and the shame of sin,--

    “Shaping to truth the froward will
        Along His narrow way,”--

such remembrances are a priceless treasure, that grows richer as we grow
wiser. It awakens a joy not so thrilling nor so prompt in utterance as
that of the soul snatched like a brand from the burning, but which
passes understanding. Blessed are the children of the kingdom, those who
have never roamed far from the fold of Christ and the commonwealth of
Israel, whom the cross has beckoned onwards from their childhood. But
however it was--by whatever means, at whatever time it pleased God to
call you from darkness to His marvellous light, _remember_.

       *       *       *       *       *

But we must return to Paul and his Gentile readers. The old death in
life was to them a sombre reality, keenly and painfully remembered. In
that condition of moral night out of which Christ had rescued them,
Gentile society around them still remained. Let us observe its features
as they are delineated in contrast with the privileges long bestowed on
Israel. The Gentile world was _Christless_, _hopeless_, _godless_. It
had no share in the Divine polity framed for the chosen people; the
outward mark of its uncircumcision was a true symbol of its irreligion
and debasement.

Israel had a _God_. Besides, there were only “those who are called
gods.” This was the first and cardinal distinction. Not their race, not
their secular calling, their political or intellectual gifts, but their
faith formed the Jews into a nation. They were “the people of God,” as
no other people has been--of _the_ God, for theirs was “the true and
living God”--Jehovah, the I AM, the One, the Alone. The monotheistic
belief was, no doubt, wavering and imperfect in the mass of the nation
in early times; but it was held by the ruling minds amongst them, by the
men who have shaped the destiny of Israel and created its Bible, with
increasing clearness and intensity of passion. “All the gods of the
nations are idols--vapours, phantoms, nothings!--but Jehovah made the
heavens.” It was the ancestral faith that glowed in the breast of Paul
at Athens, amidst the fairest shrines of Greece, when he “saw the city
wholly given to idolatry”--man’s highest art and the toil and piety of
ages lavished on things that were no gods; and in the midst of the
splendour of a hollow and decaying Paganism he read the confession that
God was “unknown.”

Ephesus had her famous goddess, worshipped in the most sumptuous pile of
architecture that the ancient world contained. Behold the proud city,
“temple-keeper of the great goddess Artemis,” filled with wrath!
Infuriate Demos flashes fire from his thousand eyes, and his brazen
throat roars hoarse vengeance against the insulters of “her
magnificence, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth”! Without
God--_atheists_, in fact, the apostle calls this devout Asian
population; and Artemis of Ephesus, and Athené, and Cybelé of Smyrna,
and Zeus and Asclepius of Pergamum, though all the world worship them,
are but “creatures of art and man’s device.”

The Pagans retorted this reproach. “Away with _the atheists_!” they
cried, when Christians were led to execution. Ninety years after this
time the martyr Polycarp was brought into the arena before the
magistrates of Asia and the populace gathered in Smyrna at the great
Ionic festival. The Proconsul, wishing to spare the venerable man, said
to him: “Swear by the Fortune of Cæsar; and say, Away with the
atheists!” But Polycarp, as the story continues, “with a grave look
gazing on the crowd of lawless Gentiles in the stadium and shaking his
hand against them, then groaning and looking up to heaven, said, _Away
with the atheists_!” Pagan and Christian were each godless in the eyes
of the other. If visible temples and images, and the local worship of
each tribe or city made a god, then Jews and Christians had none: if God
was a Spirit--One, Holy, Almighty, Omnipresent--then polytheists were in
truth atheists; their many gods, being many, were no gods; they were
idols,--_eidola_, illusive shows of the Godhead.

The more thoughtful and pious among the heathen felt this already. When
the apostle denounced the idols and their pompous worship as “these
vanities,” his words found an echo in the Gentile conscience. The
classical Paganism held the multitude by the force of habit and local
pride, and by its sensuous and artistic charms; but such religious power
as it once had was gone. In all directions it was undermined by mystic
Oriental and Egyptian rites, to which men resorted in search of a
religion and sick of the old fables, ever growing more debased, that had
pleased their fathers. The majesty of Rome in the person of the Emperor,
the one visible supreme power, was seized upon by the popular instinct,
even more than it was imposed by state policy, and made to fill the
vacuum; and temples to Augustus had already risen in Asia, side by side
with those of the ancient gods.

In this despair of their ancestral religions many piously disposed
Gentiles turned to Judaism for spiritual help; and the synagogue was
surrounded in the Greek cities by a circle of earnest proselytes. From
their ranks St Paul drew a large proportion of his hearers and converts.
When he writes, “Remember that you were at that time _without God_,” he
is within the recollection of his readers; and they will bear him out in
testifying that their heathen creed was dead and empty to the soul. Nor
did philosophy construct a creed more satisfying. Its gods were the
Epicurean deities who dwell aloof and careless of men; or the supreme
Reason and Necessity of the Stoics, the _anima mundi_, of which human
souls are fleeting and fragmentary images. “Deism finds God only in
heaven; Pantheism, only on earth; Christianity alone finds Him both in
heaven and on earth” (Harless). The Word made flesh reveals _God in the
world_.

When the apostle says “without God _in the world_,” this qualification
is both reproachful and sorrowful. To be without God in the world that
He has made, where His “eternal power and Godhead” have been visible
from creation, argues a darkened and perverted heart.[86] To be without
God in the world is to be in the wilderness, without a guide; on a
stormy ocean, without harbour or pilot; in sickness of spirit, without
medicine or physician; to be hungry without bread, and weary without
rest, and dying with no light of life. It is to be an orphaned child,
wandering in an empty, ruined house.

In these words we have an echo of Paul’s preaching to the Gentiles, and
an indication of the line of his appeals to the conscience of the
enlightened pagans of his time. The despair of the age was darker than
the human mind has known before or since. Matthew Arnold has painted it
all in one verse of those lines, entitled _Obermann once more_, in which
he so perfectly expresses the better spirit of modern scepticism.

    “On that hard Pagan world disgust
      And secret loathing fell;
    Deep weariness and sated lust
      Made human life a hell.”

The saying by which St Paul reproved the Corinthians, “Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die,” is the common sentiment of pagan epitaphs
of the time. Here is an extant specimen of the kind: “Let us drink and
be merry; for we shall have no more kissing and dancing in the kingdom
of Proserpine. Soon shall we fall asleep, to wake no more.” Such were
the thoughts with which men came back from the grave-side. It is
needless to say how depraving was the effect of this hopelessness. At
Athens, in the more religious times of Socrates, it was even considered
a decent and kindly thing to allow a criminal condemned to death to
spend his last hours in gross sensual indulgence. There is no reason to
suppose that the extinction of the Christian hope of immortality would
prove less demoralizing. We are “saved by hope,” said St Paul: we are
ruined by despair. Pessimism of creed for most men means pessimism of
conduct.

Our modern speech and literature and our habits of feeling have been for
so many generations steeped in the influence of Christ’s teaching, and
it has thrown so many tender and hallowed thoughts around the state of
our beloved dead, that it is impossible even for those who are
personally without hope in Christ to realize what its general decay and
disappearance would mean. To have possessed such a treasure, and then to
lose it! to have cherished anticipations so exalted and so dear,--and to
find them turn out a mockery! The age upon which this calamity fell
would be of all ages the most miserable.

The hope of Israel which Paul preached to the Gentiles was a hope for
the world and for the nations, as well as for the individual soul. “The
commonwealth [or _polity_] of Israel” and “the covenants of promise”
guaranteed the establishment of the Messianic kingdom upon earth. This
expectation took amongst the mass of the Jews a materialistic and even a
revengeful shape; but in one form or other it belonged, and still
belongs to every man of Israel. Those noble lines of Virgil in his
fourth Eclogue[87]--like the words of Caiaphas, an unintended Christian
prophecy--which predicted the return of justice and the spread of a
golden age through the whole world under the rule of the coming heir of
Cæsar, had been signally belied by the imperial house in the century
that had elapsed. Never were human prospects darker than when the
apostle wrote as Nero’s prisoner in Rome. It was an age of crime and
horror. The political world and the system of pagan society seemed to be
in the throes of dissolution. Only in “the commonwealth of Israel” was
there a light of hope and a foundation for the future of mankind; and of
this in its wisdom the world knew nothing.

The Gentiles were “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,”--that is
to say, treated as aliens and made such by their exclusion. By the very
fact of Israel’s election, the rest of mankind were shut out of the
visible kingdom of God. They became mere _Gentiles_, or _nations_,--a
herd of men bound together only by natural affinity, with no “covenant
of promise,” no religious constitution or destiny, no definite
relationship to God, Israel being alone the acknowledged and organized
“_people_ of Jehovah.”

These distinctions were summed up in one word, expressing all the pride
of the Jewish nature, when the Israelites styled themselves “the
Circumcision.” The rest of the world--Philistines or Egyptians, Greeks,
Romans, or Barbarians, it mattered not--were “the Uncircumcision.” How
superficial this distinction was in point of fact, and how false the
assumption of moral superiority it implied in the existing condition of
Judaism, St Paul indicates by saying, “those who are _called_
Uncircumcision by that which is _called_ Circumcision, in flesh, wrought
by human hands.” In the second and third chapters of his epistle to the
Romans he exposed the hollowness of Jewish sanctity, and brought his
fellow-countrymen down to the level of those “sinners of the Gentiles”
whom they so bitterly despised.

The destitution of the Gentile world is put into a single word, when the
apostle says: “You were at that time _separate from Christ_”--without a
Christ, either come or coming. They were deprived of the world’s one
treasure,--shut out, as it appeared, for ever[88] from any part in Him
who is to mankind all things and in all.--_Once far off!_

       *       *       *       *       *

“But now in Christ Jesus ye were _made nigh_.” What is it that has
bridged the distance, that has transported these Gentiles from the
wilderness of heathenism into the midst of the city of God? It is “the
blood of Christ.” The sacrificial death of Jesus Christ transformed the
relations of God to mankind, and of Israel to the Gentiles. In Him God
reconciled not a nation, but “a world” to Himself (2 Cor. v. 19). The
death of the Son of man could not have reference to the sons of Abraham
alone. If sin is universal and death is not a Jewish but a human
experience, and if one blood flows in the veins of all our race, then
the death of Jesus Christ was a universal sacrifice; it appeals to every
man’s conscience and heart, and puts away for each the guilt which comes
between his soul and God.

When the Greeks in Passion week desired to see Him, He exclaimed: “I, if
I be lifted up from the earth, will draw _all_ unto me.” The cross of
Jesus was to draw humanity around it, by its infinite love and sorrow,
by the perfect apprehension there was in it of the world’s guilt and
need, and the perfect submission to the sentence of God’s law against
man’s sin. So wherever the gospel was preached by St Paul, it won
Gentile hearts for Christ. Greek and Jew found themselves weeping
together at the foot of the cross, sharing one forgiveness and baptized
into one Spirit.

The union of Caiaphas and Pilate in the condemnation of Jesus and the
mingling of the Jewish crowd with the Roman soldiers at His execution
were a tragic symbol of the new age that was coming. Israel and the
Gentiles were accomplices in the death of the Messiah--the former of the
two the more guilty partner in the counsel and deed. If this Jesus whom
they slew and hanged on a tree was indeed the Christ, God’s chosen, then
what availed their Abrahamic sonship, their covenants and law-keeping,
their proud religious eminence? They had killed their Christ; they had
forfeited their calling. His blood was on them and on their children.

Those who seemed nigh to God, at the cross of Christ were found far
off,--that both together, the far and the near, might be reconciled and
brought back to God. “He shut up all unto disobedience, that He might
have mercy upon all.”

FOOTNOTES:

[86] Rom. i. 19-23; comp. John i. 10: “He [the true Light] was _in the
world_, and the world knew Him not.”

[87]

    Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo.
    Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;
    Jam nova progenies cœlo demittitur alto.
    Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum
    Desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea mundo,
    Casta, fave, Lucina.

[88] Observe the perfect participle ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι, which signifies an
abiding fact or fixed condition. Similar is the turn of expression in
ch. iii. 9, and in Col. i. 26, Rom. xvi. 25, Matt. xiii. 35.




CHAPTER X.

_THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION._

    “For He is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle
    wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, _even_
    the law of commandments _contained_ in ordinances, that He might
    create in Himself of the twain one new man, _so_ making peace; and
    might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross,
    having slain the enmity thereby: and He came and preached good
    tidings of peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that
    were nigh: for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit
    unto the Father.”--EPH. ii. 14-18.


_Peace, peace--to the far off, and to the near!_ Such was God’s promise
to His scattered people in the times of the exile (Isai. lvii. 19). St
Paul sees that peace of God extending over a yet wider field, and
terminating a longer and sadder banishment than the prophet had
foreseen. Christ is “our peace”--not for the divided members of Israel
alone, but for all the tribes of men. He brings about a universal
pacification.

There were two distinct, but kindred enmities to be overcome by Christ,
in preaching to the world His good tidings of peace (ver. 17). There was
the hostility of Jew and Gentile, which was removed in its cause and
principle when Christ “in His flesh” (by His incarnate life and death)
“abolished the law of commandments in decrees”--_i.e._, the law of Moses
as it constituted a body of external precepts determining the way of
righteousness and life. This abolition of the law by the evangelical
principle “dissolved the middle wall of partition.” The occasion of
quarrel between Israel and the world was destroyed; the barrier
disappeared that had for so long fenced off the privileged ground of the
sons of Abraham (vv. 14, 15). But behind this human enmity, underneath
the feud and rancour existing between the Jews and the nations, there
lay the deeper quarrel of mankind with God. Both enmities centred in the
law; both were slain by one stroke, in the reconciliation of the cross
(ver. 16).

The Jewish and Gentile peoples formed two distinct types of humanity.
Politically, the Jews were insignificant and had scarcely counted
amongst the great powers of the world. Their religion alone gave them
influence and importance. Bearing his inspired Scriptures and his
Messianic hope, the wandering Israelite confronted the vast masses of
heathenism and the splendid and fascinating classical civilization with
the proudest sense of his superiority. To his God he knew well that one
day every knee would bow and every tongue confess. The circumstances of
the time deepened his isolation and aggravated to internecine hate his
spite against his fellow-men, the _adversus omnes alios hostile odium_
stigmatized by the incisive pen of Tacitus. Within three years of the
writing of this letter the Jewish war against Rome broke out, when the
enmity culminated in the most appalling and fateful overthrow recorded
in the pages of history. Now, it is this enmity at its height--the most
inveterate and desperate one can conceive--that the apostle proposes to
reconcile; nay, that he sees already slain by the sacrifice of the
cross, and within the brotherhood of the Christian Church. It was slain
in the heart of Saul of Tarsus, the proudest that beat in Jewish
breast.

In his earlier writings the apostle has been concerned chiefly to guard
the position and rights of the two parties within the Church. He has
abundantly maintained, especially in the epistle to the Galatians, the
claims of Gentile believers in Christ against Judaic assumptions and
impositions. He has defended the just prerogative of the Jew and his
hereditary sentiments from the contempt to which they were sometimes
exposed on the part of the Gentile majority.[89] But now that this has
been done, and that Gentile liberties and Jewish dignity have been
vindicated and safeguarded on both sides, St Paul advances a step
further: he seeks to amalgamate the Jewish and Gentile section of the
Church, and to “make of the twain one new man, so making peace.” This,
he declares, was the end of Christ’s mission; this a chief purpose of
His atoning death. Only by such union, only through the burying of the
old enmity slain on the cross, could His Church be built up to its
completeness. St Paul would have Gentile and Jewish believers everywhere
forget their differences, efface their party lines, and merge their
independence in the oneness of the all-embracing and all-perfecting
Church of Jesus Christ, God’s habitation in the Spirit. Instead of
saying that a catholic ideal like this belongs to a later and
post-apostolic age, we maintain, on the contrary, that a catholic mind
like St Paul’s, under the conditions of his time, could not fail to
arrive at this conception.

It was his confidence in the victory of the cross over all strife and
sin that sustained St Paul through these years of captivity. As he
looks out from his Roman prison, under the shadow of Nero’s palace, the
future is invested with a radiance of hope that makes the heart of the
chained apostle exult within him. The world is lost, to all outward
seeming: he knows it is saved! Jew and Gentile are about to close in
mortal conflict: he proclaims peace between them, assured of their
reconcilement, and knowing that in their reunion the salvation of human
society is assured.

The enmity of Jew and Gentile was representative of all that divides
mankind. In it were concentrated most of the causes by which society is
rent asunder. Along with religion, race, habits, tastes and culture,
moral tendencies, political aspirations, interests of trade, all helped
to widen the breach. The cleavage ran deep into the foundations of life;
the enmity was the growth of two thousand years. It was not a case of
local friction, nor a quarrel arising from temporary causes. The Jew was
ubiquitous, and everywhere was an alien and an irritant to Gentile
society. No antipathy was so hard to subdue. The grace that conquers it,
can and will conquer all enmities.

St Paul’s view embraced, in fact, a world-wide reconcilement. He
contemplates, as the Hebrew prophets themselves did, the fraternization
of mankind under the rule of the Christ. After this scale he laid down
the foundation of the Church, “wise master-builder” that he was. It was
destined to bear the weight of an edifice in which all the races of men
should dwell together, and every order of human faculty should find its
place. His thoughts were not confined within the Judaic antithesis.
“There is no Jew and Greek,” he says in another place; yes, and “no
barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, male or female. Ye are all one in
Christ Jesus.”[90] Birth, rank, office in the Church, culture, even sex
are minor and subordinate distinctions, merged in the unity of redeemed
souls in Christ. That which He “creates in Himself of the twain” is _one
new man_--one incorporate humanity, neither Jew nor Gentile, Englishman
nor Hindu, priest nor layman, male nor female; but simply _man_, and
_Christian_.

At the present time we are better able to enter into these views of the
apostle than at any intervening period of history. In his day almost the
whole visible world, lying round the Mediterranean shores, was brought
under the government and laws of Rome. This fact made the establishment
of one religious polity a thing quite conceivable. The Roman empire did
not, as it proved, allow Christianity to conquer it soon enough and to
leaven it sufficiently to save it. That huge construction, the mightiest
fabric of human polity, fell and covered the earth with its ruins. In
its fall it reacted disastrously upon the Church, and has bequeathed to
it the corrupt and despotic unity of Papal Rome. Now, in these last
days, the whole world is opened to the Church, a world stretching far
beyond the horizon of the first century. Science and Commerce, those two
strong-winged angels and giant ministers of God, are swiftly binding the
continents together in material ties. The peoples are beginning to
realize their brotherhood, and are feeling their way in many directions
towards international union; while in the Churches a new, federal
catholicity is taking shape, that must displace the false catholicism of
external uniformity and the disastrous absolutism inherited from Rome.
The spread of European empire and the marvellous expansion of our
English race are carrying forward the world’s unification with enormous
strides,--towards some end or other. What end is this to be? Is the
kingdom of the world about to become the kingdom of our Lord and His
Christ? and are the nations preparing to be “reconciled in one body unto
God”?

If Christendom were worthy of her Master and her name, this question
would be answered with no doubtful affirmative. The Church is well able,
if she were prepared, to go up and possess the whole earth for her Lord.
The way is open; the means are in her hand. Nor is she ignorant, nor
wholly negligent of her opportunity and of the claims that the times
impose upon her. She is putting forth new strength and striving to
overtake her work, notwithstanding the weight of ignorance and sloth
that burdens her. Soon the reconciling cross will be planted on every
shore, and the praises of the Crucified sung in every human language.

But there are dark as well as bright auguries for the future. The
advance of commerce and emigration has been a curse and not a blessing
to many heathen peoples. Who can read without shame and horror the story
of European conquest in America? And it is a chapter not yet closed.
Greed and injustice still mark the dealings of the powerful and
civilized with the weaker races. England set a noble example in the
abolition of negro slavery; but she has since inflicted, for purposes of
gain, the opium curse on China, putting poison to the lips of its vast
population. Under our Christian flags fire-arms are imported, and
alcohol, amongst tribes of men less able than children to resist their
evils. Is this “preaching peace to those far off”? It is likely that
the commercial profits made in the destruction of savage races as yet
exceed all that our missionary societies have spent in saving them. One
of these days Almighty God may have a stern reckoning with modern Europe
about these things. “When He maketh inquisition for blood, He will
remember.”

And what shall we say of ourselves at home, in our relation to this
great principle of the apostle? The old “middle wall of partition,” the
temple-barrier that sundered Jew and Gentile, is “broken down,”--visibly
levelled by the hand of God when Jerusalem fell, as it had been
virtually and in its principle destroyed by the work of Christ. But are
there no other middle walls, no barriers raised within the fold of
Christ? The rich man’s purse, and the poor man’s penury; aristocratic
pride, democratic bitterness and jealousy; knowledge and refinement on
the one hand, ignorance and rudeness on the other--how thick the veil of
estrangement which these influences weave, how high the party walls
which they build in our various Church communions!

It is the duty of the Church, as she values her existence, with gentle
but firm hands to pull down and to keep down all such partitions. She
cannot abolish the natural distinctions of life. She cannot turn the Jew
into a Gentile, nor the Gentile into a Jew. She will never make the poor
man rich in this world, nor the rich man altogether poor. Like her
Master, she declines to be “judge or divider” of our secular
inheritance. But she can see to it that these outward distinctions make
no difference in her treatment of the men as men. She can combine in her
fellowship all grades and orders, and teach them to understand and
respect each other. She can soften the asperities and relieve many of
the hardships which social differences create. She can diffuse a
healing and purifying influence upon the contentions of society around
her.

Let us labour unweariedly for this, and let our meeting at the Lord’s
table be a symbol of the unreserved communion of men of all classes and
conditions in the brotherhood of the redeemed sons of God. “_He_ is our
peace”; and if He is in our hearts, we must needs be sons of peace.
“Behold the secret of all true union! It is not by others coming to us,
nor by our going over to them; but it is by both them and ourselves
coming to Christ” that peace is made (Monod).

Thus within and without the Church the work of atonement will advance,
with Christ ever for its preacher (ver. 17). He speaks through the words
and the lives of His ten thousand messengers,--men of every order, in
every age and country of the earth. The leaven of Christ’s peace will
spread till the lump is leavened. God will accomplish His purpose of the
ages, whether in our time, or in another worthier of His calling. His
Church is destined to be the home of the human family, the universal
liberator and instructor and reconciler of the nations. And Christ shall
sit enthroned in the loyal worship of the federated peoples of the
earth.

       *       *       *       *       *

But the question remains: What is the foundation, what the warrant of
this grand idealism of the apostle Paul? Many a great thinker, many an
ardent reformer before and since has dreamed of some such millennium as
this. And their enthusiastic plans have ended too often in conflict and
destruction. What surer ground of confidence have we in Paul’s
undertaking than in those of so many gifted visionaries and
philosophers? The difference lies here: his expectation rests on the
word and character of God; his instrument of reform is the cross of
Jesus Christ.

God is the centre of His own universe. Any reconciliation that is to
stand, must include Him first of all. Christ reconciled Jew and Gentile
“both in one body _to God_.” There is the meeting point, the true focus
of the orbit of human life, that can alone control its movements and
correct its wild aberrations. Under the shadow of His throne of justice,
in the arms of His fatherly love, the kindreds of the earth will at last
find reconciliation and peace. Humanitarian and secularist systems make
the simple mistake of ignoring the supreme Factor in the scheme of
things; they leave out the All in all.

“Be ye _reconciled to God_,” cries the apostle. For Almighty God has had
a great quarrel with this world of ours. The hatred of men towards each
other is rooted in the “carnal mind which is enmity against God.” The
“law of commandments contained in ordinances,” in whose possession the
Jew boasted over the lawless and profane Gentile, in reality branded
both as culprits.

The secret disquiet and dread lurking in man’s conscience, the pangs
endured in his body of humiliation, the groaning frame of nature declare
the world unhinged and out of course. Things have gone amiss, somehow,
between man and his Creator. The face of the earth and the field of
human history are scarred with the thunderbolts of His displeasure. God,
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the King of the ages, is not the
amiable, almighty Sentimentalist that some pious people would make Him
out to be. The men of the Bible felt and realized, if we do not, the
grave and tremendous import of the Lord’s controversy with all flesh. He
is unceasingly at war with the sins of men. “God is _love_”--oh yes;
but then He is also “a consuming fire”! There is no anger so crushing as
the anger of love, for there is none so just; no wrath to be feared like
“the wrath of the Lamb.” God is not a man, weak and passionate, whom a
spark of anger might set all on fire, burning out His justice and
compassion. “In His wrath He remembers mercy.” Within that infinite
nature there is room for an absolute loathing and resentment towards
sin, in consistence with an immeasurable pity and yearning towards His
sinful children. Hence the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Look at it from what side you will (and it has many sides), propound it
in what terms you may (and it translates itself anew into the dialect of
every age), you must not explain the cross of Christ away nor cause its
offence to cease. “The atonement has always been a scandal and a folly
to those who did not receive it; it has always contained something which
to formal logic is false and to individualistic ethics immoral; yet in
that very element which has been branded as immoral and false, has
always lain the seal of its power and the secret of its truth.” The Holy
One of God, the Lamb without spot and blemish, He died by His own
consent a sinner’s death. That sacrifice, undergone by the Son of God
and Son of man dying as man for men, in love to His race and in
obedience to the Divine will and law, gave an infinite satisfaction to
God in His relation to the world, and there went up to the Divine throne
from the anguish of Calvary a “savour of sweet smell.” The moral glory
of the act of Jesus Christ in dying for His guilty brethren outshone its
horror and disgrace; and it redeemed man’s lost condition, and clothed
human nature with a new character and aspect in the eyes of God
Himself. “Now therefore there is no more condemnation to them that are
in Christ Jesus.” The mercy of God, if we may so say, is set free to act
in forgiveness and restoration, without any compromise of justice and
inflexible law. No peace without this: no peace that did not _satisfy
God_, and satisfy that law, deep as the deepest in God, that binds
suffering to wrong-doing and death to sin.

Perhaps you say: This is immoral, surely, that the just should suffer
for the unjust; that one commits the offence, and another bears the
penalty.--Stay a moment: that is only half the truth. We are more than
individuals; we are members of a race; and vicarious suffering runs
through life. Our sufferings and wrong-doings bind the human family
together in an inextricable web. We are _communists in sin and death_.
It is the law and lot of our existence. And Christ, the Lord and centre
of the race, has come within its scope. He bound Himself to our sinking
fortunes. He became co-partner in our lost estate, and has redeemed it
to God by His blood. If He was true and perfect man, if He was the
creative Head and Mediator of the race, the eternal Firstborn of many
brethren, He could do no other. He who alone had the right and the
power,--“_One_ died for all.” He took upon His Divine heart the sin and
curse of the world, He fastened it to His shoulders with the cross; and
He bore it away from Caiaphas’ hall and Pilate’s judgement-seat, away
from guilty Jerusalem; He took away the sin of the world, and expiated
it once for all. He quenched in His blood the fires of wrath and hate it
kindled. He slew _the enmity_ thereby.

       *       *       *       *       *

Still, we are individuals, as you said, not lost after all in the
world’s solidarity. Here your personal right and will must come in. What
Christ has done for you is yours, so far as you accept it. He has died
your death beforehand, trusting that you would not repudiate His act,
that you would not let His blood be spilt in vain. But He will never
force His mediation upon you. He respects your freedom and your manhood.
Do you now endorse what Jesus Christ did on your behalf? Do you renounce
the sin, and accept the sacrifice? Then it is yours, from this moment,
before the tribunal of God and of conscience. By the witness of His
Spirit you are proclaimed a forgiven and reconciled man. Christ
crucified is yours--if you will have Him, if you will identify your
sinful self with the sinless Mediator, if as you see Him lifted up on
the cross you will let your heart cry out, “Oh my God, He dies for
_me_!”

Coming “in one Spirit to the Father,” the reconciled children join hands
again with each other. Social barriers, caste feelings, family feuds,
personal quarrels, national antipathies, alike go down before the virtue
of the blood of Jesus.

            “Neither passion nor pride
              His cross can abide,
    But melt in the fountain that streams from His side!”

“Beloved,” you will say to the man that hates or has wronged you
most,--“Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”
In these simple words of the apostle John lies the secret of universal
peace, the hope of the fraternization of mankind. Nations will have to
say this one day, as well as men.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] See to this effect such passages as Rom. i. 16 (_to the Jew
first_), ix. 4, 5; and especially xi. 13-32.

[90] Gal. iii. 28; Col. iii. 11. Comp. John x. 16, xi. 52. See _The
Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor’s Bible), Chapter XV.




CHAPTER XI.

_GOD’S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY._

    “So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are
    fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God, being
    built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus
    Himself being the chief corner stone; in whom each several building,
    fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in
    whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the
    Spirit.”--EPH. ii. 19-22.


Not unfrequently it is the last word or phrase of the paragraph that
gives us the clue to St Paul’s meaning and discloses the point at which
he has aimed all along. So in this instance. “For a habitation of God in
the Spirit”: behold the goal of God’s ways with mankind! For this end
the Divine grace has wrought through countless ages and has made its
great sacrifice. For this end Jew and Gentile are being gathered into
one and compacted into a new humanity.

I. The Church is a house built for an _Occupant_. Its quality and size,
and the mode of its construction are determined by its destination. It
is built to suit the great Inhabitant, who says concerning the new Zion
as He said of the old in figure: “This is my rest for ever! Here will I
dwell, for I have desired it.” God, who is spirit, cannot be satisfied
with the fabric of material nature for His temple, nor does “the Most
High dwell in houses made by men’s hands.” He seeks our spirit for His
abode, and

                            “Doth prefer
    Before all temples the upright heart and pure.”

In the collective life and spirit of humanity God claims to reside, that
He may fill it with His glory and His love. “Know you not,” cries the
apostle to the once debased Corinthians, “that you are God’s temple, and
that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”

Nothing that is bestowed upon man terminates in himself. The deliverance
of Jewish and Gentile believers from their personal sins, their
re-instatement into the broken unity of mankind and the destruction in
them of their old enmities, of the antipathies generated by their common
rebellion against God--these great results of Christ’s sacrifice were
means to a further end. “Hallowed be Thy name” is our first petition to
the Father in heaven; “Glory to God in the highest” is the key-note of
the angels’ song, that runs through all the harmonies of “peace on
earth,” through every strain of the melody of life. Religion is the
mistress, not the handmaid in human affairs. She will never consent to
become a mere ethical discipline, an instrument and subordinate stage in
social evolution, a ladder held for men to climb up into their
self-sufficiency.

The old temptation of the Garden, “Ye shall be as gods,” has come upon
our age in a new and fascinating form, “You shall be as gods,” it is
whispered: “nay, you _are_ God, and there is no other. The supernatural
is a dream. The Christian story is a fable. There is none to fear or
adore above yourselves!” Man is to worship his collective self, his own
humanity. “I am the Lord thy God,” the great idol says, “that brought
thee up out of animalism and savagery, and me only shalt thou
serve!--Love and faithful service to one’s kind, a holy passion for the
welfare of the race, for the relief of human ignorance and poverty and
pain, this is the true religion; and you need no other. Its obligation
is instinctive, its benefits immediate and palpable; and it gives a
consecration to individual life that dignifies and chastens, while it
calls into exercise all our faculties.”

Yes, we willingly admit, such human service is “religion pure and
undefiled, _before our God and Father_.” If service is rendered to our
kind as worship to the Father of men; if we reverence in each man the
image of God and the shrine of His Spirit; if we are seeking to cleanse
and adorn in men the temple where the Most High shall dwell, the
humblest work done for our fellows’ good is done for Him. The best human
charity is rendered for the love of God. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. This,” said Jesus, “is
the first and great commandment. And the second is _like unto it_: Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all
the law and the prophets.” On these two hangs the welfare of men and
nations.

But the first commandment must come first. The second law of Jesus never
has been or will be kept to purpose without the first. Humanitarian
sentiments, dreams of universal brotherhood, projects of social reform,
may seem for the moment to gain by their independence of religion a
certain zest and emphasis; but they are without root and vitality. Their
energy fails, or spends itself in revolt; their glow declines, their
purity is stained. The leaders and first enthusiasts trained in the
school of Christ, whose spirit, in vain repudiated, lives on in them,
find themselves betrayed and alone. The coarse selfishness and
materialism of the human heart win an easy triumph over a visionary
altruism. “Without me,” says Jesus Christ, “ye can do nothing.”

In the light of God’s glory man learns to reverence his nature and
understand the vocation of his race. The love of God touches the deep
and enduring springs of human action. The kingdom of Christ and of God
commands an absolute devotion; its service inspires unfaltering courage
and invincible patience. There is a grandeur and a certainty, of which
the noblest secular aims fall short, in the hopes of those who are
striving together for the faith of the gospel, and who work to build
human life into a dwelling-place for God.

II. God’s temple in the Church of Jesus Christ, while it is one, is also
manifold. “In whom _each several building_ [or _every part of the
building_[91]], while it is compacted together, grows into a holy temple
in the Lord.”

The image is that of an extensive pile of buildings, such as the ancient
temples commonly were, in process of construction at different points
over a wide area. The builders work in concert, upon a common plan. The
several parts of the work are adjusted to each other; and the various
operations in process are so harmonized, that the entire construction
preserves the unity of the architect’s design. Such an edifice was the
apostolic Church--one, but of many parts--in its diverse gifts and
multiplied activities animated by one Spirit and directed towards one
Divine purpose.

Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome--what a various scene of
activity these centres of Christian life presented! The Churches
founded in these great cities must have differed in many features. Even
in the communities of his own province the apostle did not, so far as we
can judge, impose a uniform administration. St Peter and St Paul carried
out their plans independently, only maintaining a general understanding
with each other. The apostolic founders, inspired by one and the
self-same Spirit, could labour at a distance, upon material and by
methods extremely various, with entire confidence in each other and with
an assurance of the unity of result which their teaching and
administration would exhibit. The many buildings rested on the one
foundation of the apostles. “Whether it were I or they,” says our
apostle, “so we preach, and so you believed.” Where there is the same
Spirit and the same Lord, men do not need to be scrupulous about visible
conformity. Elasticity and individual initiative admit of entire harmony
of principle. The hand may do its work without irritating and
obstructing the eye; and the foot run on its errands without mistrusting
the ear.

Such was the catholicism of the apostolic age. The true reading of verse
21, as it is restored by the Revisers, is an incidental witness to the
date of the epistle. A churchman of the second century, writing under
Paul’s name in the interests of catholic unity as it was then
understood, would scarcely have penned such a sentence without attaching
to the subject the definite article: he must have written “all the
building,” as the copyists from whom the received text proceeds very
naturally have done. From that time onwards, as the system of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy was developed, external unity was more and more
strictly imposed. The original “diversity of operations” became a rigid
uniformity. The Church swallowed up the Churches. Finally, the spiritual
bureaucracy of Rome gathered all ecclesiastical power into one centre,
and placed the direction of Western Christendom in the hands of a single
priest, whom it declared to be the Vicar of Jesus Christ and endowed
with the Divine attribute of infallibility.

Had not Jerusalem been overthrown and its Church destroyed, the
hierarchical movement would probably have made that city, rather than
Rome, its centre. This was in fact the tendency, if not the express
purpose of the Judaistic party in the Church. St Paul had vindicated in
his earlier epistles the freedom of the Gentile Christian communities,
and their right of non-conformity to Jewish usage. In the words “each
several building, fitly framed together,” there is an echo of this
controversy. The Churches of his mission claim a standing side by side
with those founded by other apostles. For himself and his Gentile
brethren he seems to say, in the presence of the primitive Church and
its leaders: “As they are Christ’s, so also are we.”

The co-operation of the different parts of the body of Christ is
essential to their collective growth. Let all Churches beware of
crushing dissent. Blows aimed at our Christian neighbours recoil upon
ourselves. Undermining their foundation, we shake our own. Next to
positive corruption of doctrine and life, nothing hinders so greatly the
progress of the kingdom of God as the claim to exclusive legitimacy made
on behalf of ancient Church organizations. Their representatives would
have every part of God’s temple framed upon one pattern. They refuse a
place on the apostolic foundation to all Churches, however numerous,
however rich in faith and good works, however strong the historical
justification for their existence, however clear the marks they bear of
the Spirit’s seal, which do not conform to the rule they themselves have
received. Their rites and ministry, they assert, are those alone
approved by Christ and authorized by His apostles, within a given area.
They refuse the right hand of fellowship to men who are doing Christ’s
work by their side; they isolate their flocks, as far as possible, from
intercourse with the Christian communities around them.

This policy on the part of any Christian Church, or Church party, is
contrary to the mind of Christ and to the example of His apostles. Those
who hold aloof from the comity of the Churches and prevent the many
buildings of God’s temple being fitly framed together, must bear their
judgement, whosoever they be. They prefer conquest to peace, but that
conquest they will never win; it would be fatal to themselves. Let the
elder sister frankly allow the birthright of the younger sisters of
Christ’s house in these lands, and be our example in justice and in
charity. Great will be her honour; great the glory won for our common
Lord.

“Every building fitly framed together _groweth into a holy temple_ in
the Lord.” The subject is distributive; the predicate collective. The
parts give place to the whole in the writer’s mind. As each several
piece of the structure, each cell or chapel in the temple, spreads out
to join its companion buildings and adjusts itself to the parts around
it, the edifice grows into a richer completeness and becomes more fit
for its sacred purpose. The separate buildings, distant in place or
historical character, approximate by extension, as they spread over the
unoccupied ground between them and as the connecting links are
multiplied. At last a point is reached at which they will become
continuous. Growing into each other step by step and forming across the
diminishing distance a web of mutual attachment constantly thickening,
they will insensibly, by a natural and vital growth, become one in
visible communion as they are one in their underlying faith.

When each organ of the body in its own degree is perfect and holds its
place in keeping with the rest, we think no longer of their individual
perfection, of the charm of this feature or of that; they are forgotten
in the beauty of the perfect frame. So it will be in the body of Christ,
when its several communions, cleansed and filled with His Spirit, each
honouring the vocation of the others, shall in freedom and in love by a
spontaneous movement be gathered into one. Their strength will then be
no longer weakened and their spirit chafed by internal conflict. With
united forces and irresistible energy, they will assail the kingdom of
darkness and subjugate the world to Christ.

For this consummation our Saviour prayed in the last hours before His
death: “that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me and I in
Thee, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that Thou
didst send me” (John xvii. 21). Did He fear that His little flock of the
Twelve would be parted by dissensions? Or did He not look onward to the
future, and see the “offences that must come,” the alienations and
fierce conflicts that would arise amongst His people, and the blood that
would be shed in His name? Yet beyond these divisions, on the horizon of
the end of the age, He foresaw the day when the wounds of His Church
would be healed, when the sword that He had brought on the earth would
be sheathed, and through the unity of faith and love in His people all
mankind would at last come to acknowledge Him and the Father who had
sent Him.

III. To appearance, we are many rather than one who bear the name of
Christ. But we are one notwithstanding, if below the variety of
superstructure our faith rests upon the witness of the apostles, and the
several buildings have Christ Jesus Himself for chief corner-stone. The
_one foundation_ and the _one Spirit_ constitute the unity of God’s
temple in the Church.

“The apostles and prophets” are named as a single body, _the prophets_
being doubtless, in this passage and in chapters iii. 5 and iv. 11, the
existing prophets of the apostolic Church, whose inspired teaching
supplemented that of the apostles and helped to lay down the foundation
of revealed truth. That foundation has been, through the providence of
God, preserved for later ages in the Scriptures of the New Testament, on
which the faith of Christians has rested ever since. Such a prophet
Barnabas was in the first days (Acts xiii. 1), and such was the unknown,
but deeply inspired writer of the epistle to the Hebrews; such prophets,
again, were SS. Mark and Luke, the Evangelists. Prophecy was not a
stated gift of office. Just as there were “teachers” in the early Church
whose knowledge and eloquence did not entitle them to bear rule, so
prophecy was frequently exercised by private persons and carried with it
no such official authority as belonged in the highest degree to the
apostles.

It is thought surprising that St Paul should write thus, in so general
and distant a fashion, of the order to which he belonged (comp. iii. 5).
This, it is said, is the language of a later generation, which looks
back with reverence to the inspired Founders. But this letter is
written, as we observed at the outset, from a peculiarly objective and
impersonal standpoint. It differs in this respect from other epistles of
St Paul. He is addressing a number of Churches, with some of which his
personal relations were slight and distant. He is contemplating the
Church in its most general character. He is not the only founder of
Churches; he is one of a band of colleagues, working in different
regions. It is natural that he should use the plural here. He sets his
successors an example of the recognition due to fellow-labourers whose
work bears the seal of Christ’s Spirit.

These men have laid _the foundation_--Peter and Paul, John and James,
Barnabas and Silas, and the rest. They are our spiritual progenitors,
the fathers of our faith. We see Jesus Christ through their eyes; we
read His teaching, and catch His Spirit in their words. Their testimony,
in its essential facts, stands secure in the confidence of mankind. Nor
was it their word alone, but the men themselves--their character, their
life and work--laid for the Church its historical foundation. This
“glorious company of the apostles” formed the first course in the new
building, on whose firmness and strength the stability of the entire
structure depends. Their virtues and their sufferings, as well as the
revelations made through them, have guided the thoughts and shaped the
life of countless multitudes of men, of the best and wisest men in all
ages since. They have fixed the standard of Christian doctrine and the
type of Christian character. At our best, we are but imitators of them
as they were of Christ.

In regard to the chief part of their teaching, both as to its meaning
and authority, the great bulk of Christians in all communions are
agreed. The keen disputes which engage us upon certain points, testify
to the cardinal importance which is felt on all hands to attach to the
words of Christ’s chosen apostles. Their living witness is in our midst.
The self-same Spirit that wrought in them, works amongst men and dwells
in the communion of saints. He still reveals the things of Christ, and
guides into truth the willing and obedient.

So “the firm foundation of God standeth”; though men, shaken themselves,
seem to see it tremble. On that basis we may labour confidently and
loyally, with those amongst whom the Master has placed us. Some of our
fellow-workmen disown and would hinder us: that shall not prevent us
from rejoicing in their good work, and admiring the gold and precious
stones that they contribute to the fabric. The Lord of the temple will
know how to use the labour of His many servants. He will forgive and
compose their strife, who are jealous for His name. He will shape their
narrow aims to His larger purposes. Out of their discords He will draw a
finer harmony. As the great house grows to its dimensions, as the
workmen by the extension of their labours come nearer to each other and
their sectional plans merge in Christ’s great purpose, reproaches will
cease and misunderstandings vanish. Over many who followed not with us
and whom we counted but as “strangers and sojourners,” as men whose
place within the walls of Zion was doubtful and unauthorized, we shall
hereafter rejoice with a joy not unmixed with self-upbraiding, to find
them in the fullest right our fellow-citizens amongst the saints and of
the household of God.

The Holy Spirit is the supreme Builder of the Church, as He is the
supreme witness to Jesus Christ (John xv. 26, 27). The words _in the
Spirit_, closing the verse with solemn emphasis, denote not the mode of
God’s habitation--that is self-evident--but the agency engaged in
building this new house of God. With one “chief corner-stone” to rest
upon and one Spirit to inspire and control them, the apostles and
prophets laid their foundation and the Church was “builded together” for
a habitation of God. Hence its unity. But for this sovereign influence
the primitive founders of Christianity, like later Church leaders, would
have fallen into fatal discord. Modern critics, reasoning upon natural
grounds and not understanding the grace of the Holy Spirit, assume that
they did thus quarrel and contend. Had this been so, no foundation could
ever have been laid; the Church would have fallen to pieces at the very
beginning.

In the hands of these faithful and wise stewards of God’s dispensation,
“the stone which the builders rejected was made the head of the corner.”
Their work has been tried by fire and by flood; and it abides. The rock
of Zion stands unworn by time, unshaken by the conflict of ages,--amidst
the movements of history and the shifting currents of thought the one
foundation for the peace and true welfare of mankind.

FOOTNOTES:

[91] Πᾶσα οἰκοδομή, according to the well-established critical reading.
For πᾶς without the article, implying a various whole, compare πάσης
κτίσεως in Col. i. 15; πᾶσα γραφή, 2 Tim. iii. 16; ἐν πάσῃ ἀναστροφῇ, 1
Peter i. 15; and Θεὸς πάσης χάριτος, 1 Peter v. 10.




CHAPTER XII.

_THE SECRET OF THE AGES._

    “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of
    you Gentiles,--if so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of
    that grace of God which was given me toward you; how that by
    revelation was made known unto me the mystery (as I wrote afore in
    few words, whereby, when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding
    in the mystery of Christ), which in other generations was not made
    known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed unto His
    holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; _to wit_, that the
    Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and
    fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,
    whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of that grace
    of God which was given me according to the working of His power.
    Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace
    given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of
    Christ; and to bring to light what is the dispensation of the
    mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God who created all
    things.”--EPH. iii. 1-9.


Verses 2-13 are in form a parenthesis. They interrupt the prayer which
appears to be commencing in the first verse and is not resumed until
verse 14. This intervening period is parenthetical, however, in
appearance more than in reality. The matter it contains is so weighty
and so essential to the argument and structure of the epistle, that it
is impossible to treat it as a mere _aside_. The writer intends, at the
pause which occurs after the paragraph just concluded (ii. 22), to
interpose a few words of prayer before passing on to the next topic.
But in the act of doing so, this subject of which his mind is
full--viz., that of his own relation to God’s great purpose for
mankind--forces itself upon him; and the prayer that was on his lips is
pent up for a few moments longer, until it flows forth again, in richer
measure, in verses 14-19.

Like chapter i. 3-14, this passage is an extreme instance of St Paul’s
amorphous style. His sentences are not composed; they are spun in a
continuous thread, an endless chain of prepositional, participial, and
relative adjuncts. They grow under our eyes like living things, putting
forth new processes every moment, now in this and now in that direction.
Within the main parenthesis we soon come upon another parenthesis
including verses 3_b_ and 4 (“as I wrote afore,” etc.); and at several
points the grammatical connexion is uncertain. In its general scope,
this intricate sentence resolves itself into a statement of _what God
has wrought in the apostle_ toward the accomplishment of His great plan.
It thus completes the exposition given already of that which _God
wrought in Christ for the Church_, and that which _He has wrought
through Christ in Gentile believers_ in fulfilment of the same end.

       *       *       *       *       *

Verses 1-9 speak (1) of the mystery itself--God’s gracious intention
toward the human race, unknown in earlier times; and (2) of the man to
whom, above others, it was given to make known the secret.

I. _The mystery_ is defined twice over. First, it consists in the fact
that “in Christ Jesus through the gospel the Gentiles are co-heirs and
co-incorporate and co-partners in the promise” (ver. 6); and secondly,
it is “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (ver. 8). The latter phrase
gathers to a point what is diversely expressed in the former.

Christ is, to St Paul, the centre and the sum of the mysteries of Divine
truth, of the whole enigma of existence. In the parallel epistle he
calls Him “the mystery of God--in whom are all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge hidden” (Col. ii. 2, 3: R.V.). The mystery of God,
discovered in Christ, was hidden out of the sight and reach of previous
times. Now, by the preaching of the gospel, it is made the common
property of mankind (Col. i. 25-28).

In close connexion with these statements, St Paul speaks there, as he
does here, of his own heavy sufferings endured on this account and the
joy they gave him. He is the instrument of a glorious purpose worthy of
God; he is the mouthpiece of a revelation waiting to be spoken since the
world began, that is addressed to all mankind and interests heaven along
with earth. The greatness of his office is commensurate with the
greatness of the truth given him to announce.

The mystery, as we have said, consists in _Christ_. This we learned from
chapter i. 4, 5, and 9, 10. In Christ the Eternal lodged His purpose and
laid His plans for the world. It is His fulness that the fulness of the
times dispenses. The Old Testament, the reservoir of previous
revelation, had Him for its close-kept secret, “held in silence through
eternal times” (Rom. xvi. 25-27). The drift of its prophecies, the focus
of its converging lights, the veiled magnet towards which its spiritual
indications pointed, was “Christ.” He “was the spiritual rock that
followed” Israel in its wanderings, from whose springs the people
drank, as it answered to the touch of one and now another of the holy
men of old. The revelation of Jesus Christ gives unity, substance, and
meaning to the history of Israel, which is otherwise a pathway without
goal, a problem without solution. Priest and prophet, law and sacrifice;
the kingly Son of David, and the suffering Servant of Jehovah; the Seed
of the woman with bruised foot bruising the serpent’s head; the Lord
whom His people seek, suddenly coming to His temple; the Stone hewn from
the mountains without hands, that grows till it fills the earth--the
manifold representations of Israel’s ideal, centre in the Lord Jesus
Christ. The lines of the great figure drawn on the canvas of
prophecy--disconnected as they seemed and without a plan, giving rise to
a thousand dreams and speculations--are filled out and drawn into shape
and take life and substance in Him. They are found to be parts of a
consistent whole, sketches and studies of this fragment or of that
belonging to the consummate Person and the comprehensive plan manifest
in the revelation of Jesus Christ.

But while Christ gathers into Himself the accumulated wealth of former
revelation, His fulness is not measured thereby or exhausted. He solves
the problems of the past; He unseals the ancient mysteries. But He
creates new and deeper problems, some explained in the continued
teaching of His Spirit and His providence, others that remain, or emerge
from time to time to tax the faith and understanding of His Church.
There are the mysteries surrounding His own Person, with which the Greek
Church struggled long--His eternal Sonship, His pre-incarnate relation
to mankind and the creatures, the final outcome of the mediatorial reign
and its subordination to the absolute sovereignty of God. These depths
St Paul sounded with his plummet; but he found them unfathomable.
Theological science has explored and defined them, and illuminated them
on many sides, but cannot reach to their inmost mystery. Then there is
the problem of the atonement, with all the cognate difficulties touching
the origin of sin, its heredity and its personal guilt, touching the
adjustment of law and grace, the method of justification, the extent and
efficacy of Christ’s redeeming work, touching the future destiny and
eternal state of souls. Another class of questions largely occupies the
minds of thoughtful men to-day. They are studying the relation of Christ
and His Church to nature and the outward world, the bearings of
Christian truth upon social conditions, the working of the Spirit of God
in communities, and the place of man’s collective life in the progress
and upbuilding of the kingdom of Christ.

For such inquiries the Spirit of wisdom and revelation is given to those
who humbly seek His light. He is given afresh in every age. Out of
Christ’s unsearchable riches ever-new resources are forthcoming at His
Church’s need, new treasures lying hidden in the old for him who can
extract them. But His riches, however far they are investigated, remain
unsearchable, and inexhaustible however largely drawn upon. God’s ways
may be tracked further and further in each generation; they will remain
to the end, as they were to the mind of Paul at the limit of his bold
researches, “past finding out.” The inspired apostle confesses himself a
child in Divine learning: “We know in part,” he says, “we prophesy in
part.” Oh the depths of “hidden wisdom” unimagined now, that are in
store for us in Christ, “foreordained before the worlds unto our
glory!”

The particular aspect of the mystery of Christ with which the apostle is
concerned, is that of His relationship to the Gentile world. “The grace
of God,” he says in verse 2, “was given me _for you_.” Such is “the
dispensation” in which God is now engaged. Upon this lavish and
undreamed-of scale He is dealing forth salvation to men. St Paul
describes this revelation of God’s goodness to the Gentiles by three
parallel but distinct terms in verse 6. They “are fellow-heirs”--a word
that carries us back to chapter i. 11-13, and assures the Gentile
readers of their final redemption and heavenly glory.[92] They “are of
the same body”--which sums up all that we have learnt from chapter ii.
11-22. And they “are fellow-partakers of the promise”--receiving upon a
footing of equal privilege with Jewish believers the gift of the Spirit
and the blessings promised to Israel in the Messianic kingdom.

In virtue of the dispensation committed to him, St Paul formally
proclaims the incorporation of the Gentiles into the body of Christ,
their investiture with the franchise of faith. The forgiveness of sins
is theirs, the light of God’s smile, the breath of His Spirit, the
worship and fellowship of His Church, the tasks and honours of His
service. The incarnation of Christ is theirs; His life, teaching, and
miracles; His cross is theirs, His resurrection and ascension, and His
second coming, and the glories of His heavenly kingdom--all made their
own on the bare condition of a penitent and obedient faith. The past is
theirs--is ours, along with the present and the future. The God of
Israel is our God. Abraham is our father, though his sons after the
flesh acknowledge us not. Their prophets prophesied of the grace that
should come unto us. Their poets sing the songs of Zion to Gentile
peoples in a hundred tongues. They lead our prayers and praises. In
their words we find expression for our heart-griefs and joys. At the
wedding-feast or by the grave-side, amidst “the multitude that keep holy
day” and in “dry lands” where the soul thirsts for God’s ordinances, we
carry the Psalmists with us and the teachers of Israel.

What a boundless wealth we Gentiles, taught by Jesus Christ, have
discovered in the Jewish Bible! When will the Jewish people understand
that their greatness is in Him, that the light which lightens the
Gentiles is their true glory? When will they accept their part in the
riches of which they have made all the world partakers? The mystery of
our participation in their Christ has now been “revealed to the sons of
men” long enough. Is it not time that they themselves should see it,
that the veil should be lifted from the heart of Israel? The disclosure
was in the first instance so astounding, so contrary to their cherished
expectations, that one can scarcely wonder if it was at first rejected.
But God the King of the ages has been asserting and re-asserting the
fact in the course of history ever since. How vain to fight against Him!
how useless to deny the victory of the Nazarene!

II. But there was in Israel an election of grace,--men of unveiled heart
to whom the mystery of ages was disclosed. “The secret of Jehovah is
with them that fear Him, and He will show them His covenant.” Such is
the rule of revelation. To the like effect Christ said: “The pure in
heart shall see God. He that willeth to do His will shall know of the
doctrine.”

The light of God’s universal love had come into the world; but where it
fell on cold or impure hearts, it shone in vain. The mystery “was made
manifest to His _saints_,” writes the apostle in Colossians i. 26. So in
this passage: “revealed to His _holy_ apostles and prophets in the
Spirit.” The pure eye sees the true light. This was the condition which
made it possible for Paul himself and his partners in the gospel to be
the bearers of this august revelation. It needed sincere and devoted
men, willing to be taught of God, willing to surrender every prejudice
and the preconceptions of flesh and blood, in order to receive and
convey to the world thoughts of God so much larger and loftier than the
thoughts of men. To such men--true disciples, loyal at all costs to God
and truth, holy and humble of heart--Jesus Christ gave His great
commission and bade them “go and make disciples of all the nations.”

The secret was further disclosed to Peter, when he was taught at the
house of Cornelius “not to call any man common or unclean.” He saw, and
the Church of Jerusalem saw and confessed that God “gave the like gift”
to uncircumcised Gentiles as to themselves and had “purified their
hearts by faith.” Many prophetic voices, unrecorded, confirmed this
revelation. Of all this Paul is thinking here. It is to his predecessors
in the knowledge of the truth rather than to himself that he refers when
he speaks of “holy apostles and prophets” in verse 5. His readers would
naturally turn to them in coming to this plural expression. The original
apostles of Jesus and witnesses of His truth first attested the doctrine
of universal grace; and that they did so was a fact of vital importance
to Paul and the Gentile Church. The significance of this fact is shown
by the stress which is laid upon it and the prominence given to it in
the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles.

The apostle frequently alludes to revelations made to himself; he never
claims that this chief matter was _revealed_ personally to himself. It
was an open secret when Saul entered the Church. “Whereof,” he says, in
verse 7, “I _became minister_”; again, “to me was this grace given, to
_preach to the Gentiles_ Christ’s unsearchable riches.” The leaders of
the Jewish Christian Church knew well that their message was meant for
all the world. But the abstract knowledge of a truth is one thing; the
practical power to realize it is another. Until the new apostle came
upon the field, there was no man ready for this great task and equal to
it. It was at this crisis that Paul was raised up. Then “it pleased God
to reveal His Son” in him, that he might “preach Him among the
Gentiles.”

The effect of this summons upon Paul himself was overwhelming, and
continued to be so till the end of life. The immense favour humbles him
to the dust. He strains language, heaping comparative upon superlative,
to describe his astonishment as the import of his mission unfolds
itself: “To me, less than the least of all the saints, was this grace
given.” That Saul the Pharisee and the persecutor, the most unworthy and
most unlikely of men, should be the chosen vessel to bear Christ’s
riches to the Gentile world, how shall he sufficiently give thanks for
this! how express his wonder at the unfathomable wisdom and goodness
that the choice displays in the mind of God! But we can see well that
this choice was precisely the fittest. A Hebrew of the Hebrews, steeped
in Jewish traditions and glorying in his sacred ancestry, none knew
better than the apostle Paul how rich were the treasures stored in the
house of Abraham that he had to make over to the Gentiles. A true son of
that house, he was the fittest to lead in the aliens, to show them its
precious things and make them at home within its walls.

To himself the office was an unceasing delight. The universalism of the
gospel--a commonplace of our modern rhetoric--had burst upon his mind in
its unspoilt freshness and undimmed splendour. He is sailing out into an
undiscovered ocean, with a boundless horizon. A new heaven and earth are
opened to him in the revelation that the Gentiles are partakers of the
promise in Christ Jesus. He is entranced, as he writes, with the
largeness of the Divine purpose, with the magnificent sweep and scope of
the designs of grace. These verses give us the warm and genuine
impression made upon the hearts of its first recipients by the
disclosure of the universal destination of the gospel of Christ.

St Paul’s work, in carrying out the dispensation of this mystery, was
twofold. It was both external and internal. He was a “herald and
apostle”; he was also “teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth” (1
Tim. ii. 7). He had in the former capacity to carry the good tidings
from one end to the other of the Roman empire, to spread it abroad as
far as his feet could travel and his voice reach, and thus “to fulfil
the gospel of Christ.” But there was another, mental task, as necessary
and still more difficult, which likewise fell to his lot. He had to
_think out_ the gospel. It was his office to unfold and apply it to the
wants of a new world, to solve by its aid the problems that confronted
him as evangelist and pastor,--questions that contained the seed and
beginning of the intellectual difficulties of the Church in future
times. He had to free the gospel from the swaddling-bands of Judaism,
to emancipate the spirit from the letter of a mechanical and legal
interpretation. On the other hand, he had equally to guard the truth as
it is in Jesus from the dissolving influences of Gentile scepticism and
theosophy. Fighting his way through fierce and incessant opposition on
both sides, the apostle Paul led the mind of the Church onwards and
guides it still in the faith and knowledge of the Son of God. These
noble epistles are the fruit and record of St Paul’s theological work.
Through them he has left a deeper mark on the conscience of the world
than any one man besides, except the Master of truth who was more than
man.

The apostle was not unaware of the vast influence he now possessed, and
that must accrue to him in the future from the transcendent interest of
the doctrines committed to his charge. There is no false modesty about
this splendidly gifted man. It is his not only to “preach to the
Gentiles the good news of Christ’s unsearchable riches”; but more than
that, “to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery that
has been hidden away from the ages in God who created all things.” The
great secret was out while Saul of Tarsus was still a persecutor and
blasphemer. But as to the _management_ and _dispensation_ of the
mystery, the practical handling of it, as to the mode and way in which
God would convey and apply it to the world at large, and as to the
bearings and consequences of this momentous truth,--the apostle Paul,
and no one but he, had all this to expound and set in order. He was, in
fact, the architect of Christian doctrine.

Theologically, Peter and John himself were Paul’s debtors; and are
included amongst the “all men” of verse 9 (if this reading of the text
is correct). St John had, it is true, a more direct intuition into the
mind of Christ and rose to an even loftier height of contemplation; but
the labours and the logic of St Paul provided the field into which he
entered in his ripe old age spent at Ephesus. John, who absorbed and
assimilated everything that belonged to Christ and found for everything
its principle and centre in the Master of his youth--“the way, the
truth, and the life”--passed through the school of Paul. With the rest,
he learnt through the new apostle to see more perfectly “what is the
dispensation of the mystery hidden from the ages in God.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Well persuaded is our apostle that all readers of this letter in the
Asian towns, if they have not known it before, will now “perceive” his
“understanding in the mystery of Christ.” All ages have discerned it
since. And the ages to come will measure its value better than we can do
now.

FOOTNOTES:

[92] See Gal. iii. 7, v. 5; Rom. viii. 14-25; 1 Peter i. 4, 5.




CHAPTER XIII.

_EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN._

    “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the
    heavenly _places_ might be made known through the Church the
    manifold wisdom of God, according to the purpose of the ages which
    He formed in the Christ, _even_ Jesus our Lord: in whom we have
    boldness and access in confidence through our faith in Him.
    Wherefore I ask that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which
    are your glory.”--EPH. iii. 10-13.


_The mystery hidden since the ages began, in God who created all
things_: so the last paragraph concluded. The added phrase “through
Jesus Christ” is a comment of the pious reader, that has been
incorporated in the received text; but it is wanting in the oldest
copies, and is out of place. The apostle is not concerned with the
prerogatives of Christ, but with the scope of the Christian economy. He
is displaying the breadth and grandeur of the dispensation of grace, the
infinite range of the Divine plans and operations of which it forms the
centre. Its secret was cherished in the Eternal Mind. Its foundations
are laid in the very basis of the world. And the disclosure of it now
being made brings new light and wisdom to the powers of the celestial
realms.

“There is nothing covered,” said Jesus, “which shall not be revealed,
and hidden which shall not be known.” The mysteries which God sets
before His intelligent creatures, are promises of knowledge; they are
drafts, to be honoured in due time, upon the treasures of wisdom hidden
in Christ. So this great secret of the destiny of the Gentile world was
“from all ages hidden, in order that now through the Church it might be
made known,” and by its means God’s wisdom, to these sublime
intelligences. This intention was a part of the “plan of the ages”
formed in Christ (ver. 11). God designed by our redemption to bless
higher races along with our own. The elder sons of God, those “morning
stars” of creation, are schooled and instructed by what is transpiring
here upon earth.

To some this will appear to be mere extravagance. They see in such
expressions the marks of an unrestrained enthusiasm, of theological
speculation pushed beyond its limits and unchecked by any just knowledge
of the physical universe. This censure would be plausible and it might
seem that the apostle had extended the mission of the gospel beyond its
province, were it not for what he says in verse 11: This “purpose of the
ages” God “made in _the Christ_, even _Jesus our Lord_.” Jesus Christ
links together angels and men. He draws after Him to earth the eyes of
heaven. Christ’s coming to this world and identification with it unite
to it enduringly the great worlds above us. The scenes enacted upon this
planet and the events of its religious history have sent their shock
through the universe. The incarnation of the Son of God gives to human
life a boundless interest and significance. It is idle to oppose to this
conviction the fact of the littleness of the terrestrial globe.
Spiritual and physical magnitudes are incommensurable. You cannot
measure a man’s soul by the size of his dwelling-house. Science teaches
us that the most powerful forces may exist and operate within the
narrowest space. A microscopic cell may contain the potential life of a
world. If our earth is but a grain of sand to the astronomer, it has
been the home of Godhead. It is the world for which God spared not to
give His own Son!

Here, then, lies the centre of the apostle’s thoughts in this paragraph:
_God’s all-comprehending purpose in Christ_. The magnitude and
completeness of this plan are indicated by the fact that it embraces in
its purview _the angelic powers and their enlightenment_. So
understanding it, our _human faith gains confidence and courage_ (vv.
12, 13).

       *       *       *       *       *

I. The textual critics restore the definite article which later copyists
had dropped before the word _Christ_ in verse 11. We have already
remarked the frequency of “the Christ” in this epistle.[93] Once besides
this peculiar combination of the names of our Saviour occurs--in
Colossians ii. 6, where Lightfoot renders it _the Christ, even Jesus the
Lord_. So it should be rendered in this place. St Paul sets forth the
purpose of “God who created all things.” He is looking back through “the
ages” during which the Divine plan was kept secret. God was all the time
designing His work of mercy, pointing meanwhile the hopes of men by
token and promise to the Coming One. The Messiah was the burden of those
prophetic ages. That inscrutable Christ of the Old Testament, the veiled
mystery of Jewish hope, stands manifested before us and challenges our
faith in the glorious person of “Jesus our Lord.” This singular turn of
expression identifies the ideal and the real, the promise and
fulfilment, the dream of Old Testament prophecy and the fact of New
Testament history. For Jesus our Lord is the very Christ to whom the
generations before His coming looked forward out of their twilight with
wistful expectancy.

Not without meaning is He called “Jesus _our Lord_.” The “principalities
and powers” of the heavenly places are in our view (ver. 10). These
potentates some of the Asian Christians were fain to worship. “See ye do
it not,” Paul seems to say. “Jesus, the Christ of God, is alone our
Lord; not these. He is our Lord _and theirs_ (i. 21, 22). As our Lord He
commands their homage, and gives them lessons through His Church in
God’s deep counsels.” Everything that the apostle says tends to exalt
our Redeemer and to enhance our confidence in Him. His position is
central and supreme, in regard alike to the ages of time and the powers
of the universe. In His hand is the key to all mysteries. He is the
Alpha and Omega, the beginning, middle, and end of God’s ways. He is the
centre of Israel, Israel of the world and the human ages; while the
world of men is bound through Him to the higher spheres of being, over
which He too presides.

There is a splendid intellectual courage, an incredible boldness and
reach of thought in St Paul’s conception of the sovereignty of Christ.
Remember that He of whom these things are said, but thirty years before
died a felon’s death in the sight of the Jewish people. It is not _our_
Lord Jesus Christ, whose name is hallowed by the lips of millions and
glorified by the triumphs of centuries upon centuries past, but the
Nazarene with the obscurity of His life and the cruel shame of Calvary
fresh in the recollection of all men. With what immense force had the
facts of His glorification wrought upon men’s minds--His resurrection
and ascension, the witness of His Spirit and the virtue of His
gospel--for it to be possible to speak of Him thus, within a generation
of His death! While “the foolishness of preaching” such a Christ and the
weakness in which He was crucified were patent to all eyes, unrelieved
by the influence of time and the glamour of success, how was it that the
first believers raised Jesus to this limitless glory and dominion? It
was through the conviction, certified by outward fact and inward
experience, that “He liveth by the power of God.” Thus Peter on the day
of Pentecost: “By the right hand of God exalted, He hath shed forth this
which ye now see and hear.” The resurrection from the dead, the
demonstration of the Spirit proved Jesus Christ to be that which He had
claimed to be, the Saviour of men and the eternal Son of God.

The supremacy here assigned to Christ is a consequence of the exaltation
described at the close of the first chapter. There we see the height,
here the breadth and length of His dominion. If He is raised from the
grave so high that all created powers and names are beneath His feet, we
cannot wonder that the past ages were employed in preparing His way,
that the basis of His throne lies in the foundation of the world.

II. The universe is one. There is a solidarity of rational and moral
interests amongst all intelligences. Granting the existence of such
beings as the angels of Scripture, we should expect them to be
profoundly concerned in the redeeming work of Christ. They are the
“watchers” and “holy ones” spoken of by the later Isaiah and Daniel,
whom the Lord has “set upon the walls of Jerusalem” and who survey the
affairs of nations. Such was “the angel who talked” with Zechariah in
his vision, and whom the prophet overheard pleading for Jerusalem. In
the Apocalypse, again, we find the angels acting as God’s unseen
executive. We decline to believe that these superhuman creatures are
nothing more than apocalyptic machinery, that they are creations of
fancy employed to give a livelier aspect to spiritual truth. “Cannot I
pray to my Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve
legions of angels?” So Jesus said, in the most solemn hour of His life.
And who can forget His tender words concerning the little children,
whose “angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven”?

The apostle Paul, who denounces “worship of the angels” in the fellow
epistle to this, earnestly believed in their existence and their
interest in human affairs. If he did not write the words of Hebrews i.
14, he certainly held that “they are ministering spirits sent forth to
do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation.” Most
clearly is their relationship to the Church affirmed by the words of the
revealing angel to the apostle John: “I am a fellow-servant with thee
and with thy brethren the prophets, and with them that keep the words of
this book.”

Christ’s service is the high school of wisdom for the universe. These
princes of heaven win by their ministry to Christ and His Church a great
reward. Their intelligence, however lofty its range, is finite. Their
keen and burning intuition could not penetrate the mystery of God’s
intentions toward this world. The revelations of the latter days--the
incarnation, the cross, the publication of the gospel, the outpouring
of the Spirit--were full of surprises to the heavenly watchers. They
sang at Bethlehem; they hid their faces and shrouded heaven in blackness
at the sight of Calvary. They bent down with eager observation and
searching thought “desiring to look into” the things made known to men
(1 Peter i. 12),--close and sympathetic students of the Church’s
history. The apostle felt that there were other eyes bent upon him than
those of his fellow-men, and that he was acting in a grander arena than
the visible world. “We are a spectacle,” he says, “_to angels_ and to
men.” So he enjoins faithfulness on Timothy, and with Timothy on all who
bear the charge of the gospel, “before God and Christ Jesus, and the
elect angels.” What is public opinion, what the applause or derision of
the crowd, to him who lives and acts in the presence of these august
spectators?

“Through the Church,” we are told, the angels of God are “now” having
His “manifold wisdom made known” to them. It is not from the abstract
scheme of salvation, from the theory or theology of the Church that they
get this education, but through the living Church herself. The Saviour’s
mission to earth created a problem for them, the development of which
they follow with the most intense and sympathetic interest. With what
solicitude they watch the conflict between good and evil and the varying
progress of Christ’s kingdom amongst men! Many things, doubtless, that
engage our attention and fill a large space in our Church records, are
of little account with them; and much that passes in obscurity, names
and deeds unchronicled by fame, are written in heaven and pondered in
other spheres. No brave and true blow is struck in Christ’s battle, but
it has the admiration of these high spectators. No advance is made in
character and habit, in Christian intelligence and efficiency and the
application of the gospel to human need, but they notice and approve.
When the cause of the Church and the salvation of mankind go forward,
when righteousness and peace triumph, the morning stars sing together
and the sons of God shout for joy. The joy that there is in the presence
of the angels of God over the repenting sinner, is not the joy of
sympathy or pity only; it is the delight of growing wisdom, of deepening
insight into the ways of God, into the heart of the Father and the love
that passes knowledge.

One would suppose from what the apostle hints, that our world presents a
problem unique in the kingdom of God, one which raises questions more
complicated and crucial than have elsewhere arisen. The heavenly
princedoms are learning through the Church “the _manifold_ wisdom of
God.” His love, in its pure essence, those happy and godlike beings
know. They have lived for ages in its unclouded light. His power and
skill they may see displayed in proportions immensely grander than this
puny globe of ours presents. God’s justice, it may be, and the thunders
of His law have issued forth in other regions clothed with a splendour
of which the scenes of Sinai were but a faint emblem. It is in the
combination of the manifold principles of the Divine government that the
peculiarity of the human problem appears to lie. The delicate and
continuous balancing of forces in God’s plan of dealing with this world,
the reconciliation of seeming incompatibilities, the issue found from
positions of hopeless contradiction, the accord of goodness with
severity, of inflexible rectitude and truth with fatherly compassion,
afford to the greatest minds of heaven a spectacle and a study
altogether wonderful. So amongst ourselves the child of a noble house,
reared in cultured ease and shielded from moral peril, in visiting the
homes of poverty in the crowded city finds a new world opened to him,
that can teach him Divine lessons if he has the heart to learn. His mind
is awakened, his sympathies enriched. He hears the world’s true voice,
“the still, sad music of humanity.” He measures the heights and depths
of man’s nature. A host of questions are thrust upon him, whose urgency
he had scarcely guessed; and wide ranges of truth are lighted up for
him, which before were distant and unreal. The highest have ever to
learn from the lowest in Christ’s school, the seeming-wise from the
simple; even the pure and good, from contact with the fallen whom they
seek to save.

And “the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places” are, it
seems, willing to learn from those below them. As they traced the course
of human history in those “eternal times” during which the mystery lay
wrapped in silence, the angel watchers were too wise to play the
sceptic, too cautious to criticize an unfinished plan and arraign a
justice they could not yet understand. With a dignified patience they
waited the uplifting of the curtain and the unravelling of the entangled
plot. They looked for the coming of the Promised One. So in due time
they witnessed and, for their reward, assisted in His manifestation.
With the same docility these high sharers of our theological inquiries
still wait to see the end of the Lord and to take their part in the
dénouement of the time-drama, in the revelation of the sons of God. Let
us copy their long patience. God has not made us to mock us. “What thou
knowest not now,” said the great Revealer, the Master of all mysteries,
to His disciple, “thou shalt know hereafter.”

These wise elder brothers of ours, rich in the lore of eternity, foresee
the things to come as we cannot do. They are far above the smoke and
dust of the earthly conflict. The doubts that shake the strongest souls
amongst us, the cries of the hour which confuse and deceive us, do not
trouble them. They behold us in our weakness, our fears and our
divisions; but they also look on Him who “sits expecting till His
enemies are made His footstool.” They see how calmly He sits, how
patiently expectant, while the sound of clashing arms and the rage and
tumult of the peoples go up from the earth. They mark the steadiness
with which through century after century, in spite of refluent waves,
the tide of mercy rises, and still rises on the shores of earth.
Thrones, systems, civilizations have gone down; one after another of the
powers that strove to crush or to corrupt Christ’s Church has
disappeared; and still the name of Jesus lives and spreads. It has
traversed every continent and sea; it stands at the head of the living
and moving forces of the world. Those who come nearest to the angelic
point of view, and judge of the progress of things not by the froth upon
the surface but by the trend of the deeper currents, are the most
confident for the future of our race. The kingdom of Satan will not fall
without a struggle--a last struggle, perhaps more furious than any in
the past--but it is doomed, and waning to its end. So far has the
kingdom of Christ advanced, so mightily does the word of God grow and
prevail in the earth, that faith may well assure itself of the promised
triumph. Soon we shall shout: “Alleluia! The Lord God Omnipotent
reigneth!”

III. Suddenly, according to his wont, the apostle drops down from the
heights of contemplation to the level of ordinary fact. He descends in
verse 12 from the thought of the eternal purpose and the education of
the angels to the struggling Church. The assurance of its life in the
Spirit corresponds to the grandeur of that Divine order to which it
belongs. “In whom,” he says--in this Christ, the revealed mystery of
ages past, the Teacher of angels and archangels--“we have our freedom
and confident access to God through faith in Him.”

If it be “Jesus our Lord” to whom these attributes belong, and He is not
ashamed of us, well may we draw near with _confidence_ to the Father,
unashamed in the presence of His holy angels. We have no need to be
abashed, if we approach the Divine Majesty with a true faith in Christ.
His name gives the sinner access to the holiest place. The cherubim
sheathe their swords of flame. The heavenly warders at this passport
open the golden gates. We “come unto Mount Sion, the city of the living
God, and to an innumerable company of angels.” Not one of these
mightinesses and ancient peers of heaven, not Gabriel or Michael
himself, would wish or dare to bar our entrance.

“We _have_ boldness and access,” says the apostle, as in chapter i. 7:
“We have redemption in His blood.” He insists upon the conscious fact.
This freedom of approach to God, this sonship of faith, is no hope or
dream of what may be; it is a present reality, a filial cry heard in a
multitude both of Gentile and Jewish hearts (comp. ii. 18).

This sentence exhibits the richness of synonyms characteristic of the
epistle. There is _boldness_ and _access_, _confidence_ as well as
_faith_. The three former terms Bengel nicely distinguishes: “libertatem
_oris_ in orando,” and “admissionem in fiducia _in re_, et
_corde_”--freedom of _speech_ (in prayer), of _status_, and of
_feeling_. The second word (as in chapter ii. 18 and Romans v. 2)
appears to be active rather than passive in its force, denoting
_admittance_ rather than _access_. So that while the former of the
parallel terms (_boldness_) describes the liberty with which the
new-born Church of the redeemed address themselves to God the Father and
the unchecked freedom of their petitions, the latter (_admittance_)
takes us back to the act of Christ by which He introduced us to the
Father’s presence and gave us the place of sons in the house. Being thus
admitted, we may come with confidence of heart, though we be less than
the least of saints. Accepted in the Beloved, we are within our right if
we say to the Father:--

    “Yet in Thy Son divinely great,
    We claim Thy providential care.
    Boldly we stand before Thy seat;
    Our Advocate hath placed us there!”

“Wherefore,” concludes the imprisoned apostle, “I beg you not to lose
heart at my afflictions for you.” Assuredly Paul did not pray that _he_
should not lose heart, as some interpret his meaning. But he knew how
his friends were fretting and wearying over his long captivity. Hence he
writes to the Philippians: “I would have you know that the things which
have happened to me have turned out rather to the furtherance of the
gospel.” Hence, too, he assures the Colossians earnestly of his joy in
suffering for their sake (ch. i. 24).

The Church was fearful for Paul’s life and distressed by his prolonged
sufferings. It missed his cheering presence and the inspiration of his
voice. But if the Church is so dear to God as the pages of this letter
show, and grounded in His eternal purposes, then let all friends of
Christ take courage. The ark freighted with such fortunes cannot sink.
St Paul is a martyr for Christ, and for Gentile Christendom! Every
stroke that falls upon him, every day added to the months of his
imprisonment helps to show the worth of the cause he has espoused and
gives to it increased lustre: “my afflictions for you, which are your
glory.”

Those that love him should _boast_ rather than grieve over his
afflictions. “We make our boast in you amongst the Churches of God,” he
wrote to the distressed Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 4), “for your patience
and faith in all your persecutions and afflictions”; so he would have
the Churches think of him. When good men suffer in a good cause, it is
not matter for pity and dread, but rather for a holy pride.

FOOTNOTES:

[93] See note on p. 47; also pp. 83, 189.




_PRAYER AND PRAISE._

CHAPTER iii. 14-21.

    Τὸ ὑπερέχον τῆς γνώσεως Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ Κυρίου μου.--PHIL. iii. 8.




CHAPTER XIV.

_THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST._

    “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every
    family in heaven and upon earth is named, that He would grant you,
    according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened
    with power through His Spirit in the inward man; that the Christ may
    dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted
    and grounded in love, may be strong to comprehend with all the
    saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.”--EPH.
    iii. 14-18.


In verse 14 the prayer is resumed which the apostle was about to offer
at the beginning of the chapter, when the current of his thoughts
carried him away. The supplication is offered “for this cause” (vv. 1,
14),--it arises out of the teaching of the preceding pages. Thinking of
all that God has wrought in the Christ, and has accomplished by means of
His gospel in multitudes of Gentiles as well as Jews, reconciling them
to Himself in one body and forming them together into a temple for His
Spirit, the apostle bows his knees before God on their behalf. So much
he had in mind, when at the end of the second chapter he was in act to
pray for the Asian Christians that they might be enabled to enter into
this far-reaching purpose. Other aspects of the great design of God rose
upon the writer’s mind before his prayer could find expression. He has
told us of his own part in disclosing it to the world, and of the
interest it excites amongst the dwellers in heavenly places,--thoughts
full of comfort for the Gentile believers troubled by his imprisonment
and continued sufferings. These further reflections add new meaning to
the “For this cause” repeated from verse 1.

The prayer which he offers here is no less remarkable and unique in his
epistles than the act of praise in chapter i. Addressing himself to God
as the Father of angels and of men, the apostle asks that He will endow
the readers in a manner corresponding to _the wealth of His glory_--in
other words, that the gifts He bestows may be worthy of the universal
Father, worthy of the august character in which God has now revealed
Himself to mankind. According to this measure, St Paul beseeches for the
Church, in the first instance, two gifts, which after all are
one,--viz., _the inward strength of the Holy Spirit_ (ver. 16), and _the
permanent indwelling of Christ_ (ver. 17). These gifts he asks on his
readers’ behalf with a view to their gaining two further blessings,
which are also one,--viz., _the power to understand the Divine plan_
(ver. 18) as it has been expounded in this letter, and so _to know the
love of Christ_ (ver. 19). Still, beyond these there rises in the
distance a further end for man and the Church: _the reception of the
entire fulness of God_. Human desire and thought thus reach their limit;
they grasp at the infinite.

In this Chapter we will strive to follow the apostle’s prayer to the end
of the eighteenth verse, where it arrives at its chief aim and touches
the main thought of the epistle, expressing the desire that all
believers may have power to realize the full scope of the salvation of
Christ in which they participate.

Let us pause for a moment to join in St Paul’s invocation: “I bow my
knees to the Father, of whom [not _the whole family_, but] _every
family_ in heaven and upon earth is named.” The point of St Paul’s
original phrase is somewhat lost in translation. The Greek word for
_family_ (_patria_) is based on that for _father_ (_pater_). A
distinguished father anciently gave his name to his descendants; and
this paternal name became the bond of family or tribal union, and the
title which ennobled the race. So we have “the sons of Israel,” the
“sons of Aaron” or “of Korah”; and in Greek history, the Atridæ, the
Alcmæonidæ, who form a family of many kindred households--a _clan_, or
_gens_, designated by their ancestral head. Thus Joseph (in Luke ii. 4)
is described as “being of the house and family [_patria_] of David”; and
Jesus is “the Son of David.” Now Scripture speaks also of _sons of God_;
and these of two chief orders. There are those “in heaven,” who form a
race distinct from ourselves in origin--divided, it may be, amongst
themselves into various orders and dwelling in their several homes in
the heavenly places.

Of these are “the sons of God” whom the Book of Job pictures appearing
in the Divine court and forming a “family in heaven.” When Christ
promises (Luke xx. 36) that His disciples in their immortal state will
be “equal to the angels,” because they are “sons of God,” it is implied
that the angels are already and by birthright sons of God. Hence in
Hebrews xii. 22, 23 the angels are described as “the festal gathering
and assembly of _the firstborn_ enrolled in heaven.” We, the sons of
Adam, with our many tribes and kindreds, through Jesus Christ our Elder
Brother constitute a new family of God. God becomes our Name-father, and
permits us also to call ourselves His sons through faith. Thus the
Church of believers in the Son of God constitutes the “family on earth
named” from the same Father who gave His name to the holy angels, our
wise and strong and brilliant elder brothers. They and we are alike
God’s offspring. Heaven and earth are kindred spheres.

This passage gives to God’s Fatherhood the same extension that chapter
i. 21 has given to Christ’s Lordship. Every order of creaturely
intelligence acknowledges God for the Author of its being, and bows to
Christ as its sovereign Lord. In God’s name of Father the entire wealth
of love that streams forth from Him through endless ages and unmeasured
worlds is hidden; and in the name of sons of God there is contained the
blessedness of all creatures that can bear His image.

       *       *       *       *       *

I. What, therefore, shall the universal Father be asked to give to His
needy children upon earth? They have newly learnt His name; they are
barely recovered from the malady of their sin, fearful of trial, weak to
meet temptation. _Strength_ is their first necessity: “I bow my knees to
the Father of heaven and earth, praying that He may grant you, according
to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened by the entering of the
Spirit into your inward man.” The apostle asked them in verse 13, in
view of the greatness of his own calling, to be of good courage on his
account; now he entreats God so to reveal to them His glory and to pour
into their hearts His Spirit, that no weakness and fear may remain in
them. The _strengthening_ of which he speaks is the opposite of the
_faintness of heart_, the failure of courage deprecated in verse 13.
Using the same word, the apostle bids the Corinthians “Quit themselves
like men, _be strong_” (1 Ep. xvi. 13). He desires for the Asian
believers a manful heart, the strength that meets battle and danger
without quailing.

The source of this strength is not in ourselves. We are to be
“strengthened _with_ [or _by_] _power_,”--by “the power” of God “working
in us” (ver. 20), the very same “power, exceeding great,” that raised
Jesus our Lord from the dead (i. 19). This superhuman might of God
operating in men is always referred to the Holy Spirit: “by power made
strong,” he says, “_through the Spirit_.” Nothing is more familiar in
Scripture than the conception of the indwelling Spirit of God as the
source of moral strength. The special power that belongs to the gospel
Christ ascribes altogether to this cause. “Ye shall receive power,” He
said to His disciples, “after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you.”
Hence is derived the vigour of a strong faith, the valour of the good
soldier of Christ Jesus, the courage of the martyrs, the cheerful and
indomitable patience of multitudes of obscure sufferers for
righteousness’ sake. There is a great truth expressed when we describe a
brave and enterprising man as a _man of spirit_. All high and commanding
qualities of soul come from this invisible source. They are
inspirations. In the human will, with its _vis vivida_, its elasticity
and buoyancy, its steadfastness and resolved purpose, is the highest
type of force and the image of the almighty Will. When that will is
animated and filled with “the Spirit,” the man so possessed is the
embodiment of an inconceivable power. Firm principle, hope and
constancy, self-mastery, superiority to pleasure and pain,--all the
elements of a noble courage are proper to the man of the Spirit. Such
power is not neutralized by our infirmities; it asserts itself under
their limiting conditions and makes them its contributories. “My grace
is sufficient for thee,” said Christ to His disabled servant; “for
power is perfected in weakness.” In privation and loneliness, in old age
and bodily decay, the strength of God in the human spirit shines with
its purest lustre. Never did St Paul rise to such a height of moral
ascendency as at the time when he was “smitten down” and all but
destroyed by persecution and affliction. “That the excellency of the
power,” he says, “may be of God, and not from ourselves” (2 Cor. iv.
7-11).

The apostle points to “the inner man” as the seat of this invigoration,
thinking perhaps of its secrecy. While the world buffets and dismays the
Christian, new vigour and joy are infused into his soul. The surface
waters and summer brooks of comfort fail; but there opens in the heart a
spring fed by the river of life proceeding from the throne of God.
Beneath the toil-worn frame, the mean attire and friendless condition of
the prisoner Paul--a mark for the world’s scorn--there lives a strength
of thought and will mightier than the empire of the Cæsars, a power of
the Spirit that is to dominate the centuries to come. Of this omnipotent
power dwelling in the Church of God, the apostle prays that every one of
his readers may partake.

II. Parallel to the first petition, and in substance identical with it,
is the second: “that the Christ may make His dwelling through faith in
your hearts.” Such, it seems to us, is the relation of verses 16 and 17.
Christ’s residence in the heart is to be viewed neither as the result,
nor the antecedent of the strength given by the Spirit to the inward
man: the two are simultaneous; they are the same things seen in a
varying light.

We observe in this prayer the same vein of Trinitarian thought which
marks the doxology of chapter i., and other leading passages in this
epistle.[94] The Father, the Spirit, and the Christ are unitedly the
object of the apostle’s devout supplication.

As in the previous clause, the verb of verse 17 bears emphasis and
conveys the point of St Paul’s entreaty; he asks that “the Christ may
_take up His abode_,--may _settle_ in your hearts.” The word signifies
to _set up one’s house_ or _make one’s home_ in a place, by way of
contrast with a temporary and uncertain sojourn (comp. ii. 19). The same
verb in Colossians ii. 9 asserts that in Christ “_dwells_ all the
fulness of the Godhead”; and in Colossians i. 19 it declares, used in
the same tense as here, how it was God’s “pleasure that all the fulness
should _make its dwelling_ in Him” now raised from the dead, who had
emptied and humbled Himself to fulfil the purpose of the Father’s love.
So it is desired that Christ should take His seat within us. He is never
again to stand at the door and knock, nor to have a doubtful and
disputed footing in the house. Let the Master come in, and claim His
own. Let Him become the heart’s fixed tenant and full occupier. Let Him,
if He will thus condescend, make Himself at home within us and there
rest in His love. For He promised: “If any man love me, my Father will
love him; and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”

And “_the_ Christ,” not Christ alone. Why does the apostle say this?
There is a reason for the definite article, as we have found
elsewhere.[95] The apostle is asking for his Asian brethren something
beyond that possession of Christ which belongs to every true
Christian,--more even than the permanence and certainty of this
indwelling indicated by the verb. “The Christ” is Christ in the
significance of His _name_. It is Christ not only possessed, but
understood,--Christ realized in the import of His work, in the light of
His relationship to the Father and the Spirit, and to men. It is the
Christ of the Church and the ages--known and accepted for all this--that
St Paul would fain have dwelling in the heart of each of his Gentile
disciples. He is endeavouring to raise them to an adequate comprehension
of the greatness of the Redeemer’s person and offices; he longs to have
their minds possessed by his own views of Christ Jesus the Lord.

_The heart_, in the language of the Bible, never denotes the emotional
nature by itself. The antithesis of “heart and head,” the divorce of
feeling and understanding in our modern speech is foreign to Scripture.
The heart is our interior, conscious self--thought, feeling, will in
their personal unity. It needs the whole Christ to fill and rule the
whole heart,--a Christ who is the Lord of the intellect, the Light of
the reason, no less than the Master of the feelings and desires.

The difference in significance between “Christ” or “Christ Jesus” and
“the Christ” in such a sentence as this, is not unlike the difference
between “Queen Victoria” and “the Queen.” The latter phrase brings Her
Majesty before us in the grandeur and splendour of her Queenship. We
think of her vast dominion, of her line of royal and famous ancestry, of
her beneficent and memorable reign. So, to know the Christ is to
apprehend Him in the height of His Godhead, in the breadth of His
humanity, in the plenitude of His nature and His powers. And this is the
object to which the teaching and the prayers of St Paul for the Churches
at the present time are directed. Understanding in this larger sense the
indwelling of the Christ for which he prays, we see how naturally his
supplication expands into the “height and depth” of the ensuing verse.

But however large the mental conception of Christ that St Paul desires
to impart to us, it is to be grasped “through faith.” All real
understanding and appropriation of Christ, the simplest and the most
advanced, come by this channel,--through the faith of the heart in which
knowledge, will and feeling blend in that one act of trustful
apprehension of the truth concerning Jesus Christ by which the soul
commits itself to Him.

How much is contained in this petition of the apostle that we need to
ask for ourselves, Christ Jesus dwells now as then in the hearts of all
who love Him. But how little do we know our heavenly Guest! how poor a
Christ is ours, compared to the Christ of Paul’s experience! how slight
and empty a word is His name to multitudes of those who bear it! If men
have once attained a sense of His salvation, and are satisfied of their
interest in His atonement and their right to hope for eternal life
through Him, their minds are at rest. They have accepted Christ and
received what He has to give them; they turn their attention to other
things. They do not love Christ enough to study Him. They have other
mental interests,--scientific, literary, political or industrial; but
the knowledge of Christ has no intellectual attraction for them. With St
Paul’s passionate ardour, the ceaseless craving of his mind to “know
Him,” these complacent believers have no sympathy whatever. This, they
think, belongs only to a few, to men of metaphysical bias or of
religious genius like the great apostle. Theology is regarded as a
subject for specialists. The laity, with a lamentable and disastrous
neglect, leave the study of Christian doctrine to the ministry. The
Christ cannot take His due place in His people’s heart, He will not
reveal to them the wealth of His glory, while they know so little and
care to know so little of Him. How many can be found, outside the ranks
of the ordained, that make a sacrifice of other favourite pursuits to
meditate on Christ? what prosperous merchant, what active man of affairs
is there who will spare an hour each day from his other gains “for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord”?--“If at the
present time the religious life of the Church is languid, and if in its
enterprises there is little of audacity and vehemence, a partial
explanation is to be found in that decline of intellectual interest in
the contents of the Christian Faith which has characterized the last
hundred or hundred and fifty years of our history.”[96]

It is a knowledge that when pursued grows upon the mind without limit.
St Paul, who knew so much, for that reason felt that all he had attained
was but in the bud and beginning. “The Christ” is a subject infinite as
nature, large and wide as history. With our enlarged apprehension of
Him, the heart enlarges in capacity and moral power. Not unfrequently,
the study of Christ in Scripture and experience gives to unlettered men,
to men whose mind before their conversion was dull and uninformed, an
intellectual quality, a power of discernment and apprehension that
trained scholars might envy. By such thoughtful, constant fellowship
with Him the vigour of spirit and courage in affliction are sustained,
that the apostle first asked from God on behalf of his anxious Gentile
friends.

III. The prayers now offered might suffice, if St Paul were concerned
only for the individual needs of those to whom he writes and their
personal advancement in the new life. But it is otherwise. _The Church_
fills his mind. Its lofty claims at every turn he has pressed on our
attention. This is God’s holy temple and the habitation of His Spirit;
it is the body in which Christ dwells, the bride that He has chosen. The
Church is the object that draws the eyes of heaven; through it the
angelic powers are learning undreamed-of lessons of God’s wisdom. Round
this centre the apostle’s intercession must needs revolve. When he asks
for his readers added strength of heart and a richer fellowship with
Christ, it is in order that they may be the better able to enter into
the Church’s life and to apprehend God’s great designs for mankind.

This object so much absorbs the writer’s thoughts and has been so
constantly in view from the outset, that it does not occur to him, in
verse 18, to say precisely _what_ that is whose “breadth and length and
height and depth” the readers are to measure. The vast building stands
before us and needs not to be named; we have only not to look away from
it, not to forget what we have been reading all this time. It is _God’s
plan for the world in Christ_; it is the purpose of the ages realized in
the building of His Church. This conception was so impressive to the
original readers and has held their attention so closely since the
apostle unfolded it in the course of the second chapter, that they would
have no difficulty in supplying the ellipsis which has given so much
trouble to the commentators since.

If we are asked to interpret the four several magnitudes that are
assigned to this building of God, we may say with Hofmann[97]: “It
stretches _wide_ over all the world of the nations, east and west. In
its _length_, it reaches through all time unto the end of things. In
_depth_, it penetrates to the region where the faithful sleep in death
[comp. iv. 9]. And it rises to heaven’s _height_, where Christ lives.”
In the like strain Bernardine à Piconio, most genial and spiritual of
Romanist interpreters: “_Wide_ as the furthest limits of the inhabited
world, _long_ as the ages of eternity through which God’s love to His
people will endure, _deep_ as the abyss of misery and ruin from which He
has raised us, _high_ as the throne of Christ in the heavens where He
has placed us.” Such is the commonwealth to which we belong, such the
dimensions of this city of God built on the foundation of the
apostles,--“that lieth four-square.”

Do we not need to be _strong_--to “gain full strength,” as the apostle
prays, in order to grasp in its substance and import this immense
revelation and to handle it with practical effect? Narrowness is
feebleness. The greatness of the Church, as God designed it, matches the
greatness of the Christ Himself. It needs a firm spiritual faith, a
far-seeing intelligence, and a charity broad as the love of Christ to
comprehend this mystery. From many believing eyes it is still hidden.
Alas for our cold hearts, our weak and partial judgements! alas for the
materialism that infects our Church theories, and that limits God’s free
grace and the sovereign action of His Spirit to visible channels and
ministrations “wrought by hand.” Those who call themselves Churchmen
and Catholics contradict the titles they boast when they bar out their
loyal Christian brethren from the covenant rights of faith, when they
deny churchly standing to communities with a love to Christ as warm and
fruitful in good works, a gospel as pure and saving, a discipline at
least as faithful as their own. Who are we that we dare to forbid those
who are doing mighty works in the name of Christ, because they follow
not with us? When we are fain to pull down every building of God that
does not square with our own ecclesiastical plans, we do not apprehend
“what is the breadth!”

We draw close about us the walls of Christ’s wide house, as if to
confine Him in our single chamber. We call our particular communion “the
Church,” and the rest “the sects”; and disfranchise, so far as our word
and judgement go, a multitude of Christ’s freemen and God’s elect, our
fellow-citizens in the New Jerusalem--saints, some of them, whose feet
we well might deem ourselves unworthy to wash. A Church theory that
leads to such results as these, that condemns Nonconformists to be
strangers in the House of God, is self-condemned. It will perish of its
own chillness and formalism. Happily, many of those who hold the
doctrine of exclusive Roman or Anglican, or Baptist or Presbyterian
legitimacy, are in feeling and practice more catholic than in their
creed.

“With _all_ the saints” the Asian Christians are called to enter into St
Paul’s wider view of God’s work in the world. For this is a collective
idea, to be shared by many minds and that should sway all Christian
hearts at once. It is the collective aim of Christianity that St Paul
wants his readers to understand, its mission to save humanity and to
reconstruct the world for a temple of God. This is a calling for _all
the saints_; but only for _saints_,--for men devoted to God and renewed
by His Spirit. It was “revealed to His _holy_ apostles and prophets”
(ver. 5); and it needs men of the same quality for its bearers and
interpreters.

But the first condition for this largeness of sympathy and aim is that
stated at the beginning of the verse, thrown forward there with an
emphasis that almost does violence to grammar: “in love being fast
rooted and grounded.” Where Christ dwells abidingly in the heart, love
enters with Him and becomes the ground of our nature, the basis on which
our thought and action rest, the soil in which our purposes grow. _Love_
is the mark of the true Broad Churchman in all Churches, the man to whom
Christ is all things and in all, and who, wherever he sees a Christlike
man, loves him and counts him a brother.

When such love to Christ fills all our hearts and penetrates to their
depths, we shall have strength to shake off our prejudices, strength to
master our intellectual difficulties and limitations. We shall have the
courage to adopt Christ’s simple rule of fellowship: “Whosoever shall
do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister,
and mother.”

FOOTNOTES:

[94] See ch. i. 17, ii. 18, 22, and especially ch. iv. 4-6.

[95] See pp. 47, 83, 169.

[96] _Lectures on Ephesians_, pp. 235-8. No one who has read Dr. R. W.
Dale’s noble Lectures on this epistle, can write upon the same subject
without being deeply in his debt.

[97] _Der Brief Pauli an die Epheser_, p. 138. Hofmann is one of those
writers from whom one constantly learns, although one must as often
differ from him as agree with him.




CHAPTER XV.

_KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE._

    “[I pray] that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong
    to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and
    height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth
    knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.”--EPH.
    iii. 17-19.


We were compelled to pause before reaching the end of the apostle’s
comprehensive prayer. But we must not let slip the thread of its
connexion. Verse 19 is the necessary sequel and counterpart of verse 18.
The catholic love which embraces “all the saints” and “comprehends” in
its wide dimensions the extent of the Redeemer’s kingdom, admits us to a
deeper knowledge of Christ’s own love. The breadth and length, the
height and depth of the work of Christ in men and the ages give us a
worthier conception of the love that inspired and sustains it. “In the
Church” at once “and in Christ Jesus” God’s glory is revealed. Our
Church views react upon our views of Christ and our sense of His love.
Bigotry and exclusiveness towards His brethren chill the heart towards
Himself. Our sectarianism stints and narrows our apprehensions of the
Divine grace.

       *       *       *       *       *

I. St Paul prays that we may “_know_ [not _comprehend_] the love of
Christ”; for it “passes knowledge.” Amongst the Greek words denoting
mental activity, that here employed signifies knowledge in the
acquisition rather than possession--_getting to know_. Hence it is
rightly, and often used of things Divine that “we know in part,” our
knowledge of which falls short of the reality while it is growing up to
it. Thus understood, the contradiction of the apostle’s wish disappears.
We know the unknowable, just as we “clearly see the invisible things of
God” (Rom. i. 20). The idea is conveyed of an object that invites our
observation and pursuit, but which at every step outreaches
apprehension, each discovery revealing depths within it unperceived
before. Such was the knowledge of Christ to the soul of St Paul. To the
Philippians the aged apostle writes: “I do not reckon myself to have
apprehended Him. I am in pursuit! I forget the past; I press on eagerly
to the goal. I have but one object in view and sacrifice everything for
it,--that I may _win Christ_!”

In all the mystery of Christ, there is nothing more wonderful and past
finding out than His love. For nigh thirty years Paul has been living in
daily fellowship with the love of Christ, his heart full of it and all
the powers of his mind bent upon its comprehension: he cannot understand
it yet! At this moment it amazes him more than ever.

Great as the Christian community is, and large as the place and part
assigned to it by this epistle, that is still finite and a creation of
time. The apostle’s doctrine of the Church is not beyond the
comprehension of a mind sufficiently loving and enlightened. But though
we had followed him so far and had well and truly apprehended the
mystery he has revealed to us, the love of Christ is still beyond us.
Our principles of judgement and standards of comparison fail us when
applied to this subject. Human love has in many instances displayed
heroic qualities; it can rise to a divine height of purity and
tenderness; but its noblest sacrifices will not bear to be put by the
side of the cross of Christ. No picture of that love but shows poor and
dull compared with the reality; no eloquence lavished upon it but lowers
the theme. Our logical framework of doctrine fails to enclose and hold
it; the love of Christ defies analysis and escapes from all our
definitions. Those who know the world best, who have ranged through
history and philosophy and the life of living men and have measured most
generously the possibilities of human nature, are filled with a
wondering reverence when they come to know the love of Christ. “Never
man spake like this man,” said one; but verily never man loved like
Jesus Christ. He expects to be loved more than father or mother; for His
love surpasses theirs. We cannot describe His love, nor delineate its
features as Paul saw them when he wrote these lines. Go to the Gospels,
and behold it as it lived and wrought for men. Stand and watch at the
cross. Then if the eyes of your heart are open, you will see the great
sight--the love that passeth knowledge.

When, turning from Christ Himself in His own person and presence, before
whom praise is speechless, we contemplate the manifestations of His love
to mankind; when we consider that its fountain lies in the bosom of the
Eternal; when we trace its footsteps prepared from the world’s
foundation, and perceive it choosing a people for its own and making its
promises and raising up its heralds and forerunners; when at last it can
hide and refrain itself no longer, but comes forth incarnate with lowly
heart to take our infirmities and carry our diseases--yea, to put away
our sin by the sacrifice of itself; when we behold that same Love which
the hands of men had slain, setting up its cross for the sign of its
covenant of peace with mankind, and enthroned in the majesty of heaven
waiting even as a bridegroom joyously for the time when its ransomed
shall be brought home, redeemed from iniquity and gathered unto itself
from all the kindreds of the earth; and when we see how this mystery of
love, in its sufferings and glories and its deep-laid plans for all the
creatures, engages the ardent study and sympathy of the heavenly
principalities,--in view of these things, who can but feel himself
unworthy to know the love of Christ or to speak one word on its behalf?
Are we not ready to say like Peter, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful
man, O Lord”?

This is a revelation that searches every man’s soul who looks into it.
What is there so confounding to our reason and our human
self-complacency as the discovery: “He loved me; He gave Himself up for
me”--that He should do it, and should _need_ to do it! It was this that
went to Saul’s heart, that gave the mortal blow to the Jewish pride in
him, strong as it was with the growth of centuries. The bearer of this
grace and the ambassador of Christ’s love to the Gentiles, he feels
himself to be “less than the least of all the saints.” We carry in our
hands to show to men a heavenly light, which throws our own unloveliness
into dark relief.

II. The _love of Christ_ connects together, in the apostle’s thoughts,
_the greatness of the Church_ and _the fulness of God_. The two former
conceptions--Christ’s love and the Church’s greatness--go together in
our minds; knowing them, we are led onwards to the realization of the
last.

The “fulness [_pleroma_] of God,” and the “filling” (or “completing”) of
believers in Christ are ideas characteristic of this group of epistles.
The first of these expressions we have discussed already in its
connexion with Christ, in chapter i. 23; we shall meet with it again as
“the fulness of Christ” in chapter iv. 13. The phrase before us is, in
substance, identical with that of the latter text. Christ contains the
Divine plenitude; He embodies it in His person, and conveys it to the
world by His redemption. St Paul desires for the Asian Christians that
they may receive it; it is the ultimate mark of his prayer. He wishes
them to gain the total sum of all that God communicates to men. He would
have them “filled”--their nature made complete both in its individual
and social relations, their powers of mind and heart brought into full
exercise, their spiritual capacities developed and replenished--“filled
unto all the plenitude of God.”

This is no humanistic or humanitarian ideal. The mark of Christian
completeness is on a different and higher plane than any that is set up
by culture. The ideal Christian is a greater man than the ideal citizen
or artist or philosopher: he may include within himself any or all of
these characters, but he transcends them. He may conform to none of
these types, and yet be a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Our race cannot
rest in any perfection that stops short of “the fulness of God.” When we
have received all that God has to give in Christ, when the community of
men is once more a family of God and the Father’s will is done on earth
as in heaven, then and not before will our life be complete. That is the
goal of humanity; and the civilization that does not lead to it is a
wandering from the way. “You are complete in Christ,” says the apostle.
The progress of the ages since confirms the saying.

The apostle prays that his readers may know the love of Christ. This is
a part of the Divine plenitude; nor is there anything in it deeper. But
there is more to know. When he asks for “_all_ the fulness,” he thinks
of other elements of revelation in which we are to participate. God’s
_wisdom_, His _truth_, His _righteousness_, along with His _love_ in its
manifold forms,--all the qualities that, in one word, go to make up His
_holiness_, are communicable and belong to the image stamped by the Holy
Spirit on the nature of God’s children. “Ye shall be holy, for I am
holy” is God’s standing command to His sons. So Jesus bids His
disciples, “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” St Paul’s
prayer “is but another way of expressing the continuous aspiration and
effort after holiness which is enjoined in our Lord’s precept”
(Lightfoot).

While the holiness of God gathers up into one stream of white radiance
the revelation of His character, “the fulness of God” spreads it abroad
in its many-coloured richness and variety. The term accords with the
affluence of thought that marks this supplication. The might of the
Spirit that strengthens weak human hearts, the greatness of the Christ
who is the guest of our faith, His wide-spreading kingdom and the vast
interests it embraces and His own love surpassing all,--these objects of
the soul’s desire issue from the fulness of God; and they lead us in
pursuing them, like streams pouring into the ocean, back to the eternal
Godhead. The mediatorial kingdom has its end; Christ, when He has “put
down all rule and authority,” will at last “yield it up to His God and
Father”; and “the Son Himself will be subjected to Him that put all
things under Him, that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. xv. 24-28). This
is the crown of the Redeemer’s mission, the end which His love to the
Father seeks. But when that end is reached, and the soul with immediate
vision beholds the Father’s glory, the Plenitude will be still new and
unexhausted; the soul will then begin its deepest lessons in the
knowledge of God which is life eternal.

       *       *       *       *       *

St Paul is conscious of the extreme boldness of the prayer he has just
uttered. But he protests that, instead of going beyond God’s purposes,
it falls short of them. This assurance rises, in verses 20 and 21, into
a rapture of praise. It is a cry of exultation, a true song of triumph,
that breaks from the apostle’s lips:--

    “Now unto Him that is able to do above all things,--
    Yea, far exceedingly beyond what we ask or think,--
              According to the power that worketh in us:
    To Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus,
    Unto all generations of the age of the ages.--Amen!”

    (vv. 20, 21).

Praise soars higher than prayer. When St Paul has reached in
supplication the summit of his desires, he sees the plenitude of God’s
gifts still by a whole heaven outreaching him. But it is only from these
mountain-tops hardly won in the exercise of prayer, in their still air
and tranquil light, that the boundless realms of promise are visible.
God’s giving surpasses immeasurably our thought and asking; but there
must be the asking and the thinking for it to surpass. He puts always
more into our hand and better things than we expected--when the
expectant hand is reached out to Him.

Man’s desires will never overtake God’s bounty. Hearing the prayer just
offered, unbelief will say: “You have asked too much. It is preposterous
to expect that raw Gentile converts, scarcely raised above their heathen
debasement, should enter into these exalted notions of yours about
Christ and the Church and should be filled with the fulness of God!
Prayer must be rational and within the bounds of possibility, offered
‘with the understanding’ as well as ‘with the spirit,’ or it becomes
mere extravagance.”--The apostle gives a twofold answer to this kind of
scepticism. He appeals to the Divine omnipotence. “With men,” you say,
“this is impossible.” Humanly speaking, St Paul’s Gentile disciples were
incapable of any high spiritual culture; they were unpromising material,
with “not many wise or many noble” amongst them, some of them before
their conversion stained with infamous vices. Who is to make saints and
godlike men out of such human refuse as this! But “with God,” as Jesus
said, “all things are possible.” _Fæx urbis, lux orbis_: “the scum of
the city is made the light of the world!” The force at work upon the
minds of these degraded pagans--slaves, thieves, prostitutes, as some of
them had been--is the love of Christ; it is the power of the Holy Ghost,
the might of the strength which raises the dead to life eternal.

Let us therefore praise Him “who is able to do beyond all
things”--beyond the best that His best servants have wished and striven
for. Had men ever asked or thought of such a gift to the world as Jesus
Christ? Had the prophets foreseen one tenth part of His greatness? In
their boldest dreams did the disciples anticipate the wonders of the
day of Pentecost and of the later miracles of grace accomplished by
their preaching? How far exceedingly had these things already surpassed
the utmost that the Church asked or thought.

St Paul’s reliance is not upon the “ability” alone, upon the abstract
omnipotence of God. The force upon which he counts is lodged in the
Church, and is in visible and constant operation. “According to the
power _that worketh in us_” he expects these vast results to be
achieved. This power is the same as that he invoked in verse 16,--the
might of the Spirit of God in the inward man. It is the spring of
courage and joy, the source of religious intelligence (i. 17, 18) and
personal holiness, the very power that raised the dead body of Jesus to
life, as it will raise hereafter all the holy dead to share His
immortality (Rom. viii. 11). St Paul was conscious at this time in a
remarkable degree of the supernatural energy working within his own
mind. It is of this that he speaks to the Colossians, in language very
similar to that of our text, when he says: “I toil hard, striving
according to His energy that works in me in power.” As he labours for
the Church in writing that epistle, he is sensible of another Power
acting within his spirit and distinguished from it by his consciousness,
which tasks his faculties to the utmost to follow its dictates and
express its meaning.

The presence of this mysterious power of the Spirit St Paul constantly
felt when engaged in prayer,--“The Spirit helpeth our infirmities”; He
“makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered” (Rom.
viii. 26, 27). On this point the experience of earnest Christian
believers in all ages confirms that of St Paul. The sublime prayer to
which he has just given utterance, is not his own. There is more in it
than the mere Paul, a weak man, would have dared to ask or think. He who
inspires the prayer will fulfil it. The Searcher of hearts knows better
than the man who conceived it, infinitely better than we who are trying
for our own help to interpret it, all that this intercession means. God
will hear the pleading of His Spirit. The Power that prompts our
prayers, and the Power that grants their answer are the same. The former
is limited in its action by human infirmity; the latter knows no limit.
Its only measure is the fulness of God. To Him who works in us all good
desires, and works far beyond us to bring our good desires to good
effect, be the glory of all for ever!

In such measure, then, shall glory be to God “in the Church and in
Christ Jesus.” We see how the Church takes up the foreground of Paul’s
horizon. This epistle has taught us that God desires far more than our
individual salvation, however complete that might be. Christ came not to
save men only, but mankind. It is “in the Church” that God’s consummate
glory will be seen. No man in his fragmentary self-hood, no number of
men in their separate capacity can conceivably attain “unto the fulness
of God.” It will need all humanity for that,--to reflect the full-orbed
splendour of Divine revelation. Isolated and divided from each other, we
render to God a dimmed and partial glory. “With one accord, with one
mouth” we are called to “glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ.” Wherefore the apostle bids us “receive one another, as Christ
also received us, to the glory of God” (Rom. xv. 6, 7).

The Church, being the creation of God’s love in Christ and the
receptacle of His communicative fulness, is the vessel formed for His
praise. Her worship is a daily tribute to the Divine majesty and bounty.
The life of her people in the world, her witness for Christ and warfare
against sin, her ceaseless ministries to human sorrow and need proclaim
the Divine goodness, righteousness and truth. From the heavenly places
where she dwells with Christ, she reflects the light of God’s glory and
makes it shine into the depths of evil at her feet. It was the Church’s
voice that St John heard in heaven as “the voice of a great multitude,
and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders,
saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigneth!” Each
soul new-born into the fellowship of faith adds another note to make up
the multitudinous harmony of the Church’s praise to God.

Nor does the Church by herself alone render this praise and honour unto
God. The display of God’s manifold wisdom in His dealings with mankind
is drawing admiration, as St Paul believed, from the celestial spheres
(ver. 10). The story of earth’s redemption is the theme of endless songs
in heaven. All creation joins in concert with the redeemed from the
earth, and swells the chorus of their triumph. “I heard,” says John in
another place, “a voice of many angels round about the throne, and the
living creatures, and the elders, saying with a great voice, Worthy is
the Lamb that hath been slain! And every created thing which is in the
heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all
things that are in them, heard I saying:

    Unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb,
    Be blessing and honour and glory and dominion--
                                          For ever and ever.”

But the Church is the centre of this tribute of the universe to God and
to His Christ.

_The Church and Christ Jesus_ are wedded in this doxology, even as they
were in the foregoing supplication (vv. 18, 19). In the Bride and the
Bridegroom, in the Redeemed and the Redeemer, in the many brethren and
in the Firstborn is this perfect glory to be paid to God. “In the midst
of the congregation” Christ the Son of man sings evermore the Father’s
praise (Heb. ii. 12). No glory is paid to God by men which is not due to
Him; nor does He render to the Father any tribute in which His people
are without a share. “The glory which thou hast given me I have given
them,” said Jesus to the Father praying for His Church, “that they may
be one, even as we are one” (John xvii. 22). Our union with each other
in Christ is perfected by our union with Him in realizing the Father’s
glory, in receiving and manifesting the fulness of God.

The duration of the glory to be paid to God by Christ and His Church is
expressed by a cumulative phrase in keeping with the tenor of the
passage to which it belongs: “unto all generations of the age of the
ages.” It reminds us of “the ages to come” through which the apostle in
chapter ii. 7 foresaw that God’s mercy to his own age would be
celebrated. It carries our thoughts along the vista of the future, till
time melts into eternity. When the apostle desires that God’s praise may
resound in the Church “unto _all generations_,” he no longer supposes
that the mystery of God may be finished speedily as men count years. The
history of mankind stretches before his gaze into its dim futurity. The
successive “generations” gather themselves into that one consummate
“age” of the kingdom of God, the grand cycle in which all “the ages” are
contained. With its completion time itself is no more. Its swelling
current, laden with the tribute of all the worlds and all their
histories, reaches the eternal ocean.

The end comes: God is all in all. At this furthest horizon of thought,
Christ and His own are seen together rendering to God unceasing glory.




_THE EXHORTATION._

CHAPTER iv. 1--vi. 20.


_ON CHURCH LIFE._

CHAPTER iv. 1-16.

    “It is good we return unto the ancient bond of unity in the Church
    of God, which was _one faith_, _one baptism_, and not _one
    hierarchy_, _one discipline_; and that we observe the league of
    Christians, as it was penned by our Saviour Christ, which is in
    substance of doctrine this: _He that is not with us is against us_;
    and in things indifferent and but of circumstance this: _He that is
    not against us is with us_.”--LORD BACON: _Certain Considerations
    touching the better Pacification and Edification of the Church of
    England_, addressed to King James I.




CHAPTER XVI.

_THE FUNDAMENTAL UNITIES._

    “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily
    of the calling wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness and
    meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; giving
    diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

              “There is one body, and one Spirit,
    Even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling;
                One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
                  One God and Father of all,
        Who is over all, and through all, and in all.”

    EPH. iv. 1-6.


This Encyclical of St Paul to the Churches of Asia is the most formal
and deliberate of his writings since the great epistle to the Romans. In
entering upon its hortatory and practical part we are reminded of the
transition from doctrine to exhortation in that epistle. Here as in
Romans xi., xii. the apostle’s theological teaching, brought with
measured steps to its conclusion, has been followed by an act of worship
expressing the profound and holy joy which fills his spirit as he views
the purposes of God thus displayed in the gospel and the Church. In this
exalted mood, as one sitting in heavenly places with Christ Jesus, St
Paul surveys the condition of his readers and addresses himself to their
duties and necessities. His homily, like his argument, is inwoven with
the golden thread of devotion; and the smooth flow of the epistle
breaks ever and again into the music of thanksgiving.

The apostle resumes the words of self-description dropped in chapter
iii. 1. He appeals to his readers with pathetic dignity: “I the prisoner
in the Lord”; and the expression gathers new solemnity from that which
he has told us in the last chapter of the mystery and grandeur of his
office. He is “_the_ prisoner”--the one whose bonds were known through
all the Churches and manifest even in the imperial palace (Phil. i.
12-14). It was “in the Lord” that he wore this heavy chain, brought upon
him in Christ’s service and borne joyfully for His people’s sake. He is
now a martyr apostle. If his confinement detained him from his Gentile
flock, at least it should add sacred force to the message he was able to
convey. The tone of the apostle’s letters at this time shows that he was
sensible of the increased consideration which the afflictions of the
last few years had given to him in the eyes of the Church. He is
thankful for this influence, and makes good use of it.

His first and main appeal to the Asian brethren, as we should expect
from the previous tenor of the letter, is an exhortation to _unity_. It
is an obvious conclusion from the doctrine of the Church that he has
taught them. The “oneness of the Spirit” which they must “earnestly
endeavour to preserve,” is the unity which their possession of the Holy
Spirit of itself implies. “Having access in one Spirit to the Father,”
the antipathetic Jewish and Gentile factors of the Church are
reconciled; “in the Spirit” they “are builded together for a habitation
of God” (ii. 18-22). This unity when St Paul wrote was an actual and
visible fact, despite the violent efforts of the Judaizers to destroy
it. The “right hands of fellowship” exchanged between himself and
James, Peter, and John at the conference of Jerusalem were a witness
thereto (Gal. ii. 7-10). But it was a union that needed for its
maintenance the efforts of right-thinking men and sons of peace
everywhere. St Paul bids all who read his letter help to keep Christ’s
peace in the Churches.

The conditions for such pursuing and preserving of peace in the fold of
Christ are briefly indicated in verses 1 and 2. There must be--

(1) _A due sense of the dignity of our Christian calling_: “Walk
worthily,” he says, “of the calling where with you were called.” This
exhortation, of course, includes much besides in its scope; it is the
preface to all the exhortations of the three following chapters, the
basis, in fact, of every worthy appeal to Christian men; but it bears in
the first instance, and pointedly, upon Church unity. Levity of temper,
low and poor conceptions of religion militate against the catholic
spirit; they create an atmosphere rife with causes of contention.
“Whereas there is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal and
walk as men?”

(2) Next to low-mindedness amongst the foes of unity comes _ambition_:
“Walk with all lowliness of mind and meekness,” he continues. Between
the low-minded and the lowly-minded there is a total difference. The man
_of lowly mind_ habitually feels his dependence as a creature and his
unworthiness as a sinner before God. This spirit nourishes in him a
wholesome self-distrust, and watchfulness over his temper and
motives.--The _meek_ man thinks as little of his personal claims, as the
humble man of his personal merits. He is willing to give place to others
where higher interests will not suffer, content to take the lowest room
and to be in men’s eyes of no account. How many seeds of strife and
roots of bitterness would be destroyed, if this mind were in us all.
Self-importance, the love of office and power and the craving for
applause must be put away, if we are to recover and keep the unity of
the Spirit in the bond of peace.

(3) When St Paul adds “with longsuffering, forbearing one another in
love,” he is opposing a cause of division quite different from the
last,--to wit, _impatience and resentfulness_. A high Christian ideal
and a strict self-judgement will render us more sensitive to wrong-doing
in the world around us. Unless tempered with abundant charity, they may
lead to harsh and one-sided censure. Gentle natures, reluctant to
condemn, are sometimes slow and difficult in forgiveness. Humbleness and
meekness are choice graces of the Spirit. But they are self-regarding
virtues at the best, and may be found in a cold nature that has little
of the patience which bears with men’s infirmities, of the sympathetic
insight that discovers the good often lying close to their faults.
“Above all things”--above kindness, meekness, longsuffering,
forgivingness--“put on love, which is the bond of perfectness” (Col.
iii. 14). Love is the last word of St Paul’s definition of the Christian
temper in verse 2; it is the sum and essence of all that makes for
Christian unity. In it lies a charm which can overcome both the lighter
provocations and the grave offences of human intercourse,--offences that
must needs arise in the purest society composed of infirm and sinful
men. “Bind thyself to thy brother. Those who are bound together in love,
bear all burdens lightly. Bind thyself to him, and him to thee. Both are
in thy power; for whomsoever I will, I may easily make my friend”
(Chrysostom).

Verses 1-3 exhibit the temper in which the unity of the Church is to be
maintained. Verses 4-6 set forth the basis upon which it rests. This
passage is a brief summary of Christian doctrine. It defines the
“foundation of the apostles and prophets” asserted in chapter ii.
20,--the groundwork of “every building” in God’s holy temple, the
foundation upon which Paul’s Gentile readers, along with the Jewish
saints, were growing into one holy temple in the Lord. Seven elements of
unity St Paul enumerates: one _body_, _Spirit_, _hope_; one _Lord_,
_faith_ and _baptism_; one _God and Father of all_. They form a chain
stretching from the Church on earth to the throne and being of the
universal Father in heaven.

Closely considered, we find that the seven unities resolve themselves
into three, centring in the names of the Divine Trinity--the Spirit, the
Lord, and the Father. The Spirit and the Lord are each accompanied by
two kindred uniting elements; while the one God and Father, placed
alone, in Himself forms a threefold bond to His creatures--by His
sovereign power, pervasive action, and immanent presence: “Who is over
all, and through all, and in all” (comp. i. 23).

The rhythm of expression in these verses suggests that they belonged to
some apostolic Christian song. Other passages in Paul’s later epistles
betray the same character;[98] and we know from chapter v. 19 and
Colossians iii. 16 that the Pauline Church was already rich in psalmody.
This epistle shows that St Paul was touched with the poetic as well as
the prophetical afflatus. He expected his people to sing; and we see no
reason why he should not, like Luther and the Wesleys afterwards, have
taught them to do so by giving voice to the joy of the new-found faith
in “hymns and spiritual songs.” These lines, we could fancy, belonged to
some chant sung in the Christian assemblies; they form a brief metrical
creed, the confession of the Church then and in all ages.

I. _One body_ there is, _and one Spirit_.

The former was a patent fact. Believers in Jesus Christ formed a single
body, the same in all essentials of religion, sharply distinguished from
their Jewish and their Pagan neighbours. Although the distinctions now
existing amongst Christians are vastly greater and more numerous, and
the boundaries between the Church and the world at many points are much
less visible, yet there is a true unity that binds together those “who
profess and call themselves Christians” throughout the world. As against
the multitudes of heathen and idolaters; as against Jewish and
Mohammedan rejecters of our Christ; as against atheists and agnostics
and all deniers of the Lord, we are “one body,” and should feel and act
as one.

In missionary fields, confronting the overwhelming forces and horrible
evils of Paganism, the servants of Christ intensely realize their unity;
they see how trifling in comparison are the things that separate the
Churches, and how precious and deep are the things that Christians hold
in common. It may need the pressure of some threatening outward force,
the sense of a great peril hanging over Christendom to silence our
contentions and compel the soldiers of Christ to fall into line and
present to the enemy a united front. If the unity of believers in
Christ--their oneness of worship and creed, of moral ideal and
discipline--is hard to discern through the variety of human forms and
systems and the confusion of tongues that prevails, yet the unity is
there to be discerned; and it grows clearer to us as we look for it. It
is visible in the universal acceptance of Scripture and the primitive
creeds, in the large measure of correspondence between the different
Church standards of the Protestant communions, in our common Christian
literature, in the numerous alliances and combinations, local and
general, that exist for philanthropic and missionary objects, in the
increasing and auspicious comity of the Churches. The nearer we get to
the essentials of truth and to the experience of living Christian men,
the more we realize the existence of one body in the scattered limbs and
innumerable sects of Christendom.

There is “one body and one Spirit”: one body because, and so far as
there is one Spirit. What is it constitutes the unity of our physical
frame? Outward attachment, mechanical juxtaposition go for nothing. What
I grasp in my hand or put between my lips is no part of _me_, any more
than if it were in another planet. The clothes I wear take the body’s
shape; they partake of its warmth and movement; they give its outward
presentment. They are not of the body for all this. But the fingers that
clasp, the lips that touch, the limbs that move and glow beneath the
raiment,--these are the body itself; and everything belongs to it,
however slight in substance, or uncomely or unserviceable, nay, however
diseased and burdensome, that is vitally connected with it. The life
that thrills through nerve and artery, _the spirit_ that animates with
one will and being the whole framework and governs its ten thousand
delicate springs and interlacing cords,--it is this that makes _one
body_ of an otherwise inert and decaying heap of matter. Let the spirit
depart, it is a body no more, but a corpse. So with the body of Christ,
and its members in particular. Am I a living, integral part of the
Church, quickened by its Spirit? or do I belong only to the raiment and
the furniture that are about it? “If any man have not the Spirit of
Christ, he is none of His.”

He who has the Spirit of Christ, will find a place within His body. The
Spirit of Jesus Christ is a communicative, sociable spirit. The child of
God seeks out his brethren; like is drawn to like, bone to bone and
sinew to its sinew in the building up of the risen body. By an instinct
of its life, the new-born soul forms bonds of attachment for itself to
the Christian souls nearest to it, to those amongst whom it is placed in
God’s dispensation of grace. The ministry, the community through which
it received spiritual life and that travailed for its birth claim it by
a parental right that may not be disowned, nor at any time renounced
without loss and peril.

Where the Spirit of Christ dwells as a vitalizing, formative principle,
it finds or makes for itself a body. Let no man say: I have the spirit
of religion; I can dispense with forms. I need no fellowship with men; I
prefer to walk with God.--God will not walk with men who do not care to
walk with His people. He “loved the world”; and we must love it, or we
displease Him. “This commandment have we from Him, that he who loves God
love his brother also.”

The oneness of communion amongst the people of Christ is governed by a
unity of aim: “Even as also you were called in _one hope_ of your
calling.” Our fellowship has an object to realize, our calling a prize
to win. All Christian organization is directed to a practical end. The
old Pagan world fell to pieces because it was “without hope”; its
golden age was in the past. No society can endure that lives upon its
memories, or that contents itself with cherishing its privileges.
Nothing holds men together like work and hope. This gives energy,
purpose, progress to the fellowship of Christian believers. In this
imperfect and unsatisfying world, with the majority of our race still in
bondage to evil, it is idle for us to combine for any purpose that does
not bear on human improvement and salvation. The Church of Christ is a
society for the abolition of sin and death. That this will be
accomplished, that God’s will shall be done on earth as in heaven, is
_the hope of our calling_. To this hope we “were called” by the first
summons of the gospel. “Repent,” it cried, “for the kingdom of heaven is
at hand!”

For ourselves, in our personal quality, Christianity holds out a
splendid crown of life. It promises our complete restoration to the
image of God, the redemption of the body with the spirit from death, and
our entrance upon an eternal fellowship with Christ in heaven. This
hope, shared by us in common and affecting all the interests and
relationships of daily life, is the ground of our communion. The
Christian hope supplies to men, more truly and constantly than Nature in
her most exalted forms,

    “The anchor of their purest thoughts, the nurse,
    The guide, the guardian of their heart, and soul
    Of all their moral being.”

Happy are the wife and husband, happy the master and servants, happy the
circle of friends who live and work together as “joint-heirs of the
grace of life.” Well says Calvin here: “If this thought were fixed in
our minds, this law laid upon us, that the sons of God may no more
quarrel than the kingdom of heaven can be divided, how much more careful
we should be in cultivating brotherly goodwill! What a dread we should
have of dissensions, if we considered, as we ought to do, that those who
separate from their brethren, exile themselves from the kingdom of God.”

But the hope of our calling is a hope for mankind,--nay, for the entire
universe. We labour for the regeneration of humanity. “We look for a new
heavens and earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness;” for the actual
gathering into one in Christ of all things in all worlds, as they are
already gathered in God’s eternal plan. Now if it were merely a personal
salvation that we had to seek, Christian communion might appear to be an
optional thing, and the Church no more than a society for mutual
spiritual benefit. But seen in this larger light, Church membership is
of the essence of our calling. As children of the household of faith, we
are heirs to its duties with its possessions. We cannot escape the
obligations of our spiritual any more than of our natural birth. One
Spirit dwelling in each, one sublime ideal inspiring us and guiding all
our efforts, how shall we not be one body in the fellowship of Christ?
This hope of our calling it is our calling to breathe into the dead
world. Its virtue alone can dispel the gloom and discord of the age.
From the fountain of God’s love in Christ springing up in the heart of
the Church, there shall pour forth

    “One common wave of thought and joy,
    Lifting mankind again!”

II. The first group of unities leads us to the second. If one Spirit
dwells within us, it is _one Lord_ who reigns over us. We have one hope
to work for; it is because we have _one faith_ to live by. A common
fellowship implies a common creed.

Thus Christ Jesus the Lord takes His place fourth in this list of
unities, between hope and faith, between the Spirit and the Father. He
is the centre of centres, the Lamb in the midst of the throne, the
Christ in the midst of the ages. United with Christ, we are at unity
with God and with our fellow-men. We find in Him the fulcrum of the
forces that are raising the world, the corner-stone of the temple of
humanity.

But let us mark that it is the one _Lord_ in whom we find our unity. To
think of Him as Saviour only is to treat Him as a means to an end. It is
to make ourselves the centre, not Christ. This is the secret of much of
the isolation and sectarianism of modern Churches. Individualism is the
negation of Church life. Men value Christ for what they can get from Him
for themselves. They do not follow Him and yield themselves up to Him,
for the sake of what He is. “Come unto me, all ye that are burdened, and
I will give you rest”: they listen willingly so far. But when He goes on
to say “Take my yoke upon you,” their ears are deaf. There is a subtle
self-seeking and self-pleasing even in the way of salvation.

From this springs the disloyalty, the want of affection for the Church,
the indifference to all Christian interests beyond the personal and
local, which is worse than strife; for it is death to the body of
Christ. The name of the “one Lord” silences party clamours and rebukes
the voices that cry, “I am of Apollos, I of Cephas.” It recalls
loiterers and stragglers to the ranks. It bids each of us, in his own
station of life and his own place in the Church, serve the common cause
without sloth and without ambition.

Christ’s Lordship over us for life and death is signified by our
_baptism_ in His name. We have received, most of us in infancy through
our parents’ reverent care, the token of allegiance to the Lord Christ.
The baptismal water that He bade all nations receive from His apostles,
has been sprinkled upon you. Shall this be in vain? Or do you now, by
the faith of your heart in Christ Jesus the Lord, endorse the faith of
your parents and the Church exercised on your behalf? If so, your faith
saves you. Your obedience is at once accepted by the Lord to whom it is
tendered; and the sign of God’s redemption of the race which greeted you
at your entrance into life, assumes for you all its significance and
worth. It is the seal upon your brow, now stamped upon your heart, of
your eternal covenant with Christ.

But it is the seal of a _corporate_ life in Him. Christian baptism is no
private transaction; it attests no mere secret vow passing between the
soul and its Saviour. “For in one Spirit we were all baptized _into one
body_, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made
to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. xii. 13). Our baptism is the sign of a
common faith and hope, and binds us at once to Christ and to His Church.

_One_ baptism there has been through all the ages since the ascending
Lord said to His disciples: “Go, make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit.” The ordinance has been administered in different ways and
under varying regulations; but with few exceptions, it has been observed
from the beginning by every Christian community in fulfilment of the
word of Christ, and in acknowledgement of His dominion. Those who
insist on the sole validity of this or that mode or channel of
administration, recognize at least the intention of Churches baptizing
otherwise than themselves to honour the one Lord in thus confessing His
name; and so far admit that there is in truth “one baptism.” Wherever
Christ’s sacraments are observed with a true faith, they serve as
visible tokens of His rule.

In this rule lies the ultimate ground of union for men, and for all
creatures. Our fellowship in the faith of Christ is deep as the nature
of God; its blessedness rich as His love; its bonds strong and eternal
as His power.

III. The last and greatest of the unities still remains. Add to our
fellowship in the one Spirit and confession of the one Lord, our
adoption by the _one God and Father of all_.

To the Gentile converts of the Asian cities this was a new and
marvellous thought. “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians,” they had been
used to shout; or haply, “Great is Aphrodité of the Pergamenes,” or
“Bacchus of the Philadelphians.” Great they knew was “Jupiter Best and
Greatest” of conquering Rome; and great the _numen_ of the Cæsar, to
which everywhere in this rich and servile province shrines were rising.
Each city and tribe, each grove or fountain or sheltering hill had its
local _genius_ or _daimon_, requiring worship and sacrificial honours.
Every office and occupation, every function in life--navigation,
midwifery, even thieving--was under the patronage of its special deity.
These petty godships by their number and rivalries distracted the pious
heathen with continual fear lest one or other of them might not have
received due observance.

With what a grand simplicity the Christian conception of “the one God
and Father” rose above this vulgar pantheon, this swarm of motley
deities--some gay and wanton, some dark and cruel, some of supposed
beneficence, all infected with human passion and baseness--which filled
the imagination of the Græco-Asiatic pagans. What rest there was for the
mind, what peace and freedom for the spirit in turning from such deities
to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Here is no jealous Monarch regarding men as tribute-payers, and needing
to be served by human hands. He is the Father of men, pitying us as His
children and giving us all things richly to enjoy. Our God is no local
divinity, to be honoured here but not there, tied to His temple and
images and priestly mediators; but the “one God and Father of all, who
is above all, and through all, and in all.” This was the very God whom
the logic of Greek thought and the practical instincts of Roman law and
empire blindly sought. Through ages He had revealed Himself to the
people of Israel, who were now dispersed amongst the nations to bear His
light. At last He declared His full name and purpose to the world in
Jesus Christ. So the gods many and lords many have had their day. By His
manifestation the idols are utterly abolished. The proclamation of one
God and Father signifies the gathering of men into one family of God.
The one religion supplies the basis for one life in all the world.

God is _over all_, gathering all worlds and beings under the shadow of
His beneficent dominion. He is _through all_, and _in all_: an
Omnipresence of love, righteousness and wisdom, actuating the powers of
nature and of grace, inhabiting the Church and the heart of men. You
need not go far to seek Him; if you believe in Him, you are yourself His
temple.

FOOTNOTES:

[98] See ch. v. 14; 1 Tim. i. 17, ii. 5, 6, vi. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii.
11-13.




CHAPTER XVII.

_THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST._

    “But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the
    measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore He saith: ‘When He ascended
    on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.’ Now
    this, ‘He ascended,’ what is it but that He also descended into the
    lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that
    ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.
    And He gave some _to be_ apostles; and some, prophets; and some
    evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of
    the saints for work of ministration, for the building up of the body
    of Christ.”--EPH. iv. 7-12.


In verse 7 the apostle passes from the unities of the Church to its
diversities, from the common foundation of the Christian life to the
variety presented in its superstructure. “To each single one of us was
the grace given.” The great gift of God in Christ is manifold in its
distribution. Its manifestations are as various and fresh as the
idiosyncrasies of human personality. There is no capacity of our nature,
no element of human society which the gospel of Christ cannot sanctify
and turn to good account.

All this the apostle keeps in view and allows for in his doctrine of the
Church. He does not merge man in humanity, nor sacrifice the individual
to the community. He claims for each believer direct fellowship with
Christ and access to God. The earnestness with which in his earlier
epistles St Paul insisted on the responsibilities of conscience and on
the personal experience of salvation, leads him now to press the claims
of the Church with equal vigour. He understands well that the person has
no existence apart from the community, that our moral nature is
essentially social and the religious life essentially fraternal. Its
vital element is “the _communion_ of the Holy Spirit.” Hence, to gather
the real drift of this passage we must combine the first words of verse
7 with the last of verse 12: “To each single one of us was the grace
given--in order to build up the body of Christ.” God’s grace is not
bestowed upon us to diffuse and lose itself in our separate
individualities; but that it may minister to one life and work towards
one end and build up one great body in us all. The diversity subserves a
higher unity. Through ten thousand channels, in ten thousand varied
forms of personal influence and action, the stream of the grace of God
flows on to the accomplishment of the eternal purpose.

Like a wise master in his household and sovereign in his kingdom, the
Lord of the Church distributes His manifold gifts. His bestowments and
appointments are made with an eye to the furtherance of the state and
house that He has in charge. As God dispenses His wisdom, so Christ His
gifts “according to plan” (iii. 11). The purpose of the ages, God’s
great plan for mankind, determines “the measure of the gift of Christ.”
Now, it is to illustrate this _measure_, to set forth the style and
scale of Christ’s bestowments within His Church, that the apostle brings
in evidence the words of Psalm lxviii. 18. He interprets this ancient
verse as he cites it, and weaves it into the texture of his argument.
In the original it reads thus:

    “Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led Thy captivity captive,
    Thou hast received gifts among men,--
    Yea, among the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell with
        them.” (R.V.)

Let us go back for a moment to the occasion of the old Hebrew song.
Psalm lxviii, is, as Ewald says, “the greatest, most splendid and
artistic of the temple-songs of Restored Jerusalem.” It celebrates
Jehovah’s entry into Zion. This culminating verse records, as the
crowning event of Israel’s history, the capture of Zion from the rebel
Jebusites and the Lord’s ascension in the person of His chosen to take
His seat upon this holy hill. The previous verses, in which fragments of
earlier songs are embedded, describe the course of the Divine Leader of
Israel through former ages. In the beat and rhythm of the Hebrew lines
one hears the footfall of the Conqueror’s march, as He “arises and His
enemies are scattered” and “kings of armies flee apace,” while nature
trembles at His step and bends her wild powers to serve His
congregation. The sojourn in the wilderness, the scenes of Sinai, the
occupancy of Canaan, the wars of the Judges were so many stages in the
progress of Jehovah, which had Zion always for its goal. To Zion, the
new and more glorious sanctuary, Sinai must now give place. Bashan and
all mountains towering in their pride in vain “look askance at the hill
which God has desired for His abode,” where “Jehovah will dwell for
ever.” So the day of the Lord’s desire has come! From the Kidron valley
David leads Jehovah’s triumph up the steep slopes of Mount Zion. A train
of captives defiles before the Lord’s anointed, who sits down on the
throne that God gives him and receives in His name the submission of the
heathen. The vanquished chiefs cast their spoil at his feet; it is laid
up in treasure to build the future temple; while, upon this happy day of
peace, “the rebellious also” share in Jehovah’s grace and become His
subjects.

In this conquest David “gave to men” rather than “received”--gave even
to his stubborn enemies (witness his subsequent transaction with Araunah
the Jebusite for the site of the temple); for that which he took from
them served to build amongst them God’s habitation: “that,” as the
Psalmist sings, “the Lord God might dwell with them.” St Paul’s
adaptation of the verse is both bold and true. If he departs from the
letter, he unfolds the spirit of the prophetic words. That David’s
_giving_ signified a higher _receiving_, Jewish interpreters themselves
seem to have felt, for this paraphrase was current also amongst them.

The author of this Hebrew song has in no way exaggerated the importance
of David’s victory. The summits of the elect nation’s history shine with
a supernatural and prophetic light. The spirit of the Christ in the
unknown singer “testified beforehand of the glory that should follow”
His warfare and sufferings. From this victorious height, so hardly won,
the Psalmist’s verse flashes the light of promise across the space of a
thousand years; and St. Paul has caught the light, and sends it on to us
shining with a new and more spiritual brightness. David’s “going up on
high” was, to the apostle’s mind, a picture of the ascent of Christ, his
Son and Lord. David rose from deep humiliation to a high dominion; his
exaltation brought blessing and enrichment to his people; and the spoil
that he won with it went to build God’s house amongst rebellious men.
All this was true in parable of the dispensation of grace to mankind
through Jesus Christ; and His ascension disclosed the deeper import of
the words of the ancient Scripture. “Wherefore God saith” (and St Paul
takes the liberty of putting in his own words _what_ He
saith)--“wherefore He saith: He ascended on high; He led captivity
captive; He gave gifts to men.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The three short clauses of the citation supply, in effect, a threefold
measure of the gifts of Christ to His Church. They are gifts _of the
ascended Saviour_. They are gifts bestowed _from the fruit of His
victory_. And they are gifts _to men_. Measure them, first, by the
height to which He has risen--from what a depth! Measure them, again, by
the spoils He has already won. Measure them, once more, by the wants of
mankind, by the need He has undertaken to supply.--As He is, so He
gives; as He has, so He gives; as He has given, so He will give till we
are filled unto all the fulness of God.

I. Think first, then, of Him. Think of what, and _where_ He is! Consider
“what is the height” of His exaltation; and then say, if you can, “what
is the breadth” of His munificence.

We know well how He gave as a poor and suffering man upon earth--gave,
with what affluence, pity and delight, bread to the hungry thousands,
wine to the wedding-feast, health to the sick, sight to the blind,
pardon to the sinful, sometimes life to the dead! Has His elevation
altered Him? Too often it is so with vain and weak men like ourselves.
Their wealth increases, but their hearts contract. The more they have to
give, the less they love to give. They go up on high as men count it,
and climb to places of power and eminence; and they forget the friends
of youth and the ranks from which they sprang--low-minded men. Not so
with our exalted Friend. “It is not one that went down, and another that
went up,” says Theodoret. “He that descended, _it is He_ also that
ascended up far above all the heavens!” (ver. 10). Jesus of Nazareth is
on the throne of God,--“the same yesterday and to-day!” But now the
resources of the universe are at His disposal. Out of that treasure He
can choose the best gifts for you and me.

Mere authority, even Omnipotence, could not suffice to save and bless
moral beings like ourselves; nor even the best will joined to
Omnipotence. Christ gained by His humiliation, in some sense, a new
fulness added to the fulness of the Godhead. This gain of His sufferings
is implied in what the apostle writes in Colossians i. 19 concerning the
risen and exalted Redeemer: “It was well-pleasing that _all_ the fulness
should make its dwelling in Him.” His plenitude is that of the Ascended
One _who had descended_. “If He ascended, what does it mean but that He
also descended into the under regions of the earth?” (ver. 9). If He
went up, why then He had been down!--down to the Virgin’s womb and the
manger cradle, wrapping His Godhead within the frame and the brain of a
little child; down to the home and the bench of the village carpenter;
down to the contradiction of sinners and the level of their scorn; down
to the death of the cross,--to the nether abyss, to that dim populous
underworld into which we look shuddering over the grave’s edge! And from
that lower gulf He mounted up again to the solid earth and the light of
day and the world of breathing men; and up, and up again, through the
rent clouds and the ranks of shouting angels, and under the lifted heads
of the everlasting doors, until He took His seat at the right hand of
the Majesty in the heavens.

Think of the regions He has traversed, the range of being through which
the Lord Jesus passed in descending and ascending, “that He might fill
all things.” Heaven, earth, hades--hades, earth, heaven again are His;
not in mere sovereignty of power, but in experience and communion of
life. Each He has annexed to His dominion by inhabitation and the right
of self-devoting love, as from sphere to sphere He “travelled in the
greatness of His power, mighty to save.” He is Lord of angels; but still
more of men,--Lord of the living, and of the dead. To them that sleep in
the dust He has proclaimed His accomplished sacrifice and the right of
universal judgement given Him by the Father.

Nor did Abraham alone and Moses and Elijah have the joy of “seeing His
day,” but all the holy men of old, who had embraced its promise and
“died in faith,” who looked forward through their imperfect sacrifices
“which could never quite take away sins” to the better thing which God
provided for us, and for their perfection along with us.[99] On the two
side-posts of the gate of death our great High Priest sprinkled His
atoning blood. He turned the abode of corruption into a sweet and quiet
sleeping chamber for His saints. Then at His touch those cruel doors
swung back upon their hinges, and He issued forth the Prince of life,
with the keys of death and hades hanging from His girdle. From the
depths of the grave to the heaven of heavens His Mastership extends.
With the perfume of His presence and the rich incense of His sacrifice
Jesus Christ has “filled all things.” The universe is made for us one
realm of redeeming grace, the kingdom of the Son of God’s love.

    “So there crowns Him the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown;
    And His love fills infinitude wholly, nor leaves up nor down
    One spot for the creature to stand in!”[100]

So “Christ is all things, and in all.” And we are nothing; but we have
everything in Him.

How, pray, will He give who has thus given Himself,--who has thus
endured and achieved on our behalf? Let our hearts consider; let our
faith and our need be bold to ask. One promise from His lips is enough:
“If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.”

II. A second estimate of the gifts to be looked for from Christ, we
derive from _His conquests already won_. David as he entered Zion’s
gates “led captivity captive,”--led, that is in Hebrew phrase, a great,
a notable captivity. Out of the gifts thus received he enriched his
people. The resources that victory placed at his disposal, furnished the
store from which to build God’s house. In like fashion Christ builds His
Church, and blesses the human race. With the spoils of His battle He
adorns His bride. The prey taken from the mighty becomes the strength
and beauty of His sanctuary. The prisoners of His love He makes the
servants of mankind.

This “captivity” implies a warfare, even as the ascent of Christ a
previous descending. The Son of God came not into His earthly kingdom as
kings are said to have come sometimes disguised amongst their subjects,
that they might learn better of their state and hear their true mind;
nor as the Greeks fabled of their gods, who wandered unknown on earth
seeking adventure and wearied haply of the cloying felicities of heaven,
suffering contempt and doing to men hard service. He came, the Good
Shepherd, to seek lost sheep. He came, the Mighty One of God, to destroy
the works of the devil, to drive out “the strong one armed” who held the
fortress of man’s soul. He had a war to wage with the usurping prince of
the world. In the temptations of the wilderness, in the strife with
disease and demoniac powers, in the debate with Scribes and Pharisees,
in the anguish of Gethsemane and Calvary that conflict was fought out;
and by death He abolished him who holds the power of death, by His blood
He “bought us for God.” But with the spoils of victory, He bears the
scars of battle,--tokens glorious for Him, humbling indeed to us, which
will tell for ever how they pierced His hands and feet!

For Him pain and conflict are gone by. It remains to gather in the spoil
of His victory of love, the harvest sown in His tears and His blood. And
what are the trophies of the Captain of our salvation? what the fruit of
His dread passion? For one, there was the dying thief, whom with His
nailed hands the Lord Jesus snatched from a felon’s doom and bore from
Calvary to Paradise. There was Mary the Magdalene, out of whom He had
cast seven demons, the first to greet Him risen. There were the three
thousand whom on one day, in the might of His Spirit, the ascended Lord
and Christ took captive in rebel Jerusalem, “lifted from the earth” that
He might draw all men unto Him. And there was the writer of this letter,
once His blasphemer and persecutor. By a look, by a word, Jesus
arrested Saul at the height of his murderous enmity, and changed him
from a Pharisee into an apostle to the Gentiles, from the destroyer into
the wise master-builder of His Church.

St Paul’s own case suggested, surely, the application he makes of this
ancient text of the Psalter and lighted up its Messianic import. In the
glory of His triumph Jesus Christ had appeared to make him captive, and
put him at once to service. From that hour Paul was led along
enthralled, the willing bond-slave of the Lord Jesus and celebrant of
His victory. “Thanks be unto God,” he cries, “who ever triumphs over us
in the Christ, and makes manifest through us the savour of His knowledge
in every place.”[101]

Such, and of such sort are the prisoners of the war of Jesus; such the
gifts that through sinners pardoned and subdued He bestows upon
mankind,--“patterns to those who should hereafter believe.” Time would
fail to follow the train of the captives of the love of Christ, which
stretches unbroken and ever multiplying through the centuries to this
day. We, too, in our turn have laid our rebel selves at His feet; and
all that we surrender to Him, by right of conquest He gives over to the
service of mankind.

    “His love the conquest more than wins;
      To all I shall proclaim:
    Jesus the King, the Conqueror reigns;
      Bow down to Jesu’s name!”

He gives out of the spoil of His war with evil,--gives what He receives.
Yet He gives not _as_ He receives. Everything laid in His hands is
changed by their touch. Publicans and Pharisees become apostles.
Magdalenes are made queens and mothers in His Israel. From the dregs of
our streets He raises up a host of sons to Abraham. From the ranks of
scepticism and anti-Christian hate the Lord Christ wins new champions
and captains for His cause. He coins earth’s basest metal into heaven’s
fine gold. He takes weak things of the earth and foolish, to strike the
mightiest blows of battle.

What may we not expect from Him who has led captive such a captivity!
What surprises of blessing and miracles of grace there are awaiting us,
that shall fill our mouth with laughter and our tongue with
singing--gifts and succours coming to the Church from unlooked-for
quarters and reinforcements from the ranks of the enemy. And what
discomfitures and captivities are preparing for the haters of the
Lord,--if, at least, the future is to be as the past; and if we may
judge from the apostle’s word, and from his example, of the measure of
the gift of Christ.

III. A third line of measurement is supplied in the last word of verse
8, and is drawn out in verses 11 and 12. “He gave gifts _to men_--He
gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and
teachers, with a view to the full equipment of the saints for work of
ministration, for building up of the body of Christ.” Yes, and some
martyrs, some missionaries, some Church rulers and Christian statesmen,
some poets, some deep thinkers and theologians, some leaders of
philanthropy and helpers of the poor; all given for the same end--to
minister to the life of His Church, to furnish it with the means for
carrying on its mission, and to enable every saint to contribute his
part to the commonwealth of Christ according to the measure of Christ’s
gift to each.

Comparison with verse 16 that follows and with verse 7 that precedes,
seems to us to make it clear that we should read, without a comma, the
second and third clauses of verse 12 as continuations of the first. The
“work of ministering” and the “building up of the body of Christ” are
not assigned to special orders of ministry as their exclusive calling.
Such honour have all His saints. It is the office of the clergy to see
that the laity do their duty, of “the ministry” to make each saint a
minister of Christ, to guide, instruct and animate the entire membership
of Christ’s body in the work He has laid upon it. Upon this plan the
Christian fellowship was organized and officered in the apostolic times.
Church government is a means to an end. Its primitive form was that best
suited to the age; and even then varied under different circumstances.
It was not precisely the same at Jerusalem and at Corinth; at Corinth in
58, and at Ephesus in 66 A.D. That is the best Church system, under any
given conditions, which serves best to conserve and develope the
spiritual energy of the body of Christ.

The distribution of Church office indicated in verse 11 corresponds
closely to what we find in the Pastoral epistles. The apostle does not
profess to enumerate all grades of ministry. The “deacons” are wanting;
although we know from Philippians i. 1 that this order already existed
in Pauline Churches. _Pastors_ (shepherds)--a title only employed here
by the apostle--is a fitting synonym for the “bishops” (_i.e._,
overseers) of whom he speaks in Acts xx. 28, Philippians i. 1, and
largely in the epistles to Timothy and Titus, whose functions were
spiritual and disciplinary as well as administrative. Addressing the
Ephesian elders at Miletus four years before, St Paul bade them
“shepherd the Church of God.”

In 1 Peter v. 1, 2 the same charge is laid by the Jewish apostle upon
his “fellow-elders,” that they should “shepherd the flock of God, making
themselves examples” to it; Christ Himself he has previously called
“Shepherd and Bishop of souls” (1 Pet. ii. 25). The expression is
derived from the words of Jesus recorded in John x., concerning the true
and false shepherd of God’s flock, and Himself the Good Shepherd,--words
familiar and dear to His disciples.

The office of _teaching_, as in 1 Timothy v. 17, is conjoined with that
of shepherding. From that passage we infer that the freedom of teaching
so conspicuous in the Corinthian Church (1 Cor. xiv. 26, etc.) was still
recognized. Teaching and ruling are not made identical, nor inseparable
functions, any more than in Romans xii. 7, 8; but they were frequently
associated, and hence are coupled together here.--Of apostolic
_evangelists_ we have examples in Timothy and the second Philip;[102]
men outside the rank of the apostles, but who, like them, preached the
gospel from place to place. The name apostles (equivalent to our
_missionaries_) served, in its wider sense, to include ministers of this
class along with those directly commissioned by the Lord Jesus.[103]

The _prophets_,[104] like the apostles and evangelists, belonged to the
Church at large, rather than to one locality. But their gift of
inspiration did not carry with it the claim to rule in the Church. This
was the function of the apostles generally, and of the pastor-bishops,
or elders, locally appointed.

The first three orders (apostles, prophets, evangelists) linked Church
to Church and served the entire body; the last two (pastors and
teachers) had charge of local and congregational affairs. The apostles
(the Twelve and Paul), with the prophets, were the founders of the
Church. Their distinctive functions ceased when the foundation was laid
and the deposit of revealed truth was complete. The evangelistic and
pastoral callings remain; and out of them have sprung all the variety of
Christian ministries since exercised. Evangelists, with apostles or
missionaries, bring new souls to Christ and carry His message into new
lands. Pastors and teachers follow in their train, tending the
ingathered sheep, and labouring to make each flock that they shepherd
and every single man perfect in Christ Jesus.

Marvellous were Christ’s “gifts for men” bestowed in the apostolic
ministry. What a gift to the Christian community, for example, was Paul
himself! In his natural endowments, so rich and finely blended, in his
training and early experience, in the supernatural mode of his
conversion, everything wrought together to give to men in the apostle
Paul a man supremely fitted to be Christ’s ambassador to the Pagan
world, and for all ages the “teacher of the Gentiles in faith and
truth.” “A _chosen vessel_ unto me,” said the Lord Jesus, “to bear my
name.”

Such a gift to the world was St Augustine: a man of the most powerful
intellect and will, master of the thought and life of his time. Long an
alien from the household of faith, he was saved at last as by miracle,
and utterly subdued to the will of Christ. In the awful crisis of the
fifth century, when the Roman empire was breaking up and the very
foundations of life seemed to be dissolved, it was the work of this
heroic man to reassert the sovereignty of grace and to re-establish
faith in the Divine order of the world.

Such another gift to men was Martin Luther, the captive of justifying
grace, won from the monastery and the bondage of Rome to set Germany and
Europe free. What a soul of fire, what a voice of power was his! to
whose lips our Lord Christ set the great trumpet of the Reformation; and
he blew a blast that waked the sleeping peoples of the North, and made
the walls of Babylon rock again to their foundation. Such a gift to
Scotland was John Knox, who from his own soul breathed the spirit of
religion into the life of a nation, and gave it a body and organic form
in which to dwell and work for centuries.

Such a gift to England was John Wesley. Can we conceive a richer boon
conferred by the Head of the Church upon the English race than the
raising up of this great evangelist and pastor and teacher, at such a
time as that of his appearance? Standing at the distance of a hundred
years, we are able to measure in some degree the magnitude of this
bestowment. In none of the leaders and commanders whom Christ has given
to His people was there more signally manifest that combination of
faculties, that concurrence of providences and adjustment to
circumstances, and that transforming and attempering influence of grace
in all--the “effectual working in the measure of each single part” of
the man and his history, which marks those special gifts that Christ is
wont to bestow upon His people in seasons of special emergency and
need.

We are passing into a new age, such as none of these great men dreamed
of, an age as exigent and perilous as any that have gone before it. The
ascendency of physical science, the political enfranchisement of the
masses, the universal spread of education, the emancipation of critical
thought, the gigantic growth of the press, the enormous increase and
aggregation of wealth, the multiplication of large cities, the
world-wide facilities of intercourse,--these and other causes more
subtle are rapidly transforming human society. Old barriers have
disappeared; while new difficulties are being created, of a magnitude to
overtask the faith of the strongest. The Church is confronted with
problems larger far in their dimensions than those our fathers knew.
Demands are being made on her resources such as she has never had to
meet before. Shall we be equal to the needs of the coming times?--Nay,
that is not the question; but will _He_?

There is nothing new or surprising to the Lord Jesus in the progress of
our times and the developments of modern thought, nothing for which He
is not perfectly prepared. He has taken their measure long ere this, and
holds them within His grasp. The government is upon His shoulders--“the
weight of all this unintelligible world”--and He can bear it well. He
has gifts in store for the twentieth century, when it arrives, as
adequate as those He bestowed upon the first or fifth, upon the
sixteenth or the eighteenth of our era. There are Augustines and Wesleys
yet to come. Hidden in the Almighty’s quiver are shafts as polished and
as keen as any He has used, which He will launch forth in the war of the
ages at the appointed hour. The need, the peril, the greatness of the
time will be the measure of the gift of Christ.

There is a danger, however, in waiting for great leaders and in looking
for signal displays of Christ’s power amongst men. His “kingdom comes
not with observation,” so that men should say, Lo here! or Lo there! It
steals upon us unforeseen; it is amongst us before we know. “We looked,”
says Rutherford, “that He should take the higher way along the
mountains; and lo, He came by the lower way of the valleys!” While men
listen to the earthquake and the wind rending the mountains, a still,
small voice speaks the message of God to prepared hearts. Rarely can we
measure at the first the worth of Christ’s best gifts. When the fruit
appears, after long patience, the world will haply discover when and how
the seed was sown. But not always then.

    “The sower, passing onward, was not known;
    And all men reaped the harvest as their own.”

Those who are most ready to appraise their fellows are constantly at
fault. Our last may prove Christ’s first; our first His last! “Each of
us shall give account of himself to God”: each must answer for his own
stewardship, and the grace that was given to each. “Let us not therefore
judge one another any more.” But let every man see to it that his part
in the building of God’s temple is well and faithfully done. Soon the
fire will try every man’s work, of what sort it is.

FOOTNOTES:

[99] Comp. Hebrews x. 1, 2, 10-14 with xi. 13-16, 39, 40, xii. 23, 24;
also vi. 12.

[100] The words of David in Browning’s _Saul_, turned from the future
tense into the present.

[101] 2 Cor. ii. 14; comp. Eph. ii. 6, 7.

[102] 2 Tim. iv. 5; Acts viii. 26-40, xxi. 8.

[103] In Acts xiv. 4, 14, _Barnabas and Paul_ are “apostles”; 1 Thess.
ii. 6, _Paul and Silas and Timothy_. Comp. Rom. xvi. 7; 2 Cor. viii. 23,
xi. 13; Phil. ii. 25; Rev. ii. 2.

[104] Comp. ch. ii. 20, iii. 5 for the association of _prophets_ with
_apostles_.




CHAPTER XVIII.

_THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH._

    “Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the full
    knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure
    of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we may be no more
    children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of
    doctrine in the sport of men, in craftiness, unto the scheme of
    error; but dealing truly, in love may grow up in all things into
    Him, which is the head, _even_ Christ; from whom all the body fitly
    framed and knit together, through that which every juncture
    supplieth, according to the working in _due_ measure of each several
    part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself
    in love.”--EPH. iv. 13-16.


We must spend a few moments in unravelling this knotty paragraph and
determining the relation of its involved clauses to each other, before
we can expound it. This passage is enough to prove St Paul’s hand in the
letter. No writer of equal power was ever so little of a literary
craftsman. His epistles read, as M. Renan says, like “a rapid
conversation stenographed.” Sometimes, as in several places in
Colossians ii., his ideas are shot out in disjointed clauses, hardly
more continuous than shorthand notes; often, as in this epistle, they
pour in a full stream, sentence hurrying after sentence and phrase
heaped upon phrase with an exuberance that bewilders us. In his spoken
address the interpretation of tone and gesture, doubtless, supplied the
syntactical adjustments so often wanting in Paul’s written composition.

The gifts pertaining to special office in the Church were bestowed to
promote its corporate efficiency and to further its general growth (vv.
11, 12). Now, the purpose of these endowments sets a _limit_ to their
use. “Christ gave apostles, prophets,” and the rest--“_till we all
arrive_ at our perfect manhood and reach the stature of His fulness.”
Such is the connexion of verse 13 with the foregoing context. The aim of
the Christian ministry is to make itself superfluous, to raise men
beyond its need. Knowledge and prophesyings, apostolates and pastorates,
the missions of the evangelist and the schools of the teacher will one
day cease; their work will be done, their end gained, when all believers
are brought “to the unity of faith, to the full knowledge of the Son of
God.” The work of Christ’s servants can have no grander aim, no further
goal lying beyond this. Verse 14, therefore, does not disclose an
ulterior purpose arising out of that affirmed in the previous sentence;
it restates the same purpose. To make men of us (ver. 13) and to prevent
our being children (ver. 14) is the identical object for which apostles,
prophets, pastors, teachers are called to office. The goal marked out
for all believers in the knowledge and the moral likeness of Christ
(ver. 13), is set up that it may direct the Church’s course through
dangers shunned and enemies vanquished (ver. 14) to the attainment of
her corporate perfection (vv. 15, 16). The whole thought of this section
turns upon the idea of “the perfecting of the saints” in verse 12. Verse
16 looks backward to this; verse 7 looked forward to it.

So much for the general construction of the period. As to its particular
words and phrases, we must observe:--

(1) The “perfect [full-grown] man” of verse 13 is the _individual_, not
the generic man, not “the one [collective] new man” of chapter ii. 15.
The Greek words for _man_ in these two places differ.[105] The apostle
proposes to the Christian ministry the end that he was himself pursuing,
viz., to “present _every man_ perfect in Christ.”[106]

(2) “_Sleight_ of men” (A.V. and R.V.) does not seem to us to express
the precise meaning of the word so translated in verse 14. _Kubeia_
(from _kubos_, a cube, or die) occurs only here in the New Testament; in
classical Greek it appears in its literal sense of _dice-play_,
_gambling_. The interpreters have drawn from this the idea of
_trickery_, _cheating_--the common accompaniment of gambling. But the
kindred verb (_to play dice_, _to gamble_) has another well-established
use in Greek, namely, _to hazard_: this supplies for St Paul’s noun the
signification of _sport_ or _hazarding_, preferred by Beza among the
older expositors and by von Soden amongst the newest. _In the sport of
men_, says von Soden: “conduct wanting in every kind of earnestness and
clear purpose. These men _play_ with religion, and with the welfare of
Christian souls.” This metaphor accords admirably with that of the
restless waves and uncertain winds[107] just preceding it; while it
leads fittingly to the further qualification “in craftiness,” which is
almost an idle synonym after “sleight.”

(3) Another rare word is found in this verse, not very precisely
rendered as “wiles”--a translation suiting it better in chapter vi. 11.
Here the noun is singular in number: _methodeia_. It signifies
_methodizing_, _reducing to a plan_; and then, in a bad sense,
_scheming_, _plotting_. “Error” is thus personified: it “schemes,” just
as in 2 Thessalonians ii. 7 it “works.” Amid the restless speculations
and the unscrupulous perversions of the gospel now disturbing the infant
faith of the Asian Churches, the apostle saw the outline of a great
system of error shaping itself. There was a method in this madness.
_Unto the scheme of error_--into the meshes of its net--those were being
driven who yielded to the prevailing tendencies of speculative thought.
With all its cross currents and capricious movements, it was bearing
steadily in one direction. Reckless pilots steered ignorant souls this
way and that over the wind-swept seas of religious doubt; but they
brought them at last to the same rocks and quicksands.

(4) As the contrast between manhood and childhood links verses 13 and
14, so it is by the contrast of error and craftiness with _truth_ that
we pass from verse 14 to verse 15. “_Speaking_ truth” insufficiently
renders the opening word of the latter verse. The “_dealing_ truly” of
the Revised margin is preferable. In Galatians iv. 16 the apostle
employs the same verb, signifying not truth of speech alone, but of deed
and life (comp. Eph. v. 9). The expression resembles that of 1 John iii.
19: “We are _of the truth_, and shall assure our hearts before Him,”
where truth and love are found in the like union.

(5) The last difficulty of this kind we have to deal with, lies in the
connexion of the clauses of verse 16. “Through every joint of supply” is
an incongruous adjunct to the previous clause, “fitly framed and knit
together,” although the rendering “joint” gives this connexion a
superficial aptness. The apostle’s word means _juncture_ rather than
_joint_.[108] The _points of contact_ between the members of Christ’s
body form the channels of supply through which the entire frame receives
nourishment. The clause “through every juncture of the supply”--an
expression somewhat obscure at the best--points forwards, not backwards.
It describes the means by which the Church of Christ, compacted in its
general framework by those larger ligatures which its ministry furnishes
(vv. 11, 12), builds up its inward life,--through a communion wherein
“each single part” of the body shares, and every tie that binds one
Christian soul to another serves to nourish the common life of grace. We
may paraphrase the sentence thus: “Drawing its life from Christ, the
entire body knit together in a well-compacted frame, makes use of every
link that unites its members and of each particular member in his place
to contribute to its sustenance, thus building itself up in love
evermore.”

       *       *       *       *       *

These difficult verses unfold to us three main conceptions: _The goal of
the Church’s life_ (ver. 13), _the malady which arrests its development_
(ver. 14), and _the means and conditions of its growth_ (vv. 15, 16).

I. The mark at which the Church has to arrive is set forth, in harmony
with the tenor of the epistle, in a twofold way,--in its _collective_
and its _individual_ aspects. We must all “unitedly attain the oneness
of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God”; and we must attain,
each of us, “a perfect manhood, the measure of the stature of the
fulness of Christ.”

The “one faith” of the Church’s foundation (ver. 5) is, at the same
time, its end and goal. The final unity will be the unfolding of the
primal unity; the implicit will become explicit; the germ will be
reproduced in the developed organism. “The faith” is still, in St Paul,
the _fides qua credimus_, not _quam credimus_; it is the living faith of
all hearts in the same Christ and gospel.[109] When “we all” believe
heartily and understandingly in “the word of truth, the gospel of our
salvation,” the goal will be in sight. All our defects are, at the
bottom, deficiencies of faith. We fail to apprehend and appropriate the
fulness of God in Christ. Faith is the essence of the heart’s life: it
forms the common consciousness of the body of Christ.

While faith is the central organ of the Church’s life, _the Son of God_
is its central object. The dangers assailing the Church and the
divisions threatening its unity, touched His Person; and whatever
touches the Head, vitally affects the health of the body and the
well-being of every member in it. Many had believed in Jesus as the
Christ and received blessing from Him, whose knowledge of Him as the Son
of God was defective. This ignorance exposed their faith to perversion
by the plausible errors circulating in the Churches of Asia Minor.[110]
The haze of speculation dimmed His glory and distorted His image.
Dazzled by the “philosophy and empty deceit” of specious talkers, these
half-instructed believers formed erroneous or uncertain views of Christ.
And a divided Christ makes a divided Church. We may hold divergent
opinions upon many points of doctrine--in regard to Church order and the
Sacraments, in regard to the nature of the future judgement, in regard
to the mode and limits of inspiration, in regard to the dialect and
expression of our spiritual life--and yet retain, notwithstanding, a
large measure of cordial unity and find ourselves able to co-operate
with each other for many Christian purposes. But when our difference
concerns the Person of Christ, it is felt at once to be fundamental.
There is a gulf between those who worship and those who do not worship
the Son of God.

“Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in
him and he in God” (1 John iv. 15). This is the touchstone of catholic
truth that the apostles have laid down; and by this we must hold fast.
The kingship of the Lord Jesus is the rallying-point of Christendom. In
His name we set up our banners. There are a thousand differences we can
afford to sink and quarrels we may well forget, if our hearts are one
towards Him. Let me meet a man of any sect or country, who loves and
worships my Lord Christ with all his mind and strength, he is my
brother; and who shall forbid us “with one mind and one mouth to glorify
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”? It is nothing but our
ignorance of Him, and of each other, that prevents us doing this
already. Let us set ourselves again to the study of Christ. Let us
strive “all of us” to “attain to the full knowledge of the Son of God”;
it is the way to reunion. As we approach the central revelation, and the
glory of Christ who is the image of God shines in its original
brightness upon our hearts, prejudices will melt away; the opinions and
interests and sentiments that divide us will be lost in the transcendent
and absorbing vision of the one Lord Jesus Christ.

    “Names and sects and parties fall:
    Thou, O Christ, art all in all!”

The second and third _unto_ of verse 13 are parallel with the first, and
with each other. A truer faith and better knowledge of Christ uniting
believers to each other, at the same time develope in each of them a
riper character. Jesus Christ was the “perfect man.” In Him our nature
attained, without the least flaw or failure, its true end,--which is to
glorify God. In His fulness the plenitude of God is embodied; it is made
human, and attainable to faith. In Jesus Christ humanity rose to its
ideal stature; and we see what is the proper level of our nature, the
dignity and worth to which we have to rise. We are “predestinated to be
conformed to the image of God’s Son.” All the many brethren of Jesus
measure themselves against the stature of the Firstborn; and they will
have to say to the end with St Paul: “Not as though I had attained,
either were already perfect. I follow after; I press towards the mark.”
A true heart that has seen perfection, will never rest short of it.

“Till we arrive--till we _all_ arrive” at this, the work of the
Christian ministry is incomplete. Teachers must still school us, pastors
shepherd us, evangelists mission us. There is work enough and to spare
for them all--and will be, to all appearance, for many a generation to
come. The goal of the regenerate life is never absolutely won; it is hid
with Christ in God. But there is to be a constant approximation to it,
both in the individual believer and in the body of Christ’s people. And
a time is coming when that goal will be practically attained, so far as
earthly conditions allow. The Church after long strife will be reunited,
after long trial will be perfected; and Christ will “present her to
Himself” a bride worthy of her Lord, “without spot or wrinkle or any
such thing.” Then this world will have had its use, and will give place
to the new heavens and earth.

II. The goal that the apostle marked out, did not appear to him to be in
immediate prospect. The childishness of so many Christian believers
stood in the way of its attainment. In this condition they were exposed
to the seductions of error, and ready to be driven this way and that by
the evil influences active in the world of thought around them. So long
as the Church contains a number of unstable souls, so long she will
remain subject to strife and corruption. When he says in verse 14, “that
we may be _no longer children_ tossed to and fro,” etc., this implies
that many Christian believers at that time were of this childish sort,
and were being so distracted and misled. The apostle writes on purpose
to instruct these “babes” and to raise them to a more manly style of
Christian thought and life.[111]

It is a grievous thing to a minister of Christ to see those who for the
time ought to be teachers, fit for the Church’s strong meat and the
harder tasks of her service, remaining still infantile in their
condition, needing to be nursed and humoured, narrow in their views of
truth, petty and personal in their aims, wanting in all generous feeling
and exalted thought. Some men, like St Paul himself, advance from the
beginning to a settled faith, to a large intelligence and a full and
manly consecration to God. Others remain “babes in Christ” to the end.
Their souls live, but never thrive. They suffer from every change in the
moral atmosphere, from every new wind of doctrine. These invalids are
objects full of interest to the moral pathologist; they are marked not
unfrequently by fine and delicate qualities. But they are a constant
anxiety to the Church. Till they grow into something more robust they
must remain to crowd the Church’s nursery, instead of taking part in her
battle like brave and strenuous men.

The appearance of false doctrine in the Asian Churches made their
undeveloped condition a matter for peculiar apprehension to the apostle.
The Colossian heresy, for example, with which he is dealing at this
present moment, would have no attraction for ripe and settled
Christians. But such a “scheme of error” was exactly suited to catch men
with a certain tincture of philosophy and in general sympathy with
current thought, who had embraced Christianity under some vague sense
of its satisfaction for their spiritual needs, but without an
intelligent grasp of its principles or a thorough experience of its
power.

St Paul speaks of “every wind of _the_ doctrine,” having in his mind a
more or less definite form of erroneous teaching, a certain “plan of
error.” Reading this verse in the light of the companion letter to
Colossæ and the letters addressed to Timothy when at Ephesus a few years
later, we can understand its significance. We can watch the storm that
was rising in the Græco-Asiatic Churches. The characteristics of early
Gnosticism are well defined in the miniature picture of verse 14. We
note, in the first place, its protean and capricious form, half
Judaistic, half philosophical--ascetic in one direction, libertine in
another: “tossed by the waves, and carried about with every wind.” In
the next place, its intellectual spirit,--that of a loose and reckless
speculation: “in the hazarding of men,”--not in the abiding truth of
God. Morally, it was vitiated by “craftiness.” And in its issue and
result, this new teaching was leading “to the scheme of error” which the
apostle four years ago had sorrowfully predicted, in bidding farewell to
the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts xx.). This scheme was no other than
the gigantic Gnostic system, which devastated the Eastern Churches and
inflicted deep and lasting wounds upon them.

The struggle with legalism was now over and past, at least in its
critical phase. The apostle of the Gentiles had won the battle with
Judaism and saved the Church in its first great conflict. But another
strife is impending (comp. vi. 10); a most pernicious error has made its
appearance within the Church itself. St Paul was not to see more than
the commencement of the new movement, which took two generations to
gather its full force; but he had a true prophetic insight, and he saw
that the strength of the Church in the coming day of trial lay in the
depth and reality of her knowledge of the Son of God.

At every crisis in human thought there emerges some prevailing method of
truth, or of error, the resultant of current tendencies, which unites
the suffrages of a large body of thinkers and claims to embody the
spirit of the age. Such a method of error our own age has produced as
the outcome of the anti-Christian speculation of modern times, in the
doctrines current under the names of Positivism, Secularism, or
Agnosticism. While the Gnosticism of the early ages asserted the
infinite distance of God from the world and the intrinsic evil of
matter, modern Agnosticism removes God still further from us, beyond the
reach of thought, and leaves us with material nature as the one positive
and accessible reality, as the basis of life and law. Faith and
knowledge of the Son of God it banishes as dreams of our childhood. The
supernatural, it tells us, is an illusion; and we must resign ourselves
to be once more without God in the world and without hope beyond death.

This materialistic philosophy gathers to a head the unbelief of the
century. It is the living antagonist of Divine revelation. It supplies
the appointed trial of faith for educated men of our generation, and the
test of the intellectual vigour and manhood of the Church.

III. In the midst of the changing perils and long delays of her history,
the Church is called evermore to press towards the mark of her calling.
The conditions on which her progress depends are summed up in verses 15
and 16.

To the craft of false teachers St Paul would have his Churches oppose
the weapons only of _truth and love_. “Holding the truth in love,” they
will “grow up in all things into Christ.” Sincere believers, heartily
devoted to Christ, will not fall into fatal error. A healthy life
instinctively repels disease. They “have an anointing from the Holy One”
which is their protection (1 John ii. 20-29). In all that belongs to
godliness and a noble manhood, such natures will expand; temptation and
the assaults of error stimulate rather than arrest their growth. And
with the growth and ripening in her fellowship of such men of God, the
whole Church grows.

Next to the moral condition lies the spiritual condition of
advancement,--viz., the full recognition of _the supremacy and
sufficiency of Christ_. Christ assumes here two opposite relations to
the members of His body. He is the Head _into_ (or _unto_) which we grow
in all things; but at the same time, _from_ whom all the body derives
its increase (ver. 16). He is the perfect ideal for us each; He is the
common source of life and progress for us all. In our individual efforts
after holiness and knowledge, in our personal aspirations and struggles,
Jesus Christ is our model, our constant aim: we “grow into Him” (ver.
15). But as we learn to live for others, as we merge our own aims in the
life of the Church and of humanity we feel, even more deeply than our
personal needs had made us do, our dependence upon Him. We see that the
forces which are at work to raise mankind, to stay the strifes and heal
the wounds of humanity, emanate from the living Christ (ver. 16). He is
the head of the Church and the heart of the world.

The third, practical condition of Church growth is brought out by the
closing words of the paragraph. It is _organization_: “all the body
fitly framed [comp. ii. 21] and knit together.” Each local _ecclesia_,
or assembly of saints, will have its stated officers, its regulated and
seemly order in worship and in work. And within this fit frame, there
must be the warm union of hearts, the frank exchange of thought and
feeling, the brotherly counsel in all things touching the kingdom of
God, by which Christian men in each place of their assembling are “knit
together.” From these local and congregational centres, the Christian
fellowship spreads out its arms to embrace all that love our Lord Jesus
Christ.

A building or a machine is _fitted_ together by the adjustment of its
parts. A body needs, besides this mechanical construction, a pervasive
life, a sympathetic force _knitting_ it together: “knit together in
love,” the apostle says in Colossians ii. 2; and so it is “in love” that
this “body builds up itself.” The tense of the participles in the first
part of verse 16 is present (continuous); we see a body in process of
incorporation, whose several organs, imperfectly developed and
imperfectly co-operant, are increasingly drawn to each other and bound
more firmly in one as each becomes more complete in itself. The perfect
Christian and the perfect Church are taking shape at once. Each of them
requires the other for its due realization.

The rest of the sentence, following the comma that we place at “knit
together,” has its parallel in Colossians ii. 19: “All the body, through
its junctures and bands being supplied and knit together, increaseth
with the increase of God.” According to St Paul’s physiology, the
“bands” knit the body together, but the “junctures” are its means of
supply. Each point of contact is a means of nourishment to the frame.
In touch with each other, Christians communicate the life flowing from
the common Head. The apostle would make _Christian intercourse a
universal means of grace_. No two Christian men should meet anywhere,
upon any business, without themselves and the whole Church being the
better for it.

“Wherever two or three are met together in my name,” said Jesus, “there
am I in the midst.” In the multitude of these obscure and humble
meetings of brethren who love each other for Christ’s sake, is the grace
supplied, the love diffused abroad, by which the Church lives and
thrives. The vitality of the Church of Christ does not depend so much
upon the large and visible features of its construction--upon Synods and
Conferences, upon Bishops and Presbyteries and the like, influential and
venerable as these authorities may be; but upon the spiritual
intercourse that goes on amongst the body of its people. “Each several
part” of Christ’s great body, “according to the measure” of its
capacity, is required to receive and to transmit the common grace.

However defective in other points of organization, the society in which
this takes place fulfils the office of an ecclesiastical body. It will
grow into the fulness of Christ; it “builds up itself in love.” The
primary condition of Church health and progress is that there shall be
an unobstructed flow of the life of grace from point to point through
the tissues and substance of the entire frame.

FOOTNOTES:

[105] Εἰς ἕνα καινὸν ἄνθρωπον (_homo_), ch. ii. 15; similarly in iv. 22,
24; Rom. vi. 6; 1 Cor. xv. 45, 47, etc. Here εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον (_vir_);
comp. 1 Cor. xiii. 11; James iii. 2. To call the Church ἀνήρ would be
highly incongruous, in view of ch. v. 23, etc.; comp. 2 Cor. xi. 2.

[106] Col. i. 22, 28, 29; 2 Tim. ii. 10.

[107] For this association of metaphor, comp. Shakespeare: _Julius
Cæsar_, Act V., Scene 1:--

    “Blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark!
    The storm is up; and all is on the hazard!”

[108] Vulgate: _per omnem juncturam ministrationis_. St Paul’s word here
is διὰ πάσης ἁφῆς, _through every touching_. See Lightfoot’s valuable
note on the medical and philosophical use of the word by Greek authors,
in his Commentary on Colossians (ii. 19).

[109] Comp. ch. i. 13: “in whom you also [Gentiles, along with us Jews]
found hope”; also Rom. iii. 29, 30; Tit. i. 4, “my true child according
to _a common faith_.”

[110] See the connexion of thought in Col. ii. 8-10, 18, 19.

[111] Compare 1 Cor. ii. 6, iii. 1-3, xiv. 20, xvi. 13; Gal. iv. 19;
Heb. v. 11-14.




    ON CHRISTIAN MORALS.

    CHAPTER iv. 17--v. 21.

    Ἐν καινότητι ζωῆς περιπατήσωμεν.--ROM. vi. 4.




CHAPTER XIX.

_THE WALK OF THE GENTILES._

    “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer
    walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being
    darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God
    because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening
    of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to
    lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.”--EPH. iv.
    17-19.


Christ has called into existence and formed around Him already a new
world. Those who are members of His body, are brought into another order
of being from that to which they had formerly belonged. They have
therefore to walk in quite another way--“no longer as the Gentiles.” St
Paul does not say “as the other Gentiles” (A.V.); for his readers,
though Gentiles by birth (ii. 11), are now of the household of faith and
the city of God. They hold the franchise of the “commonwealth of
Israel.” As at a later time the apostle John in his Gospel, though a
born Jew, yet from the standpoint of the new Israel writes of “the Jews”
as a distant and alien people, so St Paul distinguishes his readers from
“the Gentiles” who were their natural kindred.

When he “testifies,” with a pointed emphasis, “that _you_ no longer walk
as do indeed the Gentiles,” and when in verse 20 he exclaims, “But
_you_ did not thus learn the Christ,” it appears that there were those
bearing Christ’s name and professing to have learnt of Him who did thus
walk. This, indeed, he expressly asserts in writing to the Philippians
(ch. iii. 18, 19): “Many walk, of whom I told you oftentimes, and now
tell you even weeping,--the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose god is
their belly, and their glory in their shame, who mind earthly things.”
We cannot but associate this warning with the apprehension expressed in
verse 14 above. The reckless and unscrupulous teachers against whose
seductions the apostle guards the infant Churches of Asia Minor,
tampered with the morals as well as with the faith of their disciples,
and were drawing them back insidiously to their former habits of
life.[112]

The connexion between the foregoing part of this chapter and that on
which we now enter, lies in the relation of the new life of the
Christian believer to the new community which he has entered. The old
world of Gentile society had formed the “old man” as he then existed,
the product of centuries of debasing idolatry. But in Christ that world
is abolished, and a “new man” is born. The world in which the Asian
Christians once lived as “Gentiles in the flesh,” is dead to them.[113]
They are partakers of the regenerate humanity constituted in Jesus
Christ. From this idea the apostle deduces the ethical doctrine of the
following paragraphs. His ideal “new man” is no mere ego, devoted to
his personal perfection; he is part and parcel of the redeemed society
of men; his virtues are those of a member of the Christian order and
commonwealth.

       *       *       *       *       *

The representation given of Gentile life in the three verses before us
is highly condensed and pungent. It is from the same hand as the lurid
picture of Romans i. 18-32. While this delineation is comparatively
brief and cursory, it carries the analysis in some respects deeper than
does that memorable passage. We may distinguish the main features of the
description, as they bring into view in turn the _mental_, _spiritual_,
and _moral_ characteristics of the existing Paganism. Man’s intellect
was confounded; religion was dead; profligacy was flagrant and
shameless.

I. “The Gentiles walk,” the apostle says, “in _vanity of their
mind_”--with reason frustrate and impotent; “being _darkened in their
understanding_”--with no clear or settled principles, no sound theory of
life. Similarly, he wrote in Romans i. 21: “They were frustrated in
their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened.” But here he
seems to trace the futility further back, beneath the “reasonings” to
the “reason” (_nous_) itself. The Gentile mind was deranged at its
foundation. Reason seemed to have suffered a paralysis. Man has
forfeited his claim to be a rational creature, when he worships objects
so degraded as the heathen gods, when he practises vices so detestable
and ruinous.

The men of intellect, who held themselves aloof from popular beliefs,
for the most part confessed that their philosophies were speculative and
futile, that certainty in the greatest and most serious matters was
unattainable. Pilate’s question, “What is truth?”--no jesting question
surely--passed from lip to lip and from one school of thought to
another, without an answer. Five centuries before this time the human
intellect had a marvellous awakening. The art and philosophy of Greece
sprang into their glorious life, like Athené born from the head of Zeus,
full-grown and in shining armour. With such leaders as Pericles and
Phidias, as Sophocles and Plato, it seemed as though nothing was
impossible to the mind of man. At last the genius of our race had
blossomed; rich and golden fruit would surely follow, to be gathered
from the tree of life. But the blossoms fell, and the fruit proved as
rottenness. Grecian art had sunk into a meretricious skill; poetry was
little more than a trick of words; philosophy, a wrangling of the
schools. Rome towered in the majesty of her arms and laws above the
faded glory of Greece. She promised a more practical and sober ideal, a
rule of world-wide justice and peace and material plenty. But this dream
vanished, like the other. The age of the Cæsars was an age of
disillusion. Scepticism and cynicism, disbelief in goodness, despair of
the future possessed men’s minds. Stoics and Epicureans, old and new
Academics, Peripatetics and Pythagoreans disputed the palm of wisdom in
mere strife of words. Few of them possessed any earnest faith in their
own systems. The one craving of Athens and the learned was “to hear some
new thing,” for of the old things all thinking men were weary. Only
rhetoric and scepticism flourished. Reason had built up her noblest
constructions as if in sport, to pull them down again. “On the whole,
this last period of Greek philosophy, extending into the Christian era,
bore the marks of intellectual exhaustion and impoverishment, and of
despair in the solution of its high problem” (Döllinger). The world
itself admitted the apostle’s reproach that “by wisdom it knew not God.”
It knew nothing, therefore, to sure purpose, nothing that availed to
satisfy or save it.

Our own age, it may be said, possesses a philosophic method unknown to
the ancient world. The old metaphysical systems failed; but we have
relaid the foundations of life and thought upon the solid ground of
nature. Modern culture rests upon a basis of positive and demonstrated
knowledge, whose value is independent of religious belief. Scientific
discovery has put us in command of material forces that secure the race
against any such relapse as that which took place in the overthrow of
the Græco-Roman civilization. _Pessimism_ answers these pretensions made
for physical science by her idolaters. Pessimism is the nemesis of
irreligious thought. It creeps like a slow palsy over the highest and
ablest minds that reject the Christian hope. What avails it to yoke
steam to our chariot, if black care still sits behind the rider? to wing
our thoughts with the lightning, if those thoughts are no happier or
worthier than before?

“Civilization contains within itself the elements of a fresh servitude.
Man conquers the powers of nature, and becomes in turn their slave” (F.
W. Robertson). Poverty grows gaunt and desperate by the side of lavish
wealth. A new barbarism is bred in what science grimly calls the
_proletariate_, a barbarism more vicious and dangerous than the old,
that is generated by the inhuman conditions of life under the existing
regime of industrial science.

Education gives man quickness of wit and new capacity for evil or good;
culture makes him more sensitive; refinement more delicate in his
virtues or his vices. But there is no tendency in these forces as we
see them now in operation, any more than in the classical discipline, to
make nobler or better men. Secular knowledge supplies nothing to bind
society together, no force to tame the selfish passions, to guard the
moral interests of mankind. Science has given an immense impetus to the
forces acting on civilized men; it cannot change or elevate their
character. It puts new and potent instruments into our hands; but
whether those instruments shall be tools to build the city of God or
weapons for its destruction, is determined by the spirit of the
wielders. In the midst of his splendid machinery, master of the planet’s
wealth and lord of nature’s forces, the civilized man at the end of this
boastful century stands with a dull and empty heart--without God. Poor
creature, he wants to know whether “life is worth living”! He has gained
the world, but lost his soul.

In vanity of mind and darkness of reasoning men stumble onwards to the
end of life, to the end of time. The world’s wisdom and the lessons of
its history give no hope of any real advance from darkness to light
until, as Plato said, “We are able more safely and securely to make our
journey, borne on some firmer vehicle, on some Divine word.”[114] Such a
vehicle those who believe in Christ have found in His teaching. The
moral progress of the Christian ages is due to its guidance. And that
moral progress has created the conditions and given the stimulus to
which our material and scientific progress is due. Spiritual life gives
permanence and value to all man’s acquisitions. Both of this world and
of that to come “godliness holds the promise.” We are only beginning to
learn how much was meant when Jesus Christ announced Himself as “the
light of the world.” He brought into the world a light which was to
shine through all the realms of human life.

II. The delusion of mind in which the nations walked, resulted in a
settled state of _estrangement from God_. They were “alienated from the
life of God.”

“Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,” St Paul said in chapter ii.
12,[115] using, as he does here, the Greek perfect participle, which
denotes an abiding fact. These two alienations generally coincide.
Outside the religious community, we are outside the religious life. This
expression gathers to a point what was said in verses 11, 12 of chapter
ii., and further back in verses 1-3; it discloses the spring of the
soul’s malady and decay in its separation from the living God. When
shall we learn that in God only is our life? We may exist without God,
as a tree cast out in the desert, or a body wasting in the grave; but
that is not _life_.

Everywhere the apostle moved amongst men who seemed to him
dead--joyless, empty-hearted, weary of an idle learning or lost in
sullen ignorance, caring only to eat and drink till they should die like
the beasts. Their so-called gods were phantasms of the Divine, in which
the wiser of them scarcely even pretended to believe. The ancient
natural pieties--not wholly untouched by the Spirit of God, despite
their idolatry--that peopled with fair fancies the Grecian shores and
skies, and taught the sturdy Roman his manfulness and hallowed his love
of home and city, were all but extinguished. Death was at the heart of
Pagan religion; corruption in its breath. Few indeed were those who
believed in the existence of a wise and righteous Power behind the veil
of sense. The Roman augurs laughed at their own auspices; the priests
made a traffic of their temple ceremonies. Sorcery of all kinds was
rife, as rife as scepticism. The most fashionable rites of the day were
the gloomy and revolting mysteries imported from Egypt and Syria. A
hundred years before, the Roman poet Lucretius expressed, with his
burning indignation, the disposition of earnest and high-minded men
towards the creeds of the later classic times:--

    “Humana ante oculos fœde cum vita jaceret,
    In terris oppressa gravi sub religione,
    Quæ caput e cœli regionibus ostendebat
    Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,
    Primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra
    Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra.”[116]

    _De Rerum Natura_: Bk. I., 62-67.

How alienated from the life of God were those who conceived such
sentiments, and those whose creed excited this repugnance. And when
amongst ourselves, as it occurs in some unhappy instances, a similar
bitterness is cherished, it is matter of double sorrow,--of grief at
once for the alienation prompting thoughts so dark and unjust towards
our God and Father, and for the misshapen guise in which our holy
religion has been presented to make this aversion possible.

The phrase “alienated from the life of God” denotes an objective
position rather than a subjective disposition, the state and place of
the man who is far from God and and his true life. God exiles sinners
from His presence. By a necessary law, their sin acts as a sentence of
deprivation. Under its ban they go forth, like Cain, from the presence
of the Lord. They can no longer partake of the light of life which
streams forth evermore from God and fills the souls that abide in His
love.

And this banishment was due to the cause already described,--to the
radical perversion of the Gentile mind, which is re-affirmed in the
double prepositional clause of verse 18: “because of the ignorance that
is in them, because of the hardening of their heart.” The repeated
preposition (_because of_) attaches the two parallel clauses to the same
predicate. Together they serve to explain this sad estrangement from the
Divine life; the second _because_ supplements the first. It is the
ingrained “ignorance” of men that excludes them from the life of God;
and this ignorance is no misfortune or unavoidable fate, it is due to a
positive “hardening of the heart.”

Ignorance is not the mother of devotion, but of indevotion. If men knew
God, they would certainly love and serve Him. St Paul agreed with
Socrates and Plato in holding that virtue is knowledge. The debasement
of the heathen world, he declares again and again, was due to the fact
that it “knew not God.”[117] The Corinthian Church was corrupted and its
Christian life imperilled by the presence in it of some who “had not the
knowledge of God” (1 Cor. xv. 33, 34). At Athens, the centre of heathen
wisdom, he spoke of the Pagan ages as “the times of ignorance” (Acts
xvii. 30); and found in this want of knowledge a measure of excuse. But
the ignorance he censures is not of the understanding alone; nor is it
curable by philosophy and science. It has an intrinsic
ground,--“existing _in_ them.”

Since the world’s creation, the apostle says, God’s unseen presence has
been clearly visible (Rom. i. 20). Yet multitudes of men have always
held false and corrupting views of the Divine nature. At this present
time, in the full light of Christianity, men of high intellect and wide
knowledge of nature are found proclaiming in the most positive terms
that God, if He exists, is unknowable. This ignorance it is not for us
to censure; every man must give account of himself to God. There may be
in individual cases, amongst the enlightened deniers of God in our own
days, causes of misunderstanding beyond the will, obstructing and
darkening circumstances, on the ground of which in His merciful and wise
judgement God may “overlook” that ignorance, even as He did the
ignorance of earlier ages. But it is manifest that while this veil
remains, those on whose heart it lies cannot partake in the life of God.
Living in unbelief, they walk in darkness to the end, knowing not
whither they go.

The Gentile ignorance of God was attended, as St Paul saw it, with an
_induration of heart_, of which it was at once the cause and the effect.
There is a wilful stupidity, a studied misconstruction of God’s will,
which has played a large part in the history of unbelief. The
Israelitish people presented at this time a terrible example of such
guilty callousness (Rom. xi. 7-10, 25). They professed a mighty zeal for
God; but it was a passion for the deity of their partial and corrupt
imagination, which turned to hatred of the true God and Father of men
when He appeared in the person of His Son. Behind their pride of
knowledge lay the ignorance of a hard and impenitent heart.

In the case of the heathen, hardness of heart and religious ignorance
plainly went together. The knowledge of God was not altogether wanting
amongst them; He “left Himself not without witness,” as the apostle told
them (Acts xiv. 17). Where there is, amid whatever darkness, a mind
seeking after truth and right, some ray of light is given, some gleam of
a better hope by which the soul may draw nigh to God,--coming whence or
how perhaps none can tell. The gospel of Christ finds in every new land
souls waiting for God’s salvation. Such a preparation for the Lord, in
hearts touched and softened by the preventings of grace, its first
messengers discovered everywhere,--a remnant in Israel and a great
multitude amongst the heathen.

But the Jewish nation as a whole, and the mass of the pagans, remained
at present obstinately disbelieving. They had no perception of the life
of God, and felt no need of it; and when offered, they thrust it from
them. Theirs was another god, “the god of this world,” who “blinds the
minds of the unbelieving” (2 Cor. iv. 3, 4). And their “ungodliness and
unrighteousness” were not to be pitied more than blamed. They might have
known better; they were “holding down the truth in unrighteousness,”
putting out the light that was in them and contradicting their better
instincts. The wickedness of that generation was the outcome of a
hardening of heart and blinding of conscience that had been going on for
generations past.

III. By two conspicuous features the decaying Paganism of the Christian
era was distinguished,--its unbelief and its _licentiousness_. In his
letter to the Romans St Paul declares that the second of these
deplorable characteristics was the consequence of the former, and a
punishment for it inflicted by God. Here he points to it as a
manifestation of the hardening of heart which caused their ignorance of
God: “Having lost all feeling, they gave themselves up to
lasciviousness, so as to commit every kind of uncleanness in
greediness.”

Upon that brilliant classic civilization there lies a shocking stain of
impurity. St Paul stamps upon it the burning word _Aselgeia
(lasciviousness)_, like a brand on the harlot’s brow. The habits of
daily life, the literature and art of the Greek world, the atmosphere of
society in the great cities was laden with corruption. Sexual vice was
no longer counted vice. It was provided for by public law; it was
incorporated into the worship of the gods. It was cultivated in every
luxurious and monstrous excess. It was eating out the manhood of the
Greek and Latin races. From the imperial Cæsar down to the horde of
slaves, it seemed as though every class of society had abandoned itself
to the horrid practices of lust.

The “greediness” with which debauchery was then pursued, is at the
bottom self-idolatry, self-deification; it is the absorption of the
God-given passion and will of man’s nature in the gratification of his
appetites. Here lies the reservoir and spring of sin, the burning deep
within the soul of him who knows no God but his own will, no law above
his own desire. He plunges into sensual indulgence, or he grasps
covetously at wealth or office; he wrecks the purity, or tramples on the
rights of others; he robs the weak, he corrupts the innocent, he
deceives and mocks the simple--to feed the gluttonous idol of self that
sits upon God’s seat within him. The military hero wading to a throne
through seas of blood, the politician who wins power and office by the
sleights of a supple tongue, the dealer on the exchange who supplants
every competitor by his shrewd foresight and unscrupulous daring, and
absorbs the fruit of the labour of thousands of his fellow-men, the
sensualist devising some new and more voluptuous refinement of
vice,--these are all the miserable slaves of their own lust, driven on
by the insatiate craving of the false god that they carry within their
breast.

For the light-hearted Greeks, lovers of beauty and of laughter, self was
deified as Aphrodité, goddess of fleshly desire, who was turned by their
worship into _Aselgeia_,--she of whom of old it was said, “Her house is
the way to Sheol.” Not such as the chaste wife and house-keeping mother
of Hebrew praise, but Laïs with her venal charms was the subject of
Greek song and art. Pure ideals of womanhood the classic nations had
once known--or never would those nations have become great and famous--a
Greek Alcestis and Antigoné, Roman Cornelias and Lucretias, noble maids
and matrons. But these, in the dissolution of manners, had given place
to other models. The wives and daughters of the Greek citizens were shut
up to contempt and ignorance, while the priestesses of vice--_hetæræ_
they were called, or _companions_ of men--queened it in their voluptuous
beauty, until their bloom faded and poison or madness ended their fatal
days.

Amongst the Jews whom our Lord addressed, the choice lay between “God
and Mammon”; in Corinth and Ephesus, it was “Christ or Belial.” These
ancient gods of the world--“mud-gods,” as Thomas Carlyle called
them--are set up in the high places of our populous cities. To the
slavery of business and the pride of wealth men sacrifice health and
leisure, improvement of mind, religion, charity, love of country, family
affection. How many of the evils of English society come from this root
of all evil!

Hard by the temple of Mammon stands that of Belial. Their votaries
mingle in the crowded amusements of the day and rub shoulders with each
other. Aselgeia flaunts herself, wise observers tell us, with increasing
boldness in the European capitals. Theatre and picture-gallery and novel
pander to the desire of the eye and the lust of the flesh. The daily
newspapers retail cases of divorce and hideous criminal trials with
greater exactness than the debates of Parliament; and the appetite for
this garbage grows by what it feeds upon. It is plain to see whereunto
the decay of public decency and the revival of the animalism of pagan
art and manners will grow, if it be not checked by a deepened Christian
faith and feeling.

_Past feeling_ says the apostle of the brazen impudicity of his time.
The loss of the religious sense blunted all moral sensibility. The
Greeks, by an early instinct of their language, had one word for
_modesty_ and _reverence_, for self-respect and awe before the Divine.
There is nothing more terrible than the loss of shame. When immodesty is
no longer felt as an affront, when there fails to rise in the blood and
burn upon the cheek the hot resentment of a wholesome nature against
things that are foul, when we grow tolerant and familiar with their
presence, we are far down the slopes of hell. It needs only the kindling
of passion, or the removal of the checks of circumstance, to complete
the descent. The pain that the sight of evil gives is a divine shield
against it. Wearing this shield, the sinless Christ fought our battle,
and bore the anguish of our sin.

FOOTNOTES:

[112] “The persons here denounced,” says Lightfoot on Phil. iii. 18,
“are not the Judaizing teachers, but the antinomian reactionists.... The
stress of Paul’s grief lies in the fact that they degraded the true
doctrine of liberty, so as to minister to their profligate and worldly
living.” Comp. 1 Peter iv. 3, 4; 2 Peter ii. 18-22.

[113] Comp. Col. ii. 20-iii. 4; Gal. vi. 14, 15.

[114] _Phæao_: § xxxv.

[115] See p. 129.

[116] “When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth, crushed
down under the weight of religion, who showed her head from the quarters
of heaven with hideous aspect lowering upon mortals, a man of Greece
ventured first to lift up his mortal eyes to her face and first to
withstand her to her face” (Munro).

[117] 1 Thess. iv. 5; 2 Thess. i. 8; Gal. iv. 8, 9.




CHAPTER XX.

_THE TWO HUMAN TYPES._

    “But ye did not so learn the Christ; if so be that ye heard Him, and
    were taught in Him, even as truth is in Jesus: that ye put away, as
    concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth
    corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that ye be renewed in the
    spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which after God hath
    been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.”--EPH. iv.
    20-24.


_But as for you!_--The apostle points us from heathendom to Christendom.
From the men of blinded understanding and impure life he turns to the
cleansed and instructed. “Not thus did _you_ learn the Christ”--not to
remain in the darkness and filth of your Gentile state.

The phrase is highly condensed. The apostle, in this letter so exuberant
in expression, yet on occasion is as concise as in Galatians. One is
tempted, as Beza suggested[118] and Hofmann insists, to put a stop at
this point and to read: “But with you it is not so:[119] you learned the
Christ!” In spite of its abruptness, this construction would be
necessary, if it were only “the Gentiles” of verse 17 with whose “walk”
St Paul means to contrast that of his readers. But, as we have seen, he
has before his eye a third class of men, unprincipled Christian teachers
(ver. 14), men who had in some sense learnt of Christ and yet walked in
Gentile ways and were leading others back to them.[120] Verse 20, after
all, forms a coherent clause. It points an antithesis of solemn import.
There are genuine, and there are supposed conversions; there are true
and false ways of learning Christ.

Strictly speaking, it is not _Christ_, but _the Christ_ whom St Paul
presumes his readers to have duly learnt.[121] The words imply a
comprehending faith, that knows who and what Christ is and what
believing in Him means, that has mastered His great lessons. To such a
faith, which views Christ in the scope and breadth of His redemption,
this epistle throughout appeals; for its impartation and increase St
Paul prayed the wonderful prayer of the third chapter. When he writes
not simply, “You have believed in Christ,” but “You have _learned the
Christ_,” he puts their faith upon a high level; it is the faith of
approved disciples in Christ’s school. For such men the “philosophy and
vain deceit” of Colossæ and the plausibilities of the new “scheme of
error” will have no charm. They have found the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge that are hidden in Christ.

The apostle’s confidence in the Christian knowledge of his readers is,
however, qualified in verse 21 in a somewhat remarkable way: “If verily
it is He whom you heard, and in Him that you were taught, as truth is in
Jesus.” We noted at the outset the bearing of this sentence on the
destination of the letter. It would never occur to St Paul to question
whether the _Ephesian_ Christians were taught Christ’s true doctrine.
If there were any believers in the world who, beyond a doubt, had heard
the truth as in Jesus in its certainty and fulness, it was those amongst
whom the apostle had “taught publicly and from house to house,” “not
shunning to declare all the counsel of God” and “for three years night
and day unceasingly with tears admonishing each single one” (Acts xx.
18-35). To suppose these words written in irony, or in a modest
affectation, is to credit St Paul with something like an ineptitude.
Doubt was really possible as to whether all his readers had heard of
Christ aright, and understood the obligations of their faith. Supposing,
as we have done, that the epistle was designed for the Christians of the
province of Asia generally, this qualification is natural and
intelligible.

There are several considerations which help to account for it. When St
Paul first arrived at Ephesus, eight years before this time, he “found
certain disciples” there who had been “baptized into John’s baptism,”
but had not “received the Holy Spirit” nor even heard of such a thing
(Acts xix. 1-7). Apollos formerly belonged to this company, having
preached and “taught carefully the things about Jesus,” while he “knew
only the baptism of John” (Acts xviii. 25). One very much desires to
know more about this Church of the Baptist’s disciples in Asia Minor.
Its existence so far away from Palestine testifies to the power of
John’s ministry and the deep impression that his witness to the
Messiahship of Jesus made on his disciples. The ready reception of
Paul’s fuller gospel by this little circle indicates that their
knowledge of Jesus Christ erred only by defect; they had received it
from Judæa by a source dating earlier than the day of Pentecost. The
partial knowledge of Jesus current for so long at Ephesus, may have
extended to other parts of the province, where St Paul had not been able
to correct it as he had done in the metropolis.

Judaistic Christians, such as those who at Rome “preached Christ of envy
and strife,” were also disseminating an imperfect Christian doctrine.
They limited the rights of uncircumcised believers; they misrepresented
the Gentile apostle and undermined his influence. A third and still more
lamentable cause of uncertainty in regard to the Christian belief of
Asian Churches, was introduced by the rise of Gnosticizing error in this
quarter. Some who read the epistle had, it might be, received their
first knowledge of Christ through channels tainted with error similar to
that which was propagated at Colossæ. With the seed of the kingdom the
enemy was mingling vicious tares. The apostle has reason to fear that
there were those within the wide circle to which his letter is
addressed, who had in one form or other heard a different gospel and a
Christ other than the true Christ of apostolic teaching.

Where does he find the test and touchstone of the true Christian
doctrine?--In the historical Jesus: “as there is truth _in Jesus_.” Not
often, nor without distinct meaning, does St Paul use the birth-name of
the Saviour by itself. Where he does, it is most significant. He has in
mind the facts of the gospel history; he speaks of “the Jesus”[122] of
Nazareth and Calvary. The Christ whom St Paul feared that some of his
readers might have heard of was not the veritable _Jesus_ Christ, but a
shadowy and notional Christ, lost amongst the crowd of angels, such as
was now being taught to the Colossians. This Christ was neither the
image of God, nor the true Son of man. He supplied no sufficient
redemption from sin, no ideal of character, no sure guidance and
authority to direct the daily walk. Those who followed such a Christ
would fall back unchecked into Gentile vice. Instead of the light of
life shining in the character and words of Jesus, they must resort to
“the doctrines and commandments of men” (Col. ii. 8-23).

Amongst the Gnostics of the second century there was held a distinction
between the human (fleshly and imperfect) _Jesus_ and the Divine
_Christ_, who were regarded as distinct beings, united to each other
from the time of the baptism of Jesus to His death. The critics who
assert the late and non-Pauline authorship of the epistle, assert that
this peculiar doctrine is aimed at in the words before us, and that the
identification of Christ with Jesus has a polemical reference to this
advanced Gnostic error. The verses that follow show that the writer has
a different and entirely practical aim. The apostle points us to our
true ideal, to “the Christ” of all revelation manifest in “the Jesus” of
the gospel. Here we see “the new man created after God,” whose nature we
must embody in ourselves. The counteractive of a false spiritualism is
found in the incarnate life of the Son of God. The dualism which
separated God from the world and man’s spirit from his flesh, had its
refutation in “the Jesus” of Paul’s preaching, whom we see in the Four
Gospels. Those who persisted in the attempt to graft the dualistic
theosophy upon the Christian faith, were in the end compelled to divide
and destroy the Christ Himself. They broke up into _Jesus and Christ_
the unity of His incarnate Person.

It is an entire mistake to suppose that the apostle Paul was indifferent
to the historical tradition of Jesus; that the Christ he taught was a
product of his personal inspiration, of his inward experience and
theological reflection. This preaching of an abstract Christ, distinct
from the actual Jesus, is the very thing that he condemns. Although his
explicit references in the epistles to the teaching of Jesus and the
events of His earthly life are not numerous, they are such as to prove
that the Churches St Paul taught were well instructed in that history.
From the beginning the apostle made himself well acquainted with the
facts concerning Jesus, and had become possessor of all that the earlier
witnesses could relate. His conception of the Lord Jesus Christ is
living and realistic in the highest degree. Its germ was in the visible
appearance of the glorified Jesus to himself on the Damascus road; but
that expanding germ struck down its roots into the rich soil of the
Church’s recollections of the incarnate Redeemer as He lived and taught
and laboured, as He died and rose again amongst men. Paul’s Christ was
the Jesus of Peter and of John and of our own Evangelists; there was no
other. He warns the Church against all unhistorical, subjective Christs,
the product of human speculation.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Asian Christians who held a true faith, had received Jesus as the
Christ. So accepting Him, they accepted a fixed standard and ideal of
life for themselves. With Jesus Christ evidently set forth before their
eyes, let them look back upon their past life; let them contrast what
they had been with what they are to be. Let them consider what things
they must “put off” and what “put on,” so that they may “be found in
Him.”

Strangely did the image of Jesus confront the pagan world; keenly its
light smote on that gross darkness. There stood the Word made
flesh--purity immaculate, love in its very self--shaped forth in no
dream of fancy or philosophy, but in the veritable man Christ Jesus,
born of Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate,--truth expressed

            “In loveliness of perfect deeds,
    More strong than all poetic thought.”

And this life of Jesus, living in those who loved Him (2 Cor. iv. 11),
ended not when He passed from earth; it passed from land to land,
speaking many tongues, raising up new witnesses at every step as it
moved along. It was not a new system, a new creed, but _new men_ that it
gave the world in Christ’s disciples, men redeemed from all iniquity,
noble and pure as sons of God. It was the sight of Jesus, and of men
like Jesus, that shamed the old world, so corrupt and false and hardened
in its sin. In vain she summoned the gates of death to silence the
witnesses of Jesus. At last

    “She veiled her eagles, snapped her sword,
      And laid her sceptre down;
    Her stately purple she abhorred,
      And her imperial crown.
    She broke her flutes, she stopped her sports,
      Her artists could not please;
    She tore her books, she shut her courts,
      She fled her palaces;
    Lust of the eye and pride of life--
      She left it all behind,
    And hurried, torn with inward strife,
      The wilderness to find” (_Obermann once more_).

The Galilean conquered! The new man was destined to convict and destroy
the old. “God sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for
sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. viii. 3). When Jesus lived, died,
and rose again, an inconceivable revolution in human affairs had been
effected. The cross was planted on the territory of the god of this
world; its victory was inevitable. The “grain of wheat” fell into the
ground to die: there might be still a long, cruel winter; many a storm
and blight would delay its growth; but the harvest was secure. Jesus
Christ was the type and the head of a new moral order, destined to
control the universe.

To see the new and the old man side by side was enough to assure one
that the future lay with Jesus. Corruption and decrepitude marked every
feature of Gentile life. It was gangrened with vice,--“wasting away in
its deceitful lusts.”

St Paul had before his eyes, as he wrote, a conspicuous type of the
decaying Pagan order. He had appealed as a citizen of the empire to
_Cæsar_ as his judge. He was in durance as _Nero’s_ prisoner, and was
acquainted with the life of the palace (Phil. i. 13). Never, perhaps,
has any line of rulers dominated mankind so absolutely or held in their
single hand so completely the resources of the world as did the Cæsars
of St Paul’s time. Their name has ever since served to mark the summit
of autocratic power. It was, surely, the vision of Tiberius sitting at
Rome that Jesus saw in the wilderness, when “the devil showed Him all
the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and said, All this hath been
delivered to me, and to whomsoever I will I give it.” The Emperor was
the topstone of the splendid edifice of Pagan civilization, that had
been rearing for so many ages. And Nero was the final product and
paragon of the Cæsarean house!

At this epoch, writes M. Renan,[123] “_Nero and Jesus_, Christ and
Antichrist, stand opposed, confronting each other, if I may dare to say
so, like heaven and hell.... In face of Jesus there presents itself a
monster, who is the ideal of evil as Jesus of goodness.... Nero’s was an
evil nature, hypocritical, vain, frivolous, prodigiously given to
declamation and display; a blending of false intellect, profound
wickedness, cruel and artful egotism carried to an incredible degree of
refinement and subtlety.... He is a monster who has no second in
history, and whose equal we can only find in the pathological annals of
the scaffold.... The school of crime in which he had grown up, the
execrable influence of his mother, the stroke of parricide forced upon
him, as one might say, by this abominable woman, by which he had entered
on the stage of public life, made the world take to his eyes the form of
a horrible comedy, with himself for the chief actor in it. At the moment
we have now reached [when St Paul entered Rome], Nero had detached
himself completely from the philosophers who had been his tutors. He had
killed nearly all his relations. He had made the most shameful follies
the common fashion. A large part of Roman society, following his
example, had descended to the lowest level of debasement. The cruelty of
the ancient world had reached its consummation.... The world had touched
the bottom of the abyss of evil; it could only reascend.”

Such was the man who occupied at this time the summit of human power and
glory,--the man who lighted the torch of Christian martyrdom and at
whose sentence St Paul’s head was destined to fall, the Wild Beast of
John’s awful vision. Nero of Rome, the son of Agrippina, embodied the
triumph of Satan as the god of this world. Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of
Mary, reigned only in a few loving and pure hearts. Future history, as
the scroll of the Apocalypse unfolded it, was to be the battle-field of
these confronting powers, the war of Christ with Antichrist.

Could it be doubtful, to any one who had measured the rival forces, on
which side victory must fall? St Paul pronounces the fate of the whole
kingdom of evil in this world, when he declares that “the old man” is
“perishing, according to the lusts of deceit.” It is an application of
the maxim he gave us in Galatians vi. 8: “He that soweth to his own
flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption.” In its mad sensuality and
prodigal lusts, the vile Roman world he saw around him was speeding to
its ruin. That ruin was delayed; there were moral forces left in the
fabric of the Roman State, which in the following generations
re-asserted themselves and held back for a time the tide of disaster;
but in the end Rome fell, as the ancient world-empires of the East had
fallen, through her own corruption, and by “the wrath” which is
“revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
men.” For the solitary man, for the household, for the body politic and
the family of nations the rule is the same. “Sin, when it is finished,
bringeth forth death.”

The passions which carry men and nations to their ruin are “lusts _of
deceit_.” The tempter is the liar. Sin is an enormous fraud. “You shall
not die,” said the serpent in the garden; “Your eyes will be opened, and
you will be as God!” So forbidden desire was born, and “the woman _being
deceived_ fell into transgression.”

    “So glistered the dire Snake, and into fraud
    Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the tree
    Of prohibition, root of all our woe.”

By its baits of sensuous pleasure, and still more by its show of freedom
and power to stir our pride, sin cheats us of our manhood; it sows life
with misery, and makes us self-despising slaves. It knows how to use
God’s law as an incitement to transgression, turning the very
prohibition into a challenge to our bold desires. “Sin taking occasion
by the commandment deceived me, and by it slew me.” Over the pit of
destruction play the same dancing lights that have lured countless
generations,--the glitter of gold; the purple robe and jewelled coronet;
the wine moving in the cup; fair, soft faces lit with laughter. The
straying foot and hot desires give chase, till the inevitable moment
comes when the treacherous soil yields, and the pursuer plunges beyond
escape into sin’s reeking gulfs. Then the illusion is over. The gay
faces grow foul; the glittering prize proves dust; the sweet fruit turns
to ashes; the cup of pleasure burns with the fire of hell. And the
sinner knows at last that his greed has cheated him, that he is as
foolish as he is wicked.

Let us remember that there is but one way of escape from the
all-encompassing deceit of sin. It is in “learning Christ.” Not in
learning _about_ Christ, but in learning _Him_. It is a common artifice
of the great deceit to “wash the outside of cup and platter.” The old
man is improved and civilized; he is baptized in infancy and called a
Christian. He puts off many of his old ways, he dresses himself in a
decorous garb and style; and so deceives himself into thinking that he
is new, while his heart is unchanged. He may turn ascetic, and deny this
or that _to_ himself; and yet never deny _himself_. He observes
religious forms and makes charitable benefactions, as though he would
compound with God for his unforsaken sin. But all this is only a
plausible and hateful manifestation of the lusts of deceit. To learn the
Christ, is to learn the way of the cross. “Take my yoke upon you, and
learn of me,” He bids us; “for I am meek and lowly in heart.” Till we
have done this, we are not even at the beginning of our lesson.

From the perishing old man the apostle turns, in verses 23, 24, to the
new. These two clauses differ in their form of expression more than the
English rendering indicates.[124] When he writes, “that ye be renewed in
the spirit of your mind,” it is a _continual rejuvenation_ that he
describes; the verb is present in tense, and the newness implied is that
of recency and youth, newness in point of age. But the “new man” to be
“put on” (ver. 24) is of a _new kind and order_; and in this instance
the verb is of the aorist tense signifying an event, not a continuous
act. The new man is put on when the Christian way of life is adopted,
when we enter personally into the new humanity founded in Christ. We
“put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. xiii. 14), who covers and absorbs
the old self, even as those who await in the flesh His second advent
will “put on the house from heaven,” when “the mortal” in them will be
“swallowed up of life” (2 Cor. v. 2-4). Thus two distinct conceptions of
the life of faith are placed before our minds. It consists, on the one
hand, of a quickening, constantly renewed, in the springs of our
individual thought and will; and it is at the same time the assumption
of another nature, the investiture of the soul with the Divine character
and form of its being.

Borne on the stream of his evil passions, we saw “the old man” in his
“former manner of life,” hastening to the gulf of ruin. For the man
renewed in Christ the stream of life flows steadily in the opposite
direction, and with a swelling tide moves upward to God. His knowledge
and love are always growing in depth, in refinement, in energy and joy.
Thus it was with the apostle in his advancing age. The fresh impulses of
the Holy Spirit, the unfolding to his spirit of the mystery of God, the
fellowship of Christian brethren and the interests of the work of the
Church renewed Paul’s youth like the eagle’s. If in years and toil he is
old, his soul is full of ardour, his intellect keen and eager; the
“outward man decays, but the inward man is renewed day by day.”

This new nature had a new birth. The soul reanimating itself perpetually
from the fresh springs that are in God, had in God the beginning of its
renovated life. We have not to create or fashion for ourselves the
perfect life, but to _adopt_ it,--to realize the Christian ideal (ver.
24). We are called to put on the new type of manhood as completely as we
renounce the old (ver. 22). The new man is there before our eyes,
manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, in whom we live henceforth.
When we “learn the Christ,” when we have become His true disciples, we
“put on” His nature and “walk in Him.” The inward reception of His
Spirit is attended by the outward assumption of His character as our
calling amongst men.

Now, the character of Jesus is human nature as God first formed it. It
existed in His thoughts from eternity. If it be asked whether St Paul
refers, in verse 24, to the creation of Adam in God’s likeness, or to
the image of God appearing in Jesus Christ, or to the Christian nature
formed in the regenerate, we should say that, to the apostle’s mind, the
first and last of these creations are merged in the second. The Son of
God’s love is His primeval image. The race of Adam was created in Christ
(Col. i. 15, 16). The first model of that image, in the natural father
of mankind, was marred by sin and has become “the old man” corrupt and
perishing. The new pattern replacing this broken type is the original
ideal, displayed “in the likeness of sinful flesh”--wearing no longer
the charm of childish innocence, but the glory of sin vanquished and
sacrifice endured--in the Son of God made perfect through suffering.
Through all there has been only one image of God, one ideal humanity.
The Adam of Paradise was, within his limits, what the Image of God had
been in perfectness from eternity. And Jesus in His human personality
represented, under the changed circumstances brought about by sin, what
Adam might have grown to be as a complete and disciplined man.

The qualities which the apostle insists upon in the new man are two:
“_righteousness_ and _holiness_ [or _piety_] of the truth.” This is the
Old Testament conception of a perfect life, whose realization the devout
Zacharias anticipates when he sings how God has “shown mercy to our
fathers, in remembrance of His holy covenant, ... that we being
delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in
holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life.”
Enchanting vision, still to be fulfilled! “Righteousness” is the sum of
all that should be in a man’s relations towards God’s law; “holiness” is
a right disposition and bearing towards God Himself. This is not St
Paul’s ordinary word for holiness (_sanctification_, _sanctity_), which
he puts so often at the head of his letters, addressing his readers as
“saints” in Christ Jesus. That other term designates Christian believers
as devoted persons, claimed by God for His own;[125] it signifies
holiness as a calling. The word of our text denotes specifically the
holiness of temper and behaviour--“that becometh saints.” The two words
differ very much as _devotedness_ from _devoutness_.[126]

A religious temper, a reverent mind marks the true child of grace. His
soul is full of the loving fear of God. In the new humanity, in the type
of man that will prevail in the latter days when the truth as in Jesus
has been learnt by mankind, justice and piety will hold a balanced sway.
The man of the coming times will not be atheistic or agnostic: he will
be devout. He will not be narrow and self-seeking; he will not be
pharisaic and pretentious, practising the world’s ethics with the
Christian’s creed: he will be upright and generous, manly and godlike.

FOOTNOTES:

[118] Quid si post οὕτως distinctionem ascribas? _Vos autem non ita_
(subaudi _facere convenit_), _qui didicistis_, etc.

[119] Comp. Numb. xii. 7; Ps. i. 4; Luke xxii. 26, for this Hebraistic
turn of expression.

[120] Comp. Phil. iii. 2, 18; Titus i. 16.

[121] See pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.

[122] Ἐστὶν ἀληθεία ἐν τῷ Ἰησοῦ. The article with the proper name is
most significant. It points to the definite image of Jesus, in His
actual person, that was made familiar by the preaching of Paul and the
other apostles.

[123] _L’Antéchrist_, pp. i. ii. 1, 2. This is a powerful and impressive
work, of whose value those who know only the _Vie de Jésus_ can have
little conception. Renan’s faults are many and deplorable; but he is a
writer of genius and of candour. His rationalism teems with precious
inconsistencies. One hears in him always the Church bells ringing under
the sea, the witness of a faith buried in the heart and never silenced,
to which he confesses touchingly in the Preface to his _Souvenirs_.

[124] ἀνανεοῦσθαι δὲ τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ νοὸς ὑμῶν, καὶ ἐνδυσασθαι τὸν
καίνον ἄνθρωπον, τὸν κατὰ Θεὸν κτισθέντα.

[125] Comp. pp. 29, 30.

[126] It is important to distinguish the Greek adjectives ἅγιος and
ὅσιος, with their derivatives. See Cremer’s _N. T. Lexicon_ on these
words, and Trench’s _N. T. Synonyms_, § lxxxviii. Of the latter word, 1
Thess. ii. 10; 1 Tim. i. 9, ii. 8; 2 Tim. iii. 3; Tit. i. 8 are the only
examples in St Paul.




CHAPTER XXI.

_DISCARDED VICES._

    “Wherefore, having put away falsehood, ‘speak ye truth each one with
    his neighbour’: for we are members one of another.

    “‘Be ye angry, and sin not’: let not the sun go down upon your
    provocation: neither give place to the devil.

    “Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him labour,
    working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have
    whereof to give to him that hath need.

    “Let no worthless speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is
    good for edifying as the need may be, that it may give grace to them
    that hear. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were
    sealed unto the day of redemption.

    “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing
    be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to
    another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in
    Christ forgave you. Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved
    children; and walk in love, even as the Christ also loved you, and
    gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an
    odour of a sweet smell.

    “But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not
    even be named among you, as becometh saints; nor filthiness, nor
    foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not befitting: but rather
    giving of thanks. For this ye know of a surety, that no fornicator,
    nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an idolater, hath any
    inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no man deceive you
    with empty words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of
    God upon the sons of disobedience.”--EPH. iv. 25--v. 6.


The transformation described in the last paragraph (vv. 17-24) has now
to be carried into detail. The vices of the old heathen self must be
each of them replaced by the corresponding graces of the new man in
Christ Jesus.

The peculiarity of the instructions given by the apostle for this
purpose does not lie in the virtues enjoined, but in the light in which
they are set and the motives by which they are inculcated. The common
conscience condemns lying and theft, malice and uncleanness; they were
denounced with eloquence by heathen moralists. But the ethics of the New
Testament differed in many respects from the best moral philosophy: in
its direct appeal to the conscience, in its vigour and decision, in the
clearness with which it traced our maladies to the heart’s alienation
from God; but most of all, in the remedy which it applied, the new
principle of faith in Christ. The surgeon’s knife lays bare the root of
the disease; and the physician’s hand pours in the healing balm.

Let us observe at the outset that St Paul deals with the actual and
pressing temptations of his readers. He recalls what they had been, and
forbids them to be such again. The associations and habits of former
life, the hereditary force of evil, the atmosphere of Gentile society,
and added to all this, as we discover from chapter v. 6, the persuasions
of the sophistical teachers now beginning to infest the Church, tended
to draw the Asian Christians back to Gentile ways and to break down the
moral distinctions that separated them from the pagan world.

Amongst the discarded vices of the forsaken Gentile life, the following
are here distinguished: _lying_, _theft_, _anger_, _idle speech_,
_malice_, _impurity_, _greed_. These may be reduced to sins of temper,
of word, and of act. Let us discuss them in the order in which they are
brought before us.

1. “The falsehood”[127] of verse 25 is the antithesis of “the truth”
from which righteousness and holiness spring (ver. 24). In accepting the
one, Paul’s Gentile readers “had put off” the other. When these heathen
converts became Christians, they renounced the great lie of idolatry,
the system of error and deceit on which their lives were built. They
have passed from the realm of illusion to that of truth. “Now,” the
apostle says, “let your daily speech accord with this fact: you have
bidden farewell to falsehood; _speak_ truth each with his neighbour.”
The true religion breeds truthful men; a sound faith makes an honest
tongue. Hence there is no vice more hateful than jesuitry, nothing more
shocking than the conduct of those who defend what they call “the truth”
by disingenuous arts, by tricks of rhetoric and the shifts of an
unscrupulous partizanship. “Will you speak unrighteously for God, and
talk deceitfully for Him?” _As Christ’s truth is in me_ cries the
apostle, when he would give the strongest possible assurance of the fact
he wishes to assert.[128] The social conventions and make-believes, the
countless simulations and dissimulations by which the game of life is
carried on belong to the old man with his lusts of deceit, to the
universal lie that runs through all ungodliness and unrighteousness,
which is in the last analysis the denial of God.

St Paul applies here the words of Zechariah viii. 16, in which the
prophet promises to restored Israel better days on the condition that
they should “speak truth each with his neighbour, and judge truth and
the judgement of peace in their gates. And let none of you,” he
continues, “imagine evil in his heart against his neighbour; and love no
false oath. For all these things do I hate, saith the Lord.” Such is the
law of the New Covenant life. No doubt, St Paul is thinking of the
intercourse of Christians with each other when he quotes this command
and adds the reason, “For we are _members one of another_.” But the word
_neighbour_, as Jesus showed, has in the Christian vocabulary no limited
import; it includes the Samaritan, the heathen man and publican. When
the apostle bids his converts “Follow what is good towards one another,
and towards all” (1 Thess. v. 15), he certainly presumes the neighbourly
obligation of truthfulness to be no less comprehensive.

Believers in Christ represent a communion which in principle embraces
all men. The human race is one family in Christ. For any man to lie to
his fellow is, virtually, to lie to himself. It is as if the eye should
conspire to cheat the hand, or the one hand play false to the other.
Truth is the right which each man claims instinctively from his
neighbour; it is the tacit compact that binds together all
intelligences. Without neighbourly and brotherly love perfect
truthfulness is scarcely possible. “Self-respect will never destroy
self-seeking, which will always find in self-interest a side accessible
to the temptations of falsehood” (Harless).

2. Like the first precept, the second is borrowed from the Old
Testament and shaped to the uses of the New. “_Be ye angry_, and sin
not”: so the words of Psalm iv. 4 stand in the Greek version and in the
margin of our Revised Bible, where we commonly read, “Stand in awe, and
sin not. Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.” The
apostle’s further injunction, that anger should be stayed before
nightfall, accords with the Psalmist’s words; the calming effect of the
night’s quiet the apostle anticipates in the approach of evening. As the
day’s heat cools and its strain is relaxed, the fires of anger should
die down. With the Jews, it will be remembered, the new day began at
evening. Plutarch, the excellent heathen moralist contemporary with St
Paul, gives this as an ancient rule of the Pythagoreans: “If at any time
they happened to be provoked by anger to abusive language, before the
sun set they would take each other’s hands and embracing make up their
quarrel.” If Paul had heard of this admirable prescription, he would be
delighted to recognize and quote it as one of those many facts of
Gentile life which “show the work of the law written in their hearts”
(Rom. ii. 15). The passion which outlives the day, on which the angry
man sleeps and that wakes with him in the morning, takes root in his
breast; it becomes a settled rancour, prompting ill thoughts and deeds.

There is no surer way of tempting the devil to tempt us than to brood
over our wrongs. Every cherished grudge is a “place given” to the
tempter, a new entrenchment for the Evil One in his war against the
soul, from which he may shoot his “fire-tipped darts” (vi. 16). Let us
dismiss with each day the day’s vexations, commending as evening falls
our cares and griefs to the Divine compassion and seeking, as for
ourselves, so for those who may have done us wrong forgiveness and a
better mind. We shall rise with the coming light armed with new patience
and charity, to bring into the world’s turmoil a calm and generous
wisdom that will earn for us the blessing of the peacemakers, who shall
be called sons of God.

Still the apostle says: “_Be angry_, and sin not.” He does not condemn
anger in itself, nor wholly forbid it a place within the breast of the
saint. Wrath is a glorious attribute of God,--perilous, indeed, for the
best of men; but he who cannot be angry has no strength for good. The
apostle knew this holy passion, the flame of Jehovah that burns
unceasingly against the false and foul and cruel. But he knew its
dangers--how easily an ardent soul kindled to exasperation forgets the
bounds of wisdom and love; how strong and jealous a curb the temper
needs, lest just indignation turn to sin, and Satan gain over us a
double advantage, first by the wicked provocation and then by the
uncontrolled resentment it excites.

3. From anger we pass to _theft_.

The eighth commandment is put here in a form indicating that some of the
apostle’s readers had been habitual sinners against it. Literally his
words read: “Let him _that steals_ play the thief no more.” The Greek
present participle does not, however, necessarily imply a pursuit now
going on, but an habitual or characteristic pursuit, that by which the
agent was known and designated: “Let the thief no longer steal!” From
the lowest dregs of the Greek cities--from its profligate and criminal
classes--the gospel had drawn its converts (comp. 1 Cor. vi. 9-11). In
the Ephesian Church there were converted thieves; and Christianity had
to make of them honest workmen.

The words of verse 28, addressed to a company of thieves, vividly show
the transforming effect of the gospel of Christ: “Let him toil, working
with his hands what is good, that he may have wherewith to give to him
that is in need.” The apostle brings the loftiest motives to bear
instantly upon the basest natures, and is sure of a response. He makes
no appeal to self-interest, he says nothing of the fear of punishment,
nothing even of the pride of honest labour. Pity for their fellows, the
spirit of self-sacrifice and generosity is to set those pilfering and
violent hands to unaccustomed toil. The appeal was as wise as it was
bold. Utilitarianism will never raise the morally degraded. Preach to
them thrift and self-improvement, show them the pleasures of an ordered
home and the advantages of respectability, they will still feel that
their own way of life pleases and suits them best. But let the divine
spark of charity be kindled in their breast--let the man have love and
pity and not self to work for, and he is a new creature. His indolence
is conquered; his meanness changed to the noble sense of a common
manhood. Love never faileth.

4. We have passed from speech to temper, and from temper to act; in the
warning of verses 29, 30 we come back to speech again.

We doubt whether _corrupt talk_ is here intended. That comes in for
condemnation in verses 2 and 3 of the next chapter. The Greek adjective
is the same that is used of the “_worthless_ fruit” of the “_worthless_
[_good-for-nothing_] tree” in Matthew xii. 33; and again of the “_bad_
fish” of Matthew xiii. 48, which the fisherman throws away not because
they are corrupt or offensive, but because they are useless for food. So
it is against _inane_, inept and useless talk that St Paul sets his
face. Jesus said that “for _every idle word_ men must give account to
God” (Matt. xii. 36).

Jesus Christ laid great stress upon the exercise of the gift of speech.
“By thy words,” He said to His disciples, “thou shalt be justified, and
by thy words condemned.” The possession of a human tongue is an immense
responsibility. Infinite good or mischief lies in its power. (With the
tongue we should include the pen, as being the tongue’s deputy.) Who
shall say how great is the sum of injury, the waste of time, the
irritation, the enfeeblement of mind and dissipation of spirit, the
destruction of Christian fellowship that is due to thoughtless speech
and writing? The apostle does not simply forbid injurious words, he puts
an embargo on all that is not positively useful. It is not enough to
say: “My chatter does nobody harm; if there is no good in it, there is
no evil.” He replies: “If you cannot speak to profit, be silent till you
can.”

Not that St Paul requires all Christian speech to be grave and serious.
Many a true word is spoken in jest; and “grace” may be “given to the
hearers” by words clothed in the grace of a genial fancy and playful
wit, as well as in the direct enforcement of solemn themes. It is the
mere talk, whether frivolous or pompous--spoken from the pulpit or the
easy chair--the incontinence of tongue, the flux of senseless,
graceless, unprofitable utterance that St Paul desires to arrest: “let
it not proceed out of your mouth.” Such speech must not “escape the
fence of the teeth.” It is an oppression to every serious listener; it
is an injury to the utterer himself. Above all, it “grieves the Holy
Spirit.”

The witness of the Holy Spirit is the seal of God’s possession in
us;[129] it is the assurance to ourselves that we are His sons in
Christ and heirs of life eternal. From the day it is affixed to the
heart, this seal need never be broken nor the witness withheld, “until
the day of redemption.” Dwelling within the Church as the guard of its
communion, and loving us with the love of God, the Spirit of grace is
hurt and grieved by foolish words coming from lips that He has
sanctified. As Israel in its ancient rebellions “vexed His Holy Spirit”
(Isai. lxiii. 10), so do those who burden Christian fellowship and who
enervate their own inward life by speech without worth and purpose. As
His fire is quenched by distrust (1 Thess. v. 19), so His love is vexed
by folly. His witness grows faint and silent; the soul loses its joyous
assurance, its sense of the peace of God. When our inward life thus
declines, the cause lies not unfrequently in our own heedless speech. Or
we have listened willingly and without reproof to “words that may do
hurt,” words of foolish jesting or idle gossip, of mischief and
backbiting. The Spirit of truth retires affronted from His desecrated
temple, not to return until the iniquity of the lips is purged and the
wilful tongue bends to the yoke of Christ. Let us grieve before the Holy
Spirit, that He be not grieved with us for such offences. Let us pray
evermore: “Set a watch, O Jehovah, before my mouth; keep the door of my
lips.”

5. In his previous reproofs the apostle has glanced in various ways at
love as the remedy of our moral disorders and defects. Falsehood, anger,
theft, misuse of the tongue involve disregard of the welfare of others;
if they do not spring from positive ill-will, they foster and aggravate
it. It is now time to deal directly with this evil that assumes so many
forms, the most various of our sins and companion to every other: “Let
all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing be put
away from you, with all malice.”

The last of these terms is the most typical. _Malice_ is badness of
disposition, the aptness to envy and hatred, which apart from any
special occasion is always ready to break out in bitterness and wrath.
_Bitterness_ is malice sharpened to a point and directed against the
exasperating object. _Wrath_ and _anger_ are synonymous, the former
being the passionate outburst of resentment in rage, the latter the
settled indignation of the aggrieved soul: this passion was put under
restraint already in verses 26, 27. _Clamour_ and _railing_ give audible
expression to these and their kindred tempers. Clamour is the loud
self-assertion of the angry man, who will make every one hear his
grievance; while the railer carries the war of the tongue into his
enemy’s camp, and vents his displeasure in abuse and insult.

These sins of speech were rife in heathen society; and there were some
amongst Paul’s readers, doubtless, who found it hard to forgo their
indulgence. Especially difficult was this when Christians suffered all
manner of evil from their heathen neighbours and former friends; it cost
a severe struggle to be silent and “keep the mouth as with a bridle”
under fierce and malicious taunts. Never to return evil for evil and
railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing,--this was one of the
lessons most difficult to flesh and blood.

_Kindness_ in act, _tenderheartedness_ of feeling are to take the place
of malice with its brood of bitter passions. Where injury used to be met
with reviling and insult retorted in worse insult, the men of the new
life will be found “forgiving one another, even as God in Christ
forgave” them. Here we touch the spring of Christian virtue, the master
motive in the apostle’s theory of life. The cross of Jesus Christ is
the centre of Pauline ethics, as of Pauline theology. The sacrifice of
Calvary, while it is the ground of our salvation, supplies the standard
and incentive of moral attainment. It makes life _an imitation of God_.

The commencement of the new chapter at this point makes an unfortunate
division; for its first two verses are in close consecution with the
last verse of chapter iv. By kindness and pitifulness of heart, by
readiness to forgive, God’s “beloved children” will “show themselves
imitators” of their Father. The apostle echoes the saying of his Master,
in which the law of His kingdom was laid down: “Love your enemies, and
do good, and lend never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and
you shall be called children of the Highest: for He is kind to the
thankless and evil. Be ye therefore pitiful, as your Father is pitiful”
(Luke vi. 35, 36). Before the cross of Jesus was set up, men could not
know how much God loved the world and how far He was ready to go in the
way of forgiveness. Yet Christ Himself saw the same love displayed in
the Father’s daily providence. He bids us imitate Him who makes His sun
shine and His rain fall on the just and unjust, on the evil and the
good. To the insight of Jesus, nature’s impartial bounties in which
unbelief sees only moral indifference, spoke of God’s compassion; they
proceed from the same love that gave His Son to taste death for every
man.

In chapter iv. 32-v. 2 the Father’s love and the Son’s self-sacrifice
are spoken of in terms precisely parallel. They are altogether one in
quality. Christ does not by His sacrifice persuade an angry Father to
love His children; it is the Divine compassion in Christ that dictates
and carries into effect the sacrifice. At the same time it was “an
_offering_ and a _sacrifice_ to God.” God is love; but love is not
everything in God. Justice is also Divine, and absolute in its own
realm. Law can no more forgo its rights than love forget its
compassions. Love must fulfil all righteousness; it must suffer law to
mark out its path of obedience, or it remains an effusive, ineffectual
sentiment, helpless to bless and save. Christ’s feet followed the stern
and strait path of self-devotion; “He humbled Himself and became
obedient,” He was “born under law.” And the law of God imposing death as
the penalty for sin, which shaped Christ’s sacrifice, made it acceptable
to God. Thus it was “an odour of a sweet smell.”

Hence the love which follows Christ’s example, is love wedded with duty.
It finds in an ordered devotion to the good of men the means to fulfil
the all-holy Will and to present in turn its “offering to God.” Such
love will be above the mere pleasing of men, above sentimentalism and
indulgence; it will aim higher than secular ideals and temporal
contentment. It regards men in their kinship to God and obligation to
His law, and seeks to make them worthy of their calling. All human
duties, for those who love God, are subordinate to this; all commands
are summed up in one: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” The
apostle pronounced the first and last word of his teaching when he said:
_Walk in love, as the Christ also loved us._

6. Above all others, one sin stamped the Gentile world of that time with
infamy,--its _uncleanness_.

St Paul has stigmatized this already in the burning words of verse 19.
There we saw this vice in its intrinsic loathsomeness; here it is set
in the light of Christ’s love on the one hand (ver. 2), and of the final
judgement on the other (vv. 5, 6). Thus it is banished from the
Christian fellowship in every form--even in the lightest, where it
glances from the lips in words of jest: “Fornication and all
uncleanness, let it not even be named among you.” Along with
“filthiness, foolish talk and jesting” are to be heard no more. Passing
from verse 2 to verse 3 by the contrastive _But_, one feels how
repugnant are these things to the love of Christ. The perfume of the
sacrifice of Calvary, so pleasing in heaven, sweetens our life on earth;
its grace drives wanton and selfish passions from the heart, and
destroys the pestilence of evil in the social atmosphere. Lust cannot
breathe in the sight of the cross.

The “good-for-nothing speech” of chapter iv. 29 comes up once more for
condemnation in the _foolish speech_ and _jesting_ of this passage. The
former is the idle talk of a stupid, the latter of a clever man. Both,
under the conditions of heathen society, were tainted with foulness.
Loose speech easily becomes low speech. Wit, unchastened by reverence,
finds a tempting field for its exercise in the delicate relations of
life, and displays its skill in veiled indecencies and jests that
desecrate the purer feelings, while they avoid open grossness.

St Paul’s word for “jesting” is one of the singular terms of this
epistle. By etymology it denotes a _well-turned_ style of expression,
the versatile speech of one who can touch lightly on many themes and
aptly blend the grave and gay. This social gift was prized amongst the
polished Greeks. But it was a faculty so commonly abused, that the word
describing it fell into bad odour: it came to signify banter and
persiflage; and then, still worse, the kind of talk here indicated,--the
wit whose zest lies in its flavour of impurity. “The very profligate old
man in the _Miles Gloriosus_ of Plautus (iii. I. 42-52), who prides
himself, and not without reason, upon his wit, his elegance and
refinement [_cavillator lepidus_, _facetus_], is exactly the εὐτράπελος.
And keeping in mind that εὐτραπελία, being only once expressly and by
name forbidden in Scripture, is forbidden to Ephesians, it is not a
little notable to find him urging that all this was to be expected from
him, being as he was an Ephesian by birth:--

    Post _Ephesi sum natus_; non enim in Apulia, non Animulæ.”[130]

In place of senseless prating and wanton jests--things unbefitting to a
rational creature, much more to a saint--the Asian Greeks are to find in
_thanksgiving_ employment for their ready tongue. St Paul’s rule is not
one of mere prohibition. The versatile tongue that disported itself in
unhallowed and frivolous utterance, may be turned into a precious
instrument for God’s service. Let the fire of Divine love touch the
jester’s lips, and that mouth will show forth His praise which once
poured out dishonour to its Maker and shame to His image in man.

7. At the end of the Ephesian catalogue of vices, as at the beginning
(iv. 19), uncleanness is joined with _covetousness_, or _greed_.

This, too, is “not even to be named amongst you, as becometh saints.”
_Money! property!_ these are the words dearest and most familiar in the
mouths of a large class of men of the world, the only themes on which
they speak with lively interest. But Christian lips are cleansed from
the service both of Belial and of Mammon. When his business follows the
trader from the shop to the fireside and the social circle, and even
into the Church, when it becomes the staple subject of his conversation,
it is clear that he has fallen into the low vice of covetousness. He is
becoming, instead of a man, a money-making machine, an “idolater” of

    “Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
    From heaven.”

The apostle classes the covetous man with the fornicator and the
unclean, amongst those who by their worship of the shameful idols of the
god of this world exclude themselves from their “inheritance in the
kingdom of Christ and of God.”

A serious warning this for all who handle the world’s wealth. They have
a perilous war to wage, and an enemy who lurks for them at every step in
their path. Will they prove themselves masters of their business, or its
slaves? Will they escape the golden leprosy,--the passion for
accumulation, the lust of property? None are found more dead to the
claims of humanity and kindred, none further from the kingdom of Christ
and God, none more “closely wrapped” within their “sensual fleece” than
rich men who have prospered by the idolatry of gain. Dives has chosen
and won his kingdom. He “receives in his lifetime his good things”;
afterwards he must look for “torments.”

FOOTNOTES:

[127] Διὸ ἀποθέμενοι τὸ ψεῦδος. Despite the commentators, we must hold
to it that _the lie_, _the falsehood_ is objective and concrete; not
_lying_, or _falsehood_ as a subjective act, habit, or quality,--which
would have been rather ψευδολογία (comp. μωρολογία, v. 4; and 1 Tim. iv.
2, ψευδολόγων), or τὸ ψευδές. So in Rom. i. 25, τὸ ψεῦδος is “the [one
great] lie” which runs through all idolatry; and in 2 Thess. ii. 11 it
denotes “the lie” which Antichrist imposes on those ready to believe
it,--viz., that he himself is God. Accordingly, we take the participle
ἀποθέμενοι to signify not what the readers are to do, but what they _had
done_ in renouncing heathenism. The apostle requires consistency: “Since
you are now of the truth, be truth-speaking men.”

[128] 2 Cor. i. 18, 19, xi. 10.

[129] See ch. i. 13, 14, and 18 (last clause).

[130] Trench: _N. T. Synonyms_, § xxxiv.




CHAPTER XXII.

_DOCTRINE AND ETHICS._

    “We are members one of another....

    “Let the thief labour ... that he may have whereof to give to him
    that hath need....

    “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the
    day of redemption....

    “Forgive each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. Be ye
    imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as the
    Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a
    sacrifice to God....

    “No fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an
    idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and
    God.”--EPH. iv. 25-v. 6.


The homily that we have briefly reviewed in the last Chapter demands
further consideration. It affords a striking and instructive example of
St Paul’s method as a teacher of morals, and makes an important
contribution to evangelical ethics. The common vices are here prohibited
on specifically Christian grounds. The new nature formed in Christ casts
them off as alien and dead things; they are the sloughed skin of the old
life, the discarded dress of the old man who was slain by the cross of
Christ and lies buried in His grave.

The apostle does not condemn these sins as being contrary to God’s law:
that is taken for granted. But the legal condemnation was ineffectual
(Rom. viii. 3). The wrath revealed from heaven against man’s
unrighteousness had left that unrighteousness unchastened and defiant.
The revelation of law, approved and echoed by conscience, taught man his
guilt; it could do no more. All this St Paul assumes; he builds on the
ground of law and its acknowledged findings.

Nor does the apostle make use of the principles of philosophical ethics,
which in their general form were familiar to him as to all educated men
of the day. He says nothing of the rule of nature and right reason, of
the intrinsic fitness, the harmony and beauty of virtue; nothing of
expediency as the guide of life, of the inward contentment that comes
from well-doing, of the wise calculation by which happiness is
determined and the lower is subordinated to the higher good. St Paul
nowhere discountenances motives and sanctions of this sort; he
contravenes none of the lines of argument by which reason is brought to
the aid of duty, and conscience vindicates itself against passion and
false self-interest. Indeed, there are maxims in his teaching which
remind us of each of the two great schools of ethics, and that make room
in the Christian theory of life both for the philosophy of experience
and that of intuition. The true theory recognizes, indeed, the
experimental and evolutional as well as the fixed and intrinsic in
morality, and supplies their synthesis.

But it is not the apostle’s business to adjust his position to that of
Stoics and Epicureans, or to unfold a new philosophy; but to teach the
way of the new life. His Gentile disciples had been untruthful,
passionate in temper, covetous, licentious: the gospel which he preached
had turned them from these sins to God; from the same gospel he draws
the motives and convictions which are to shape their future life and to
give to the new spirit within them its fit expression. St Paul has no
quarrel with ethical science, much less with the inspired law of his
fathers; but both had proved ineffectual to keep men from iniquity, or
to redeem them fallen into it. Above them both, above all theories and
all external rules he sets the law of the Spirit of life in Christ.

The originality of Christian ethics, we repeat, does not lie in its
detailed precepts. There is not one, it may be, even of the noblest
maxims of Jesus that had not been uttered by some previous moralist.
With the New Testament in our hands, it may be possible to collect from
non-Christian sources--from Greek philosophers, from the Jewish Talmud,
from Egyptian sages and Hindoo poets, from Buddha and Confucius--a moral
anthology which thus sifted out of the refuse of antiquity, like
particles of iron drawn by the magnet, may bear comparison with the
ethics of Christianity. If Christ is indeed the Son of man, we should
expect Him to gather into one all that is highest in the thoughts and
aspirations of mankind. Addressing the Athenians on Mars’ Hill, the
apostle could appeal to “certain of your own poets” in support of his
doctrine of the Fatherhood of God. The noblest minds in all ages witness
to Jesus Christ and prove themselves to be, in some sort, of His
kindred.

      “They are but broken lights of Thee;
    And Thou, O Lord, art more than they!”

It is Christ in us, it is the personal fellowship of the soul with Him
and with the living God through Him, that forms the vital and
constitutive factor of Christianity. Here is the secret of its moral
efficacy. The Christ is the centre root and of the race; He is the
image of God in which we were made. The life-blood of mankind flowed in
Him as in its heart, and poured forth from Him as from its fountain in
sacrifice for the common sin. Jesus gathered into Himself and restored
the virtue of humanity broken into a thousand fragments; but He did much
more than this. While He re-created in His personal character our lost
manhood, by His death and resurrection He has gained for that ideal a
transcendent power that seizes upon men and regenerates and transforms
them. “With unveiled face beholding in the mirror the glory of the Lord,
we are changed into the same image, [receiving the glory that we see] as
from the Lord of the Spirit” (2 Cor. iii. 18).

There is, therefore, an evangelical ethics, a Christian science of life.
“The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” has a system and method
of its own. It has a rational solution and explanation to render for our
moral problems. But its solution is given, as St Paul and as his Master
loved to give it, in practice, not in theory. It teaches the art of
living to multitudes to whom the names of ethics and moral science are
unknown. Those who understand the method of Christ best are commonly too
busy in its practice to theorize about it. They are physicians tending
the sick and the dying, not professors in some school of medicine. Yet
professors have their use, as well as practitioners. The task of
developing a Christian science of life, of exhibiting the truth of
revelation in its theoretical bearings and its relations to the thought
of the age, forms a part of the practical duties of the Church and
touches deeply the welfare of souls. For other times this work has been
nobly accomplished by Christian thinkers. Shall we not pray the Lord of
the harvest that He will thrust forth into this field fit labourers;
that He will raise up men mighty through God to overthrow every high
thing that exalts itself against His knowledge, and wise to build up to
the level of the times the great fabric of Christian ethics and
discipline?

       *       *       *       *       *

There emerge in this exhortation four distinct principles, which lay at
the basis of St Paul’s views of life and conduct.

I. In the first place, the fundamental truth of _the Fatherhood of God_,
“Be imitators of God,” he writes, “as beloved children.” And in chapter
iv. 24: “Put on the new man, which _was created after God_.”

Man’s life has its law, for it has its source, in the nature of the
Eternal. Behind our race-instincts and the laws imposed on us in the
long struggle for existence, behind those imperatives of practical
reason involved in the structure of our intelligence, is the presence
and the active will of Almighty God our heavenly Father. His image we
see in the Son of man.

Here is the fountainhead of truth, from which the two great streams of
philosophical thought upon morals have diverged. If man is the child of
a Being absolutely good, then moral goodness belongs to the essence of
his nature; it is discoverable in the instincts of his reason and will.
Were not our nature warped by sin, such reasoning must have commanded
immediate assent and led to consistent and self-evident results. Again,
if man is the _child_ of God, the finite of the Infinite, his moral
character must, presumably, have been in the beginning germinal rather
than complete, needing--even apart from sin and its
malformations--development and education, the discipline of a fatherly
providence, inculcating the lessons and forming the habits which belong
to his ripe manhood and full-grown stature. Intuitional morals bear
witness to the God of creation; experimental morals to the God of
providence and history. The Divine Fatherhood is the keystone of the
arch in which they meet.

The command to “be imitators of God” makes _personality_ the sovereign
element in life. If consciousness is a finite and passing phenomenon, if
God be but a name for the sum of the impersonal laws that regulate the
universe, for the “stream of tendency” in the worlds, _Father_ and
_love_ are meaningless terms applied to the Supreme and religion
dissolves into an impalpable mist. Is the universe governed by personal
will, or by impersonal force? Is reason, or is gravitation the index to
the nature of the Absolute? This is the vital question of modern
thought. The latter is the answer given by a large, if not a
preponderant body of philosophical opinion in our own day,--as it was
given, virtually, by the natural philosophers of Greece in the dawn of
science. Man’s triumphs over nature and the splendour of his discoveries
in the physical realm bewilder his reason. The scientists, like other
conquerors, have been intoxicated with victory. The universe, it seemed,
was about to yield to them its last secrets; they were prepared to
analyze the human soul and resolve the conception of God into its
material elements. Religion and conscience, however, prove to be
intractable subjects in the physical laboratory; they are coming out of
the crucible unchanged and refined. We are able by this time to take a
more sober measure of the possibilities of the scientific method, and to
see what inductive logic and natural selection can do for us, and what
they cannot do. We can walk in the light of the new revelation, without
being dazzled by it. Things are less altered than we thought. The old
boundaries reappear. The spirit resumes its place, and rules a wider
realm than before. Reason refuses to be the victim of its own success,
and to immolate itself for the deification of material law. “Forasmuch
as we are God’s offspring,” we ought not to think, and we will not think
that the Godhead is like to blind forces and reasonless properties of
matter. Love, thought, will in us raise our being above the realm of the
impersonal; and these faculties point us upward to Him from whom they
came, the Father of the spirits of all flesh.

The great tide of joy, the victorious energy which the sense of God’s
love brings into the life of a Christian, is evidence of its reality.
The believer is a child walking in the light of his Father’s
smile--dependent, ignorant, but the object of an Almighty love. A
thousand tokens speak to him of the Divine care; his tasks and trials
are sweetened by the confidence that they are appointed for wise ends
beyond his present knowledge. To another in that same house there is no
heavenly Father, no unseen hand that guides, no gleam of a brighter and
purer day lighting up its dull chambers. There are human companions,
weak, erring and wearying like oneself. There is work to do, with the
night coming swiftly; and the brave heart girds itself to duty, finding
in the service of man its motive and employment--but, alas, with how
poor success and how faint a hope!

It is not the loss of strength for human service, nor the dying out of
joy which unbelief entails, that is its chief calamity; but the
unbelief itself. The sun in the soul’s heaven is put out. The personal
relationship to the Supreme which gave dignity and worth to our
individual being, which imparted sacredness and enduring power to all
other ties, is destroyed. The heart is orphaned; the temple of the
spirit desolate. The mainspring of life is broken.

    “Make haste to answer me, O Jehovah; my spirit faileth!
              Hide not Thy face from me,
      Lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit!”

II. _The solidarity of mankind in Christ_ furnishes the apostle with a
powerful lever for raising the ethical standard of his readers. The
thought that “we are members one of another” forbids deceit. That he may
“have whereof to give to the needy” is the purpose that provokes the
thief to industry. The desire to “give grace” to the hearers and to
“build them up” in truth and goodness imparts seriousness and elevation
to social intercourse. The irritations and injuries we inflict on each
other, with or without purpose, furnish occasion for us to “be kind one
to another, good-hearted, _forgiving yourselves_”--for this is the
expression the apostle uses in chapter iv. 32, and in Colossians iii.
13. Self is so merged in the community, that in dealing censure or
forgiveness to an offending brother the Christian man feels as though he
were dealing with himself--as though it were the hand that forgave the
foot for tripping, or the ear that pardoned some blunder of the eye.

_Showing-grace_ is what the apostle literally says here, speaking both
of human and Divine forgiveness.[131] In this lies the charm and power
of true forgiveness. The forgiver after the order of grace does not
pardon like a judge moved by magnanimity or pity for transgressors, but
in love to his own kind and desire for their amendment. He identifies
himself with the wrong-doer, weighs his temptation and all that drew him
into error. Such forgiveness, while it never ignores the wrong, admits
every qualifying circumstance and just extenuation. This is the kind of
pardon that touches the sinner’s heart; for it goes to the heart of the
sin, isolating it from all other feelings and conditions that are not
sin; it takes the wrong upon itself in understanding and perception; it
puts its finger upon the aching, festering spot where the criminality
lies and applies to that its healing balm.

“Even as God in Christ forgave you.” And how did God forgive? Not by a
grand imperial decree, as of some monarch too exalted to resent the
injuries of men or to inquire into their futile proceedings. Had such
forgiveness been possible to Divine justice, it could have wrought in us
no real salvation. Our forgiveness is that of God in Christ. The
Forgiver has sat down by the prisoner’s side, has felt his misery and
the force of his temptations, and in everything but the actual sin has
made Himself one with the sinner, even to bearing the extreme penalty of
his guilt. In the act of making sacrifice, Jesus prayed for those that
slew Him: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!” This
intercession breathed the spirit of the new forgiveness. There is a real
remission of sins, a release granted justly and upon due satisfaction;
but it is the act of justice charged with love, of a justice as tender
and considerate as it is strong, and which eagerly takes account of all
that bespeaks in the offender a possibility of better things. It is a
forgiveness that does justice to the humanity as well as the criminality
in the sinner.

To proclaim by word and deed this forgiveness of God to the sinful world
is the vocation of the Church. And where she does thus declare it, by
whatever means or ministry, Christ’s promise to her is verified:
“Whose-soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them.” We may so
reconcile men to ourselves, as to bring them back to God. Has some one
done you a wrong? there is your opportunity of saving a soul from death
and hiding a multitude of sins. Thus Christ used the great wrong we all
did Him. It is your privilege to show the wrong-doer that you and he are
made one by the blood of Christ.

“Walk in love,” St Paul says, “as the Christ also loved us and gave up
Himself for us a sacrifice.” When the apostle writes _the Christ_, he
points us along the whole line of the revelation of the cross.[132] We
think of the Christhood of Jesus, of the Christliness of such love as
this. Christ’s was a representative and exemplary love, with its
forerunners and its followers all walking in one path. “The Christ loved
_and gave_”; for love that does not give, that prompts to no effort and
puts itself to no sacrifice, is but a luxury of the heart,--useless and
even selfish. And He “gave up _Himself_”--the only gift that could
suffice. The rich who bestow many gifts in furtherance of humanitarian
and religious work and still do not bestow themselves, their sympathetic
thought, their presence and personal aid, are withholding the best
thing, the one thing required to make their bounties efficacious. In
what we give and forgive, it is the accent of sympathy, the giving of
the heart with it that adds grace to the act. “Though I dole out all my
goods, though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it
profiteth me nothing.” We do a thousand things to serve and benefit our
fellow-men, and yet evade the real sacrifice,--which is simply to love
them.

In studying this epistle, we have felt increasingly that the Church is
the centre of humanity. The love born and nourished in the household of
faith goes out into the world with a universal mission. The solidarity
of moral interests that is realized there, embraces all the kindreds of
the earth. The incarnation of Christ knits all flesh into one redeemed
family. The continents and races of mankind are members one of another,
with Jesus Christ for head. We are brothers and sisters of humanity: He
our elder brother, and God our common Father in heaven,--His Father and
ours.

Auguste Comte writes in his _System of Positive Polity_: “The promises
of supernatural religion appealed exclusively to man’s selfish
instincts.... The sympathetic instincts found no place in the
theological synthesis.”[133] It would be impossible to affirm anything
more completely at variance with the truth, anything more absolutely
opposed to the doctrine of Christ and the theological synthesis of the
apostles. And yet it was upon this ground that the great French thinker
renounced Christianity, proposing his new religion of humanity as a
substitute for a selfish and effete supernaturalism! Why did he not go
to the New Testament itself to find out what Christianity means? “To
combine permanently concert with independence,” Comte excellently says,
“is the capital problem of society, a problem which religion alone can
solve, by love primarily, then by faith on a basis of love.”[134]
Precisely so; and this is the solution offered by Jesus Christ. His
self-sacrificing love is the basis on which our faith rests; and that
faith works by love in all those who truly possess it. This is the
evangelical theory. The morale of the Church, it is true, has fallen
shamefully below its doctrine; but this doctrine is, after all, the one
fruitful and progressive moral force in the world; and it is certain to
be carried into effect.

In the darkest hour of Israel’s oppression and of international hate,
one of her great prophets thus described the triumph of supernatural
religion: “In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and Assyria,
a blessing in the midst of the earth; for that the LORD of hosts hath
blessed them, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work
of my hands, and Israel my inheritance” (Isai. xix. 24, 25). This is our
programme still.

III. Another of St Paul’s ruling ideas lying at the basis of Christian
ethics, is his conception of _man’s future destiny_. The apostle warns
his readers that they “grieve not the Holy Spirit, in whom they were
sealed till the day of redemption.” He tells them that “the impure and
the covetous have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.”

There is thus disclosed a world beyond the world, a life growing out of
life, an eternal and invisible kingdom of whose possession the Spirit
that lives in Christian men is the earnest and firstfruits. This kingdom
is the joint inheritance of the sons of God, brethren with Christ and in
Christ, who are conformed to His image and found worthy to “stand before
the Son of man.” Those are excluded from the inheritance, who by their
moral nature are alien to it: “Without are dogs, sorcerers,
whoremongers, idolaters, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie.”
This revelation has had a most powerful influence on the progress of
ethics. It has given a momentous importance to individual conduct, a new
grandeur to the moral issues of the present life. “Man’s life,” viewed
in the light of the Christian gospel, “has duties that are alone great,
that go up to Heaven, and down to Hell.” The tangled skein is at last to
be unravelled, the mysterious problem of mortal life will have its
solution at the judgement-seat of Jesus Christ.

It is true that the wicked flourish and spread themselves like green
trees in the sunshine; and the covetous boast of their hearts’ desire.
To see this was the trial of ancient faith; and the good man had to
charge himself constantly that he should not fret because of evil-doers.
It required an heroic faith to believe in God’s kingdom and
righteousness, when the visible course of things made all against them,
and there was no clear light beyond. God’s saints had to learn first
that God is Himself the sufficient good, and must be trusted to do
right. But this was the faith of defence rather than of victory,--of
endurance, not enthusiasm. In the knowledge of Christ’s victory over
death and entrance on our behalf into the heavenly world, “in hope of
life eternal which God who cannot lie hath promised,” men have fought
against their own sins, have struggled for the right and spent
themselves to save their fellows with a vigour and success never
witnessed before, and in numbers far exceeding those that all other
creeds and systems have enlisted in the holy cause of humanity.

Human reason had guessed and hope had dreamed of the soul’s
immortality. Christianity gives this hope certainty, and adds to it the
assurance of the resurrection of the body. Man’s entire nature is thus
redeemed. Chastity takes its due place amongst the virtues, and becomes
the mark of a Christian as distinguished from a pagan life. “The body is
not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. God
who raised up the Lord Jesus, will raise us also through His power. Your
bodies are limbs of Christ, ... a temple of the Holy Spirit which you
have from God.... Glorify God in your body.” So St Paul exhorts the
Christians of Corinth (1 Ep. vi.), living in the centre and shrine of
heathen vice. This doctrine of the sanctity of the body has been the
salvation of the family. It has saved civilization from perishing
through sexual corruption, and is still our chief defence against this
fearful evil.

Our bodily dress, we now learn, is one with the spirit that it infolds.
We shall lay it aside only to resume it,--transfigured, but with a form
and impress continuous with its present being. This identical self, the
same both in its outward and inward personality, will appear before the
tribunal of Christ, that it may “receive the things done in the body.”
This announcement gives reasonableness and distinctness to the
expectation of future judgement. The judgement assumes, with its solemn
grandeur, a matter-of-fact reality, an immediate bearing on the daily
conduct of life, which lends a powerful reinforcement to the conscience,
while it supplies a fitting and glorious conclusion to our course as
moral beings.

IV. Finally, _the atonement of the cross_ stamps its own character and
spirit on the entire ethics of Christianity. The Fatherhood of God, the
unity and solidarity of mankind, the issues of eternal life or death
awaiting us in the unseen world--all the great factors and fundamentals
of revealed religion gather about the cross of Christ; they lend to it
their august significance, and gain from it new import and
impressiveness.

The fact that Christ “gave Himself up for us an offering and sacrifice
to God”--gave Himself, as it is put elsewhere, “for our sins”--throws an
awful light upon the nature of human transgression. The blood spilt in
the strife with our sin and shed to wash out its stain, reveals its
foulness and malignity. All that inspired men had taught, that good men
had believed and felt and penitent men confessed in regard to the evil
of human sin, is more than verified by the sacrifice which the Holy One
of God has undergone in order to put it away. It was felt that “the
blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins,” that the
sacrifices man could offer for himself, or the creatures on his behalf,
were ineffectual; the guilt was too real to be expiated in this fashion,
the wound too deep to be healed by those poor appliances. But who had
suspected that such a remedy as this was needed, and forthcoming? How
deep the resentment of eternal Justice against the transgressions of
men, if the blood of God’s own Son alone could make propitiation! How
rank the offence against the Divine holiness, if to purge its
abomination the vessel containing the most sweet fragrance of His
sinless nature must be broken! What tears of contrition, what cleansing
fires of hate against our own sins, what scorn of their baseness, what
stern resolves against them are awakened by the sight of the cross of
our Lord Jesus Christ!

This negative side of the ethical bearing of Christ’s sacrifice is
implied in the words of the apostle in the second verse, and in the
contrast indicated between its sweet savour and those unclean things
whose very names it should banish from our midst (ver. 3). On its
positive effects--the love and self-devotion it inspires, the conformity
of our lives to its example--we have dwelt already. Let us add, however,
that the sacrifice of Christ demands from us, above all, _devotion to
Christ Himself_. Our first duty as Christians is to love Christ, to
serve and follow Christ. “He died for all,” says the apostle, “that the
living should live no longer to themselves, but to Him that died for
them and rose again.” When Mary of Bethany poured on the Saviour’s head
her box of precious ointment, the Master accepted the tribute and
approved the act; and the poor have been gainers by it a thousand times
the pence which Judas deemed wasted on the head he was watching to
betray. There is no conflict between the claims of Christ and those of
philanthropy, between the needs of His worship and the needs of the
destitute and suffering in our streets. Every new subject won to the
kingdom of Christ is another helper won for His poor. Every act of love
rendered to Him deepens the channel of sympathy by which relief and
blessing come to sorrowful humanity.

Let the gospel of Christ’s kingdom be preached in word and deed to all
nations, let the love of Christ be brought to bear upon the great masses
of mankind, and the time of the world’s salvation will be come. Its sin
will be hated, forsaken, forgiven. Its social evils will be banished;
its weapons of war turned to ploughshares and pruning hooks. Its
scattered races and nations will be reunited in the obedience of faith,
and formed into one Christian confederacy and commonwealth of the
peoples, a peaceful kingdom of the Son of God’s love.

FOOTNOTES:

[131] Χαριζόμενοι ἐαυτοῖς, καθὼς καὶ ὁ Θεὸς ἐν Χριστῷ ἐχαρίσατο ὑμῖν. So
in Col. ii. 13, iii. 13; Rom. viii. 32; 2 Cor. ii. 7, 10; Luke vii. 42,
43.

[132] Comp. pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.

[133] Vol. iv., pp. 22, 41 (Eng. Trans.).

[134] Comte, vol. iv., p. 30.




CHAPTER XXIII.

_THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT._

    “Be not ye therefore partakers with them; for ye were once darkness,
    but are now light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the
    fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth),
    proving what is well-pleasing unto the Lord; and have no fellowship
    with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them.
    For the things which are done by them in secret it is a shame even
    to speak of; but all things when they are reproved are made manifest
    by the light: for everything that is made manifest is light.
    Wherefore He saith:--

    ‘Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead;
      And the Christ shall shine upon thee.’”

    EPH. v. 7-14.


The contrast between the Christian and heathen way of life is now,
finally, to be set forth under St Paul’s familiar figure of _the light
and the darkness_. He bids his Gentile readers not to be
“joint-partakers with them”--with the sons of disobedience upon whom
God’s wrath is coming (ver. 6)--for he has hailed them already, in
chapter iii. 6, as “joint-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus
through the gospel.” “Once” indeed they shared in the lot of the
disobedient; but for them the darkness has past, and the true light now
shineth.

In wrath or promise, in hope of life eternal or in the fearful looking
for of judgement they, and we, must partake. This future participation
depends upon present character. “Do not,” the apostle entreats, “cast
in your lot again with the unclean and covetous. Their ways you have
renounced, and their doom you have exchanged for the heritage of the
saints. Let no vain words deceive you into supposing that you may keep
your new inheritance, and yet return to your old sins. Show yourselves
worthy of your calling. Walk as children of the light, and you will
possess the eternal kingdom.” Each man carries with him into the next
state of being the entail of his past life. That heritage depends on his
own choice; yet not upon his individual will working by itself, but on
the grace and will of God working with him, as that grace is accepted or
rejected. He has light: he must walk in it; and he will reach the realm
of light. Thus the apostle, in verses 7 and 8, concludes his warning
against relapse into heathen sin.

       *       *       *       *       *

Verses 9 and 10 delineate _the character of the children of the light_:
verses 11-14 set forth _their influence upon the surrounding darkness_.
Into these two divisions the exposition of this paragraph naturally
falls.

I. “The fruit _of the light_” (not _of the Spirit_) is the true text of
verse 9, as it stands in the older Greek copies, Versions, and Fathers.
Calvin showed his judgement and independence in preferring this reading
to that of the received Greek text. Similarly Bengel,[135] and most of
the later critics. The sentence is parenthetical, and contains a
singular and instructive figure. It is one of those sparks from the
anvil, in which great writers not unfrequently give us their finest
utterances,--sentences that get a peculiar point from the eagerness with
which they are struck off in the heat and clash of thought, as the mind
reaches forward to some thought lying beyond. The clause is an epitome,
in five words, of Christian virtue, whose qualities, origin and method
are all defined. It sums up exquisitely the moral teaching of the
epistle. Galatians v. 22, 23 (_the fruit of the Spirit_) and Philippians
iv. 8 (_Whatsoever things are true_, etc.) are parallel to this passage,
as Pauline definitions, equally perfect, of the virtues of a Christian
man. This has the advantage of the others in brevity and epigrammatic
point.

“You are light in the Lord,” the apostle said; “walk as children of the
light.” But his readers might ask: “What does this mean? It is poetry:
let us have it translated into plain prose. How shall we walk as
children of the light? Show us the path.”--“I will tell you,” the
apostle answers: “the fruit of the light is in all goodness and
righteousness and truth. Walk in these ways; let your life bear this
fruit; and you will be true children of the light of God. So living, you
will find out what it is that pleases God, and how joyful a thing it is
to please Him (ver. 10). Your life will then be free from all complicity
with the works of darkness. It will shine with a brightness clear and
penetrating, that will put to shame the works of darkness and transform
the darkness itself. It will speak with a voice that all must hear,
bidding them awake from the sleep of sin to see in Christ their light of
life.” Such is the setting in which this delightful definition stands.

But it is more than a definition. While this sentence declares what
Christian virtue is, it signifies also whence it comes, how it is
generated and maintained. It asserts the connexion that exists between
Christian character and Christian faith. The fruit cannot be grown
without the tree, any more than the tree can grow soundly without
yielding its proper fruit. _Right is the fruit of light._

The principle that religion is the basis of moral virtue, is one that
many moralists disputed in St Paul’s time; and it has fallen into some
discredit in our own. In philosophical theory, and to a large extent in
popular maxim and belief, it is assumed that faith and morals, character
and creed, are not only distinct but independent things and that there
is no necessary connexion between the two. Christians are themselves to
blame for this fallacy, through the discrepancy not seldom visible
between their creed and life. Our narrowness of view and the harshness
of our ethical judgements have helped to foster this grave error.

Great Christian teachers have spoken of the virtues of the heathen as
“splendid sins.” But Christ and His apostles never said so. He said:
“Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.” And they said: “In
every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is accepted
of Him.” The Christian creed has no jealousy in regard to human
excellence. “Whatsoever things are true and honourable and just and
pure,” wherever and in whomsoever they are found, our faith honours and
delights in them, and accepts them to the utmost of their worth. But
then it claims them all for its own,--as the fruit of the one “true
light which lighteth every man.” Wherever this fruit appears, we know
that that light has been, though its ways are past finding out. Through
secret crevices, by subtle refractions and multiplied reflections, the
true light reaches many a life lying far outside its visible course.

All goodness has one source; for, said Jesus, “there is none good but
one, that is God.” The channels may be tortuous, obstructed and obscure:
the stream is always one. There is nothing more touching, and nothing
more encouraging to our faith in God’s universal love and His will that
all men should be saved, than to see, as we do sometimes under
conditions most adverse and in spots the most unlikely, features of
moral beauty and Christlike goodness appearing like springs in the
desert or flowers blooming in Alpine snows,--signs of the universal
light,

    “Which yet in the absolutest drench of dark
    Ne’er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam
    To the despair of hell!”

The action of God’s grace in Christ is by no means limited to the sphere
of its recognized working. All the more earnestly on this account do we
vindicate this grace against those who deny its necessity or the
permanence of its moral influence. The fruit, in the main, they approve.
But they would cut down the plant from which it came; they seek to
quench the light under which it grew. They are like men who should take
you to some lofty tree that has flourished for ages rooted in the rock,
and who should say: “See how wide its branches and how stout its stem,
how firmly it stands upon its native soil! Let us cut it loose from
those dark and ugly roots--that mysterious theology, those superstitions
of the past. The human mind has outgrown them. Virtue can support itself
on its own proper basis. It is time to assert the dignity of man, and to
proclaim the independence of morality.” If these men have their way, and
if European society renounces the authority of God, how quickly will
that tree of the Lord’s planting, the vast growth of Christian virtue
and beneficence, wither to its topmost bough; and the next storm will
bring it to the ground, with all its stately strength and summer beauty.
Unbelief in God lays the axe at the root of human society. Our life--the
life of individuals, of families and nations--is rooted in the unseen
and hid with Christ in God. Thence it draws its vitality and virtue,
through those spiritual fibres by which we are linked to God and lay
hold on eternal life. Since Christ Jesus our forerunner entered the
heavenly places, the anchor of human hopes has been cast within the
veil; if that anchor drags, there is no other that will hold. The rocks
are plain to see on which our richly freighted ship of life will
founder. Without the religion of Jesus Christ, our civilization is not
worth a hundred years’ purchase.

Moral effects do not follow upon their causes as rapidly as physical
effects: they follow as certainly. We live largely upon the accumulated
ethical capital of our forefathers. When that is spent, we are left to
our intrinsic poverty of soul, to our faithlessness and feebleness. The
scepticism of one generation bears fruit in the immorality of the next,
or the next after that; the unbelief and cynicism of the teacher in the
vice of his disciple. Such fruit of blasting and mildew the decay of
faith has never failed to bear.

The corresponding truth will be at once acknowledged. There is no real
religion without virtue. If the godly man is not a good man, if he is
not a sincere and pure-hearted man, “that man’s religion is vain”: no
matter what his professions or his emotions, no matter what his
services to the Church. He is one of those to whom Jesus Christ will
say: “I know you not; depart from me, all ye that work iniquity.” There
is a flaw in him somewhere, a rift within the lute that spoils all its
music. “A good tree cannot bring forth corrupt fruit.”

In Christ’s garden there forms in clustered beauty and perfectness the
ripe growth of virtue, which in the sunshine of His love and under the
freshening breath of His Spirit sends forth its spices and “yieldeth its
fruit every month.” In it there abide _goodness_, _righteousness_,
_truth_--these three; and who shall say which of them is greatest?

I. _Goodness_ stands first, as the most visible and obvious form of
Christian excellence,--that which every one looks for in a religious
man, and which every one admires when it is to be seen. Righteousness,
regarded by itself, is not so readily appreciated. There is something
austere and forbidding in it. “For a righteous man scarcely would one
die”--you respect, even revere him; but you do not love him: “but for
the good man peradventure, one would even dare to die.”

Christian goodness is the sanctification of the heart and its
affections, renewed and governed by the love of God in Christ. It is,
notwithstanding, but seldom inculcated in the New Testament;[136]
because it is referred to its spring and principle in _love_. Goodness
is love embodied. Now love, as the Christian knows it, is of God. “We
love,” says the apostle John, “because He first loved us.... He loved
us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” This is the
faith that makes good men,--the best the world has ever known, the best
that it holds now. Vanity, selfishness, evil temper and desire are
shamed and burnt out of the soul by the holy fire of the love of God in
Jesus Christ our Lord. In the warm, tender light of the cross the heart
is softened and cleansed, and expanded to the widest charity. It becomes
the home of all generous instincts and pure affections. So “the fruit of
the light is in all goodness.”

2. And _righteousness_.

This second and central definition applies a searching test to all
spurious forms of goodness, superficial or sentimental,--to the goodness
of mere good manners, or good nature. The principle of righteousness,
fully understood, includes everything in moral worth, and is often used
to denote in one word the entire fruit of God’s grace in man. For
righteousness is the sanctification of the conscience. It is loyalty to
God’s holy and perfect law. It is no mere outward keeping of formal
rules, such as the legal righteousness of Judaism, no submission to
necessity or calculation of advantages: it is a love of the law in a
man’s inmost spirit; it is the quality of a heart one with that law,
reconciled to it as it is reconciled to God Himself in Jesus Christ.

At the bottom, therefore, righteousness and goodness are one. Each is
the counterface and complement of the other. Righteousness is to
goodness as the strong backbone of principle, the firm hand and the
vigorous grasp of duty, the steadfast foot that plants itself on the
eternal ground of the right and true and stands against a world’s
assault. Goodness without righteousness is a weak and fitful sentiment:
righteousness without goodness is a dead formality. He cannot love God
or his neighbour truly, who does not love God’s law; and he knows
nothing aright of that law, who does not know that it is the law of
love.

This also, this above all is “the fruit of the light.” Two watchwords we
have from the lips of Jesus, two mottoes of His own life and
mission,--the one given at the end, the other at the beginning of His
course: “Greater _love_ hath none than this, that one lay down his life
for his friends”; and, “Thus it becometh us to fulfil all
_righteousness_.” By a double flame was He consumed a sacrifice upon the
cross,--by the passion of His zeal for God’s righteousness, and by the
passion of His pity for mankind. In that twofold light we see light, and
become “light in the Lord.” Therefore the fruit of the light, the moral
product of a true faith in the gospel, is in all _goodness and
righteousness_.

There is a danger of merging the latter in the former of these
attributes. Evangelical piety is credited with an excess of the
sentimental and emotional disposition, cultivated at the expense of the
more sterling elements of character. High principle, scrupulous honour,
stern fidelity to duty are no less essential to the image of Christ in
the soul than are warm feeling and zealous devotion to His service.
_Jesus Christ the righteous_, as His apostles loved to call Him, is the
pattern of a manly faith, up to which we must grow in all things. “_He_
is the propitiation for our sins.” Never was there an act of such
unswerving integrity and absolute loyalty to the law of right as the
sacrifice of Calvary. God forbid that we should magnify love at the
expense of law, or make good feeling a substitute for duty.

3. _Truth_ comes last in this enumeration, for it signifies the inward
reality and depth of the other two.

Truth does not mean veracity alone, the mere truth of the lips. Heathen
honesty goes as far as this. Men of the world expect as much from each
other, and brand the liar with their contempt. Truth of words requires a
reality behind itself. The acted falsehood is excluded, the hinted and
intended lie no less than that expressly uttered. Beyond all this, it is
the truth of the man that God requires--speech, action, thought, all
consistent, harmonious and transparent, with the light of God’s truth
shining through them. Truth is the harmony of the inward and the
outward, the correspondence of what the man is in himself with that
which he appears and wishes to appear to be.

Now, it is only children of the light, only men thoroughly good and
upright who can, in this strict sense, be men of truth. So long as any
malice or iniquity is left in our nature, we have something to conceal.
We cannot afford to be sincere. We are compelled to pay, by very shame,
the degrading tribute which vice renders to virtue, the homage of
hypocrisy. But find a man whose intellect, whose heart and will, tried
at whatever point, ring sound and true, in whom there is no affectation,
no make-believe, no pretence or exaggeration, no discrepancy, no discord
in the music of his life and thought, “an Israelite indeed, in whom is
no guile”--there is a saint for you, and a man of God; there is one whom
you may “grapple to your soul with hoops of steel.”

Truth is the hall-mark of entire sanctification; it is the highest and
rarest attainment of the Christian life. It is equally the charm of an
innocent, unspoilt childhood, and of a ripe and purified old age. The
apostle John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” is the most perfect
embodiment, after his Master, of this consummating grace. In him
righteousness and love were blended in the translucence of an utter
simplicity and truth.

We must beware of giving a subjective and merely personal aspect to this
divine quality. While truth is the unity of the outward and inward, of
heart and act and word in the man, it is at the same time the agreement
of the man with the reality of things as they exist in God. The former
kind of truth rests upon the latter; the subjective upon the objective
order. The truth of God makes us true. We magnify our own sincerity,
until it becomes vitiated and pretentious. In our eagerness to realize
and express our own convictions, we give too little pains to form them
upon a sound basis; we make a great virtue of _speaking out_ what is in
our hearts, but take small heed of what _comes in_ to the heart, and
speak out of a loose self-confidence and idolatry of our own opinions.
So the Pharisees were true, who called Christ an impostor. So every
careless slanderer, and scandalmonger credulous of evil, who believes
the lies he propagates. “Imagination has pictured to itself a domain in
which every one who enters should be compelled to speak only what he
thought, and pleased itself by calling such domain the Palace of Truth.
A palace of veracity, if you will; but no temple of the truth. A place
where each one would be at liberty to utter his own crude unrealities,
to bring forth his delusions, mistakes, half-formed, hasty judgements;
where the depraved ear would reckon discord harmony, and the depraved
eye mistake colour; the depraved moral taste take Herod or Tiberius for
a king, and shout beneath the Redeemer’s cross, ‘Himself He cannot
save!’ A temple of the truth? Nay, only a palace echoing with veracious
falsehoods, a Babel of confused sounds, in which egotism would rival
egotism, and truth would be each man’s own lie.”[137] In the pride of
our veracity, we miss the verity of things; we are true only to our
blind self, false to the light of God. “Every one that is of the truth
heareth my voice:” so said He who was Truth incarnate, making His word a
law for all true men.

“In _all_ goodness and righteousness and truth,” says the apostle. Let
us seek them all. We are apt to become specialists in virtue, as in
other departments of life. Men will endeavour even to compensate by
extreme efforts in one direction for deficiencies in some other
direction, which they scarcely desire to make good. So they grow out of
shape, into oddities and moral malformations. There is a want of balance
and of finish about a multitude of Christian lives, even of those who
have long and steadily pursued the way of faith. We have sweetness
without strength, and strength without gentleness, and truth spoken
without love, and words of passionate zeal without accuracy and
heedfulness.

All this is infinitely sad, and infinitely damaging to the cause of our
religion.

    “It is the little rift within the lute
    That by-and-by will make the music mute,
      And ever widening slowly silence all;
    The little rift within the lover’s lute,
    Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,
      That rotting inward slowly moulders all.”

Let us judge ourselves, that we be not judged by the Lord. Let us count
no wrong a trifle. Let us never imagine that our defects in one kind
will be atoned for by excellencies in another. Our friends may say
this, in charity, for us; it is a fatal thing when a man begins to say
so to himself. “May the God of peace sanctify you fully. May your whole
spirit, soul, and body in blameless integrity be preserved to the coming
of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. v. 23).

II. The _effect_ upon surrounding darkness of the light of God in
Christian lives is described in verses 11-14, in words which it remains
for us briefly to examine.

Verse 12 distinguishes “the things secretly done” by the Gentiles, “of
which it is a shame even to speak,” from the open and manifest forms of
evil in which they invite their Christian neighbours to join (ver. 11).
Instead of doing this and “having fellowship with the unfruitful works
of darkness,” they must “rather reprove them.” Silent absence, or
abstinence is not enough. Where sin is open to rebuke, it should at all
hazards be rebuked. On the other hand, St Paul does not warrant
Christians in prying into the hidden sins of the world around them and
playing the moral detective. Publicity is not a remedy for all evils,
but a great aggravation of some, and the surest means of disseminating
them. “It is a shame”--a disgrace to our common nature, and a grievous
peril to the young and innocent--to fill the public prints with the
nauseous details of crime and to taint the air with its putridities.

“But all things,” the apostle says--whether it be those open works of
darkness, profitless of good, which expose themselves to direct
conviction, or the depths of Satan that hide their infamy from the light
of day--“all things being reproved by the light, are made manifest”
(ver. 13). The fruit of the light convicts the unfruitful works of
darkness. The daily life of a Christian man amongst men of the world is
a perpetual reproof, that tells against secret sins of which no word is
spoken, of which the reprover never guesses, as well as against open and
unblushing vices.

“This is the condemnation,” said Jesus, “that light is come into the
world.” And this condemnation every one who walks in Christ’s steps, and
breathes His Spirit amid the corruptions of the world, is carrying on,
more frequently in silence than by spoken argument. Our unconscious and
spontaneous influence is the most real and effective part of it. Life is
the light of men--words only as the index of the life from which they
spring. Just so far as our lives touch the conscience of others and
reveal the difference between darkness and light, so far do we hold
forth the word of life and carry on the Holy Spirit’s work in convincing
the world of sin. “Let your light so shine.”

This manifestation leads to a transformation: “For everything that is
made manifest _is light_” (ver. 13). “You are light in the Lord,” St
Paul says to his converted Gentile readers,--you who were “once
darkness,” once wandering in the lusts and pleasures of the heathen
around you, without hope and without God. The light of the gospel
disclosed, and then dispelled the darkness of that former time; and so
it may be with your still heathen kindred, through the light you bring
to them. So it will be with the night of sin that is spread over the
world. The light which shines upon sin-laden and sorrowful hearts,
shines on them to change them into its own nature. _The manifested is
light_: in other words, if men can be made to see the true nature of
their sin, they will forsake it. If the light can but penetrate their
conscience, it will save them. “Wherefore He saith:--

    Awake, O sleeper; and arise from out of the dead!
      And the Christ shall dawn upon thee!”

The speaker of this verse can be no other than God, or the Spirit of God
in Scripture. The sentence is no mere quotation. It re-utters, in the
style of Mary’s or Zechariah’s song, the promise of the Old Covenant
from the lips of the New. It gathers up the import of the prophecies
concerning the salvation of Christ, as they sounded in the apostle’s
ears and as he conveyed them to the world. Isaiah lx. 1-3 supplies the
basis of our passage, where the prophet awakens Zion from the sleep of
the Exile and bids her shine once more in the glory of her God and show
forth His light to the nations: “Arise,” he cries, “shine, for thy light
is come!” There are echoes in the verse, besides, of Isaiah li. 17,
xxvi. 19; perhaps even of Jonah i. 6: “What meanest thou, O sleeper?
arise, and call upon thy God!” We seem to have here, as in chapter iv.
4-6, a snatch of the earliest Christian hymns. The lines are a free
paraphrase from the Old Testament, formed by weaving together Messianic
passages--belonging to such a hymn as might be sung at baptisms in the
Pauline Churches. Certainly those Churches did not wait until the second
century to compose their hymns and spiritual songs (comp. ver. 19). Our
Lord’s sublime announcement (John v. 25), already verified, that “the
hour had come when the dead should hear the voice of the Son of God, and
they that heard should live,” gave the key to the prophetic sayings
which promised through Israel the light of life to all nations.

With this song on her lips the Church went forth, clad in the armour of
light, strong in the joy of salvation; and darkness and the works of
darkness fled before her.

FOOTNOTES:

[135] Mr. Wesley adopted this and other emendations from Bengel, “that
great light of the Christian world,” in the translation accompanying his
_Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament_. He there supplied the
Methodist preachers with many of the most valuable improvements made in
the Revised Version, a hundred years before the time.

[136] The word belongs to Paul’s vocabulary; it is found besides in 2
Thess. i. 11; Rom. xv. 14; and Gal. v. 22. See the Commentary on this
last epistle in the _Expositor’s Bible_, pp. 384, 385.

[137] F. W. Robertson: _Sermons_ (First Series), xix., on “The Kingdom
of the Truth.”




CHAPTER XXIV.

_THE NEW WINE OF THE SPIRIT._

    “Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise;
    redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not
    foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

    “And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with
    the Spirit; speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and
    spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the
    Lord; giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord
    Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; subjecting yourselves one to
    another in the fear of Christ.”--EPH. v. 15-21.


Very solemnly did the moral homily to the Asian Christians begin in
chapter iv. 17: “This therefore I say and testify in the Lord, that you
must no longer walk as the Gentiles walk.” So much has now been said and
testified in the intervening paragraphs, by way both of dehortation and
exhortation. Here the apostle pauses; and casting his eye over the whole
pathway of life he has marked out in this discourse, he bids his
readers: “Look then carefully how you walk. Show that you are not fools,
but wise to observe your steps and to seize your opportunities in these
evil times,--days so perilous that you need your best wisdom and
knowledge of God’s will to save you from fatal stumbling.”

So far St Paul’s renewed exhortation, in verses 15-17, inculcates care
and wary discretion,--the skill that in the strategy of life finds its
vantage in unequal ground, that makes opposing winds help forward the
seafarer. In this sober wisdom it is likely the Asian Christians were
deficient. In many ways, both directly and indirectly, the need of
increased thoughtfulness on the readers’ part has been indicated. But
there is another side to the Christian nature: it has its moods of
exhilaration, as well as of caution and reflection; ardent emotion,
eager speech and exultant song are things proper to a high religious
life. For these the apostle makes room in verses 18-20, while the three
foregoing verses enjoin the circumspection and vigilance that become the
good soldier of Christ Jesus.

A striking contrast thus arises between the _sobriety_ and the
_excitement_ that mark the life of grace. We see with what strictness we
must watch over ourselves, and guard the character and interests of the
Church; and with what joyousness and holy freedom we may take our part
in its communion. Temperament and constitution modify these injunctions
in their personal application. The Holy Spirit does not enable us all to
speak with equal fervour and freedom, nor to sing with the same
tunefulness. His power operates in the limbs of Christ’s body “according
to the measure of each single part.” But the self-same Spirit works in
both these contrasted ways,--in the sanguine and the melancholic
disposition, in the demonstrative and in the reserved, in the quick play
of fancy and the brightness and impulsiveness of youth no less than in
the sober gait and solid sense of riper age. Let us see how the two
opposite aspects of Christian experience are set out in the apostle’s
words.

I. First of all, upon the one side, _heedfulness_ is enjoined. The
children of light must use the light to see their way. To “stumble at
noonday” is a proof of folly or blindness. So misusing our light, we
shall quickly lose it and return to the paths of darkness.

According to the preferable (Revised) order of the words, the qualifying
adverb “carefully” belongs to the “look,” not to the “walk.” The
circumspect _look_ precedes the wise step. The spot is marked on which
the foot is to be planted; the eye ranges right and left and takes in
the bearings of the new position, forecasting its possibilities. “Look
before you leap,” our sage proverb says. According to the carefulness of
the look, the success of the leap is likely to be.

There is no word in the epistle more apposite than this to

                        “our day
    Of haste, half-work, and disarray.”

We are too restless to think, too impatient to learn. Everything is
sacrificed to speed. The telegraph and the daily newspaper symbolize the
age. The public ear loves to be caught quickly and with new sensations:
a premium is set on carelessness and hurry. Earnest men, eager for the
triumph of a good cause, push forward with unsifted statements and
unweighed denunciations, that discredit Christian advocacy and wound the
cause of truth and charity. Time, thus wronged and driven beyond her
pace, has her revenge; she deals hardly with these light judgements of
the hour. They are as the chaff which the wind carrieth away. After all,
it is still truth that lives; thorough work that lasts; accuracy that
hits the mark. And the time-servers are “unwise,” both intellectually
and morally. They are most unwise who think to succeed in life’s high
calling without self-distrust, and without scrupulous care and pains in
all work they do for the kingdom of God.

In the evil of his own times St Paul sees a special reason for
heedfulness: “Walk not as unwise, but as wise, buying up the
opportunity, _because the days are evil_.” In Colossians iv. 5 the
parallel sentence shows that in giving this caution he is thinking of
the relation of Christians to the world outside: “Walk in wisdom toward
those without, buying up the opportunity.” Evil days they were, when
Paul lay in Nero’s prison; when that wild beast was raging against
everything that resisted his mad will or reproved his monstrous vices.
With supreme power in the hands of such a creature of Satan, who could
tell what fires of persecution were kindling for the people of Christ,
or what terrible revelation of God’s anger against the present evil
world might be impending. At Ephesus the spirit of heathenism had shown
itself peculiarly menacing. Here, too, in the rich and cultivated
province of Asia where the currents of Eastern and Western thought met,
heresy and its corruptions made their first decided appearance in the
Churches of the Gentiles. Conflicts are approaching which will try to
the uttermost the strength of the Christian faith and the temper of its
weapons (vi. 10-16).

As wise men, reading thoughtfully the signs of the times, the Asian
Christians will “redeem the [present] season.” They will use to the
utmost the light given them. They will employ every means to increase
their knowledge of Christ, to confirm their faith and the habits of
their spiritual life. They are like men expecting a siege, who
strengthen their fortifications and furbish their weapons and practise
their drill and lay up store of supplies, that they may “stand in the
evil day.” Such wisdom Ecclesiastes preaches to the young man: “Remember
now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come.”

Within a year after this epistle was penned, Rome was burnt and the
crime of its burning washed out, at Nero’s caprice, in Christian blood.
In four years more St Paul and St Peter had died a martyr’s death at
Rome; and Nero had fallen by the assassin’s hand. At once the Empire was
convulsed with civil war; and the year 68-69 was known as that of the
Four Emperors. Amid the storms threatening the ruin of the Roman State,
the Jewish war against Rome was carried on, ending in the year 70 with
the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Jewish temple and
nationality. These were the days of tribulation of which our Lord spoke,
“such as had not been since the beginning of the world” (Matt. xxiv. 21,
22). The entire fabric of life was shaken; and in the midst of
earthquake and tempest, blood and fire, Israel met its day of judgement
and the former age passed away. In the year 63, when the apostle wrote,
the sky was everywhere red and lowering with signs of coming storm. None
knew where or how the tempest might break, or what would be its issue.

When men amid evil days and portents of danger must be told not to be
“foolish” nor “drunken with wine,” one is disposed to tax them with
levity. It was difficult for these Asian Greeks to take life seriously,
and to realize the gravity of their situation. St Paul appeals to them
by their duty, still more than by their danger: “Be not foolish, but
understand what _the will of the Lord_ is.” As he bade the Thessalonians
consider that chastity was not matter of choice and of their own
advantage only, it was “God’s will” (1 Ep. iv. 3), so the Ephesians
must understand that Christ is no mere adviser, nor the Christian life
an optional system that men may adopt when and so far as it suits them.
He is our Lord; and it is our business to understand, in order that we
may execute, His designs. For this Christ’s servants require a watchful
eye and an alert intelligence. They must be no dullards nor simpletons,
who would enter into the Divine Master’s plans; no triflers, no
creatures of sentiment and impulse, who are to be the agents of His
will. He can and does employ every sincere heart that gives itself in
love to Him. But His nobler tasks are for the wise taught by His Spirit,
for those who can “understand,” with penetrating sympathy and breadth of
comprehension, “what the will of the Lord is.” Hence the distinction of
St Paul himself, and of John the beloved disciple, amongst His ministers
and witnesses,--men great in mind as they were in heart, whose thoughts
about Christ were as grand as their love to Him was fervent.

Nowhere does the apostle say so much of “the will of God” in regard to
the dispensation of grace as he does in this epistle.[138] For he sees
life and salvation here in their largest bearings and proportions. He
prayed at the outset that the Gentile readers might realize the value
that God puts upon them, and the mighty forces He has set at work for
their salvation (i. 18-20); and again, that they might comprehend the
vast dimensions of His plan for the building of the Church (iii. 18).
Now that he has shown the relation of this eternal purpose to the
character and everyday life of the converted Gentiles, “the will of God”
becomes matter of immediate import; it is revealed in its bearing upon
conduct, upon the affairs of business and society. It is not the
purpose, the promises, the doctrine of the Lord alone, but “the _will_
of the Lord” that they have to understand, as it touches their spirit
and behaviour day by day. They must realize the practical demands of
their religion,--how it is to make them truthful, gracious, pure and
wise. They must translate creed into life and act. Such is the wisdom
which their apostle strives to instil into the Asian Christians. Their
first need was spiritual enlightenment; their second need was moral
intelligence. Might they only have sense to understand and loyalty to
obey the will of Christ.--And oh may we!

II. There were converted thieves in the Ephesian Church, who still
needed to be warned against their old propensities (iv. 28); there were
men who had been sorcerers and fortune-tellers (Acts xix. 18, 19). It
appears that there were in this circle converted _drunkards_ also, men
to whom the apostle is obliged to say: “Be not drunk with wine, wherein
is riot.”

In view of the following context (vv. 19-21), and remembering how the
Lord’s table was defiled by excess at Corinth (1 Cor. xi. 17-34), it
seems to us probable that the warning of verse 18 had special reference
to the Christian assemblies. The institution of the common meal, the
_Agapé_ or Lovefeast accompanying the Lord’s Supper, suited the manners
of the early Christians, and was long continued. The cities of Asia
Minor were full of trade-guilds and clubs for various social and
religious purposes, in which the common supper, or club-feast, furnished
usually by each member bringing his contribution to the table, was a
familiar bond of fellowship. This afforded to the Church a natural and
pleasant means of intercourse; but it must be purified from sensual
indulgence. _Wine_ was its chief danger.

The eastern coast of the Ægean is an ancient home of the vine. And the
Greeks of the Asian towns, on those bright shores and under their genial
sky, were a light-hearted, sociable race. They sought the wine-cup not
for animal indulgence, but as a zest to good-fellowship and to give a
freer flow to social joys. This was the influence that ruled their
feasts, that loosened their tongues and inspired their gaiety. Hence
their wit was prone to become ribaldry (ver. 4); and their songs were
the opposite of the “spiritual songs” that gladden the feasts of the
Church (ver. 19). The quick imagination and the social instincts of the
Ionian Greeks, the aptness for speech and song native to the land of
Homer and Sappho, were gifts not to be repressed but sanctified. The
lyre is to be tuned to other strains; and poetry must draw its
inspiration from a higher source. Dionysus and his reeling Fauns give
place to the pure Spirit of Jesus and the Father. “The Aonian mount”
must now pay tribute to “Sion hill”; and the fountain of Castalia yields
its honours to

            “Siloa’s brook that flowed
    Fast by the oracle of God.”

Our nature craves excitement,--some stimulus that shall set the pulses
dancing and thrill the jaded frame, and lift the spirit above the
taskwork of life and the dreary and hard conditions which make up the
daily lot of multitudes. It is this craving that gives to strong drink
its cruel fascination. Alcohol is a mighty magician. The tired labouring
man, the household drudge shut up in city courts refreshed by no
pleasant sight or cheering voice, by its aid can leave fretted nerves
and aching limbs and dull care behind, and taste, if it be only for a
feverish moment, of the joy of bounding life. Can such cravings be
hindered from seeking their relief? The removal of temptation will
accomplish little, unless higher tastes are formed and springs of purer
pleasure opened to the masses for whom our civilization makes life so
drab and colourless. “One finds traces of the primitive greatness of our
nature even in its most deplorable errors. Just as impurity proceeds at
the bottom from an abuse of the craving for love, so drunkenness betrays
a certain demand for ardour and enthusiasm, which in itself is natural
and even noble.... Man loves to _feel_ himself alive; he would fain live
twice his life at once; and he would rather draw excitement from
horrible things than have no excitement at all” (Monod).

For the drunkards of Ephesus the apostle finds a cure in the joys of the
Holy Ghost. The mightiest and most moving spring of feeling is in the
spirit of man kindred to God. There is a deep excitement and
refreshment, a “joy that human thought transcends,” in the love of God
shed abroad in the heart and the communion of true saints, which makes
sensuous delights cheap and poor. Toil and care are forgotten, sickness
and trouble seem as nothing; we can glory in tribulation and laugh in
the face of death, when the strong wine of God’s consolations is poured
into the soul.

“Be filled with the Spirit,” says the apostle--or more strictly, “filled
_in_ the Spirit”; since the Holy Spirit of God is the element of the
believer’s life, surrounding while it penetrates his nature: it is the
atmosphere that he breathes, the ocean in which he is immersed. As a
flood fills up the river-banks, as the drunkard is filled with the wine
that he drains without limit, so the apostle would have his readers
yield themselves to the tide of the Spirit’s coming and steep their
nature in His influence. The Greek imperative, moreover, is present, and
“describes this influence as ever going forth from the Spirit” (Beet).
This is to be a continual replenishment. Paul has prayed that we may “be
filled unto all the fulness of God” (iii. 19), and has bidden us grow
“to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (iv. 13) in
whom we “are made full” (Col. ii. 9): in the replenishment of the Spirit
the fulness of God in Christ is sensibly imparted. God’s fulness is the
hidden and eternal spring of all that can fill our nature; Christ’s
fulness is its revelation and renewed communication to the race; the
Holy Spirit’s fulness is its abiding energy within the soul and within
the Church. Thus possessed, the Church is truly the body of Christ (iv.
4), and the habitation of God (ii. 21, 22).

The words of verses 19, 20 show that St Paul is thinking of that
presence of the Spirit in the Christian community, which is the spring
of its affections and activities. The Spirit of Jesus, the Son of man,
is a kindly and gracious Spirit, the guardian of brotherhood and
friendship, the inspirer of pure social joys and genial converse. The
joy in the Holy Ghost that in its warmth and freshness filled the hearts
of the first Christians, soared upward on the wings of song. Their very
talk was music: they “spoke to each other in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, singing and making melody with their heart to the
Lord.” Love loves to sing. Its joys

            “from out our hearts arise,
    And speak and sparkle in our eyes,
      And vibrate on our tongue.”

All exalted sentiment tends to rhythmical expression. There is a
mystical alliance, which is amongst the most significant facts in our
constitution, between emotion and art. The rudest natures, touched by
high feeling, will shape themselves to some sort of beauty, to some
grace and refinement of expression. Each new stirring of the pulse of
man’s common life has been marked by a re-birth of poetry and art. The
songs of Mary and Zechariah were the parents and patterns of a multitude
of holy canticles. In the Psalms of Scripture the New Testament Church
found already an instrument of wide compass strung and tuned for her
use. We can imagine the delight with which the Gentile Christians would
take up the Psalter and draw out one and another of its pearls, and
would in turn recite them at their meetings, and adapt them to their
native measures and modes of song. After a while, they began to mix with
the praise-songs of Israel newer strains--“hymns” to the glory of Christ
and the Father, such as that with which this epistle opens, needing but
little change in form to make it a true poem, and such as those which
break in upon the dread visions of the Apocalypse; and added to these,
“spiritual songs” of a more personal and incidental character, like
Simeon’s _Nunc dimittis_ or Paul’s swan-song in his last letter to
Timothy. In verse 14 above we detected, as we thought, an early Church
paraphrase of the Old Testament. In later epistles addressed to Ephesus,
there are fragments of just such artless chants as the Asian Christians,
exhorted and taught by their apostle, were wont to sing in their
assemblies: see 1 Timothy iii. 16, and 2 Timothy ii. 11-13.

Upon this congenial soil, we trace the beginnings of Christian
psalmody. The parallel text of Colossians (iii. 16) discloses in the
songs of the Pauline Churches a didactic as well as a lyric character.
The apostle bids his readers “_teach and admonish_ one another by
psalms, hymns, spiritual songs.” The form of the sentence of chapter iv.
4-6 in this letter, and of 1 Timothy iii. 16, suggests that these
passages were destined for use as a chanted rehearsal of Christian
belief. Thus “the word of Christ dwelling richly” in the heart, poured
itself freely from the lips, and added to its grave discourse the charms
of gladdening and spirit-stirring song.

As in their heathen days they were used to “speak to each other,” in
festive or solemn hours, with hymns to Artemis of the Ephesians, or
Dionysus giver of the vine, or to Persephoné sad queen of the dead--in
songs merry and gay, too often loose and wanton; in songs of the dark
underworld and the grim Furies and inexorable Fate, that told how life
fleets fast and we must pluck its pleasures while we may;--so now the
Christians of Ephesus and Colossæ, of Pergamum and of Smyrna would sing
of the universal Father whose presence fills earth and sky, of the Son
of His love, His image amongst men, who died in sacrifice for their sins
and asked grace for His murderers, of the joys of forgiveness and the
cleansed heart, of life eternal and the treasure laid up for the just in
the heavenly places, of Christ’s return in glory and the judgement of
the nations and the world quickly to dissolve and perish, of a
brotherhood dearer than earthly kindred, of the saints who sleep in
Jesus and in peace await His coming, of the Good Shepherd who feeds His
sheep and leads them to fountains of living water calling each by his
name, of creation redeemed and glorified by His love, of pain and
sorrow sanctified and the trials that make perfect in Christ’s
discipline, of the joy that fills the heart in suffering for Him, and
the vision of His face awaiting us beyond the grave. So reciting and
chanting--now in single voice, now in full chorus--singing the Psalms of
David to their Greek music, or hymns composed by their leaders, or
sometimes improvised in the rapture of the moment, the Churches of
Ephesus and of the Asian cities lauded and glorified “the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ” and the counsels of redeeming love. So their worship
and fellowship were filled with gladness. Thus in their great Church
meetings, and in smaller companies, many a joyous hour passed; and all
hearts were cheered and strengthened in the Lord.

“Singing and _playing_,” says the apostle. For music aided song; voice
and instrument blended in His praise whose glory claims the tribute of
all creatures. But it was “with the heart,” even more than with voice or
tuneful strings, that melody was made. For this inward music the Lord
listens. Where other skill is wanting and neither voice nor hand can
take its part in the concert of praise, He hears the silent gratitude,
the humble joy that wells upward when the lips are still or the full
heart cannot find expression.

But the Spirit who dwelt in the praises of the new Israel, was not
confined to its public assemblings. The people of Christ should be
“_always giving thanks_, for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ.” It is one of St Paul’s commonest injunctions. “In _everything_
give thanks,” he wrote to the Thessalonians in his earliest extant
letter (1 Ep. v. 18). “For all things,” he says to the
Ephesians,--“though fallen on evil days.” Do we not “know that to them
that love God all things work together for good”--evil days as well as
good days? Nothing comes altogether amiss to the child of God. In the
heaviest loss, the severest pain, the sharpest sting of injury--“in
everything” the ingenuity of love and the sweetness of patience will
find some token of mercy. If the evil is to our eyes all evil and we can
see in it no reason for thanksgiving, then faith will give thanks for
that which we “know not now, but shall know hereafter.”

_Always_, the apostle says,--_for all things_! No room for a moment’s
discontent. In this perfecting of praise he had himself undergone a long
schooling in his four years’ imprisonment. Now, he tells us, he “has
learnt the secret of contentment, in whatsoever state” (Phil. iv. 12).
Let us try to learn it from him. These words, which we treat, almost
unconsciously, as the exaggeration of homiletical appeal, state no more
than the sober possibility, the experience attained by many a Christian
in circumstances of the greatest suffering and deprivation. The love of
God in Jesus Christ our Lord suffices for the life and joy of man’s
spirit.

The twenty-first verse, which seems to belong to a different line of
thought, in reality completes the foregoing paragraph. In the Corinthian
Church, as we remember, with its affluence of spiritual gifts, there
were so many ready to prophesy, so many to sing and recite, that
confusion arose and the Church meetings fell into disedifying uproar (1
Cor. xiv. 26-34). The apostle would not have such scenes occur again.
Hence when he urges the Asian Christians to seek the full inspiration of
the Spirit and to give free utterance in song to the impulses of their
new life, he adds this word of caution: “being subject to one another in
fear of Christ.” He reminds them that “God is not the author of
confusion.” His Spirit is a spirit of seemliness and reverence. “In fear
of Christ,” the unseen witness and president of its assemblies, the
Church will comport herself with the decorum that befits His bride. The
spirits of the prophets will be subject to the prophets. The voices of
the singers and the hands of them that play upon the strings of the harp
or the keys of the organ, will keep tune with the worship of Christ’s
congregation. Each must consider that it is his part to serve and not
rule in the service of God’s house.

In our common work and worship, in all the offices of life this is the
Christian law. No man within Christ’s Church, however commanding his
powers, may set himself above the duty of submitting his judgement and
will to that of his fellows. In mutual subjection lies our freedom, with
our strength and peace.

FOOTNOTES:

[138] See ch. i. 5-11, ii. 21, iii. 11, v. 10, vi. 6; comp. Col. i. 9,
27, iv. 12; Phil. ii. 13,--epistles of the same group.




_ON FAMILY LIFE._

CHAPTER v. 22-vi. 9.

    Θέλω δὲ ὑμᾶς εἰδέναι ὅτι παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἡ κεφαλὴ ὁ Χριστός ἐστιν,
    κεφαλὴ δὲ γυναικὸς ὁ ἀνήρ, κεφαλὴ δὲ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὁ Θεός.--1 COR. xi. 3.

    “And pure Religion breathing household laws.”

    W. WORDSWORTH.




CHAPTER XXV.

_CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE._

    “Wives, _be in subjection_ to your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
    For the husband is the head of the wife, as the Christ also is the
    head of the Church, _being_ Himself the saviour of the body. But as
    the Church is subject to the Christ, so let the wives also _be_ to
    their husbands in everything.

    “Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ also loved the
    Church, and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her,
    having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He
    might present the Church to Himself a glorious _Church_, not having
    spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and
    without blemish.

    “Even so ought husbands also to love their wives as their own
    bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself: for no man ever
    hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the
    Christ also the Church; because we are members of His body. ‘For
    this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave
    to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is
    great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the Church.
    Nevertheless do ye also severally love each one his own wife even as
    himself; and _let_ the wife _see_ that she fear her husband.”--EPH.
    v. 22-33.


In mutual subjection the Christian spirit has its sharpest trials and
attains its finest temper. “Be subject one to another,” was the last
word of the apostle’s instructions respecting the “walk” of the Asian
Churches. By its order and subjection the gifts of all the members of
Christ’s body are made available for the upbuilding of God’s temple. The
inward fellowship of the Spirit becomes a constructive and organizing
force, reconstituting human life and framing the world into the kingdom
of Christ and God. “In fear of Christ” the loyal Christian man submits
himself to the community; not from the dread of human displeasure, but
knowing that he must give account to the Head of the Church and the
Judge of the last day, if his self-will should weaken the Church’s
strength and interrupt her holy work. “For the Lord’s sake” His freemen
submit to every ordinance of men. This is such a fear as the servant has
of a good master (vi. 5), or the true wife for a loving husband (ver.
33),--not that which “perfect love casts out,” but which it deepens and
sanctifies.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of this subjection to Christ the relationship of marriage furnishes an
example and a mirror. St Paul passes on to the new topic without any
grammatical pause, verse 22 being simply an extension of the participial
clause that forms verse 21: “Being in subjection to one another in fear
of Christ--ye wives to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” The relation
of the two verses is not that of the particular to the general, so much
as that of image and object, of type and antitype. Submission to Christ
in the Church suggests by analogy that of the wife to her husband in the
house. Both have their origin in Christ, in whom all things were
created, the Lord of life in its natural as well as in its spiritual and
regenerate sphere (Col. i. 15-17). The bond that links husband and wife,
lying at the basis of collective human existence, has in turn its ground
in the relation of Christ to humanity.

The race springs not from a unit, but from a united pair. The history of
mankind began in wedlock. The family is the first institution of
society, and the mother of all the rest. It is the life-basis, the
primitive cell of the aggregate of cities and bodies politic. In the
health and purity of household life lies the moral wealth, the vigour
and durability of all civil institutions. The mighty upgrowth of nations
and the great achievements of history germinated in the nursery of home
and at the mother’s breast. Christian marriage is not an expedient--the
last of many that have been tried--for the satisfaction of desire and
the continuance of the human species. The Institutor of human life laid
down its principle in the first frame of things. Its establishment was a
great prophetic mystery (ver. 32). Its law stands registered in the
eternal statutes. And the Almighty Father watches over its observance
with an awful jealousy. Is it not written: “Fornicators and adulterers
God will judge”; and again, “The Lord is an avenger concerning all these
things”?

St Paul rightly gives to this subject a conspicuous place in this
epistle of Christ and the Church. The corner-stone of the new social
order which the gospel was to establish in the world lies here. The
entire influence of the Church upon society depends upon right views on
the relationship of man and woman and on the ethics of marriage.

In wedlock there are blended most completely the two principles of
association amongst moral beings,--viz., authority and love, submission
and self-surrender.

I. On the one side, _submission to authority_.

“Wives, be in subjection, as to the Lord,”--as is fitting in the Lord
(Col. iii. 18). Again, in 1 Timothy ii. 11, 12, the apostle writes: “I
suffer not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion,” or (as the word may
rather signify) “to act independently of the man.” Were these directions
temporary and occasional? Were they due, as one hears it suggested, to
the uneducated and undeveloped condition of women in the apostle’s time?
Or do they not affirm a law that is deeply seated in nature and in the
feminine constitution? The words of 1 Corinthians xi. 2-15 show that, in
the apostle’s view of life, this subordination is fundamental. “The head
of woman is the man,” as “the head of every man is the Christ” and “the
head of Christ is God.” “The woman,” he says, “is of the man,” and “was
created because of the man.” Whether these sentences square with our
modern conceptions or not, there they stand, and their import is
unmistakable.[139] They teach that in the Divine order of things it is
the man’s part to lead and rule, and the woman’s part to be ruled. But
the Christian woman will not feel that there is any loss or hardship in
this. For in the Christian order, ambition is sin. To obey is better
than to rule. She remembers who has said: “I am amongst you as he that
serveth.” The children of the world strive for place and power; but “it
shall not be so amongst you.”

Such subordination implies no inferiority, rather the opposite. A free
and sympathetic obedience--which is the true submission--can only
subsist between equals. The apostle writes: “Children, obey; ...
Servants, obey” (vi. 1, 5); but “Wives, submit yourselves to your own
husbands, as to the Lord.” The same word denotes submission within the
Church, and within the house. It is here that Christianity, in contrast
with Paganism, and notably with Mohammedanism, raises the weaker sex to
honour. In soul and destiny it declares the woman to be man, endowed
with all rights and powers inherent in humanity. “In Christ Jesus there
is no male and female,” any more than there is “Jew and Greek” or “bond
and free.” The same sentence which broke down the barriers of Jewish
caste, and in course of time abolished slavery, condemned the odious
assumptions of masculine pride. It is one of the glories of our faith
that it has enfranchised our sisters, and raises them in spiritual
calling to the full level of their brothers and husbands. Both sexes are
children of God by the same birthright; both receive the same Holy
Spirit, according to the prediction quoted by St Peter on the day of
Pentecost: “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.... Yea, on my
servants and on my handmaidens in those days will I pour out of my
Spirit, saith the Lord” (Acts ii. 17, 18). This one point of headship,
of public authority and guidance, is reserved. It is the point on which
Christ forbids emulation amongst His people.

Christian courtesy treats the woman as “the glory of the man”; it
surrounds her from girlhood to old age with protection and deference.
This homage, duly rendered, is a full equivalent for the honour of
visible command. When, as it happens not seldom in the partnership of
life, the superior wisdom dwells with the weaker vessel, the golden gift
of persuasion is not wanting, by which the official ruler is guided, to
his own advantage, and his adviser accomplishes more than she could do
by any overt leadership. The chivalry of the Middle Ages, from which the
refinement of European society takes its rise, was a product of
Christianity grafted on the Teutonic nature. Notwithstanding the folly
and excess that was mixed with it, there was a beautiful reverence in
the old knightly service and championship of women. It humanized the
ferocity of barbarous times. It tamed the brute strength of warlike
races and taught them honour and gentleness. Its prevalence marked a
permanent advance in civilization.

Shall we say that this law of St Paul is that laid down specifically for
_Christian_ women? is it not rather a law of nature--the intrinsic
propriety of sex, whose dictates are reinforced by the Christian
revelation? The apostle takes us back to the creation of mankind for the
basis of his principles in dealing with this subject (ver. 31). The new
commandments are the old which were in the world from the beginning,
though concealed and overgrown with corruption. Notwithstanding the
debasement of marriage under the non-Christian systems, the instincts of
natural religion taught the wife her place in the house and gave rise to
many a graceful and appropriate custom expressive of the honour due from
one sex to the other. So the apostle regarded the man’s bared and
cropped head and the woman’s flowing tresses as symbols of their
relative place in the Divine order (1 Cor. xi. 13-15). These and such
distinctions--between the dignities of strength and of beauty--no
artificial sentiment and no capricious revolt can set aside, while the
world stands. St Paul appeals to the common sense of mankind, to that
which “nature itself teaches,” in censuring the forwardness of some
Corinthian women who appeared to think that the liberty of the gospel
released them from the limitations of their nature.

Some earnest promoters of women’s rights have fallen into the error that
Christianity, to which they owe all that is best in their present
status, is the obstacle in the way of their further progress. It is an
obstacle to claims that are against nature and against the law of
God,--claims only tolerable so long as they are exceptional. But the
barriers imposed by Christianity, against which these people fret, are
their main protection. “The moment Christianity disappears, the law of
strength revives; and under that law women can have no hope except that
their slavery may be mild and pleasant.” To escape from the “bondage of
Christian law” means to go back to the bondage of paganism.

“As unto the Lord” gives the pattern and the principle of the Christian
wife’s submission. Not that, as Meyer seems to put it, the husband in
virtue of marriage “represents Christ to the wife.” Her relation to the
Lord is as full, direct, and personal as his. Indeed, the clause
inserted at the end of verse 23 seems expressly designed to guard
against this exaggeration. The qualification that Christ is “Himself
Saviour of the body,” thrown in between the two sentences comparing the
marital headship to that which Christ holds towards the Church, has the
effect of limiting the former.[140] The subjection of the Christian wife
to her husband reserves for Christ the first place in the heart and the
undiminished rights of Saviourship. St Paul indicates a real, and not
unfrequent danger. The husband may eclipse Christ in the wife’s soul,
and be counted as her all in all. Her absorption in him may be too
complete. Hence the brief guarding clause: “He Himself [and no other]
Saviour of the body [to which all believers alike belong].” As the
Saviour of the Church, Christ holds an unrivalled and unqualified
lordship over every member of the same.

“Nevertheless, as the Church is subject to the Christ, so also wives
[should be] to their husbands in everything” (ver. 24). Again, in verse
33: “Let the wife see that she fear her husband”--with the reverent and
confiding fear which love makes sweet. As the Christian wife obeys the
Lord Christ in the spiritual sphere, in the sphere of marriage she is
subject to her husband. The ties that bind her to Christ, bind her more
closely to the duties of home. These duties illustrate for her the
submissive love that Christ’s people, and herself as one of them, owe to
their Divine Head. Her service in the Church, in turn, will send her
home with a quickened sense of the sacredness of her domestic calling.
It will lighten the yoke of obedience; it will check the discontent that
masculine exactions provoke; and will teach her to win by patience and
gentleness the power within the house that is her queenly crown.

II. The apostle alludes to submission as the wife’s duty; for she might,
possibly, be tempted to think this superseded by the liberty of the
children of God. Love he need not enjoin upon her; but he writes:
“Husbands, _love your wives_, even as the Christ also loved the Church
and gave up Himself for her” (comp. Col. iii. 18, 19).

The danger of selfishness lies on the masculine side. The man’s nature
is more exacting; and the self-forgetfulness and solicitous affection of
the woman may blind him to his own want of the truest love. Full of
business and with a hundred cares and attractions lying outside the
domestic circle, he too readily forms habits of self-absorption and
learns to make his wife and home a convenience, from which he takes as
his right the comfort they have to give, imparting little of devotion
and confidence in return. This lack of love denies the higher rights of
marriage; it makes the wife’s submission a joyless constraint. Along
with this selfishness and the uneasy conscience attending it, there
supervenes sometimes an irritability of temper that chafes over domestic
troubles and makes a grievance of the most trifling mishap or
inadvertence, ignoring the wife’s patient affection and anxiety to
please. Too often in this way husbands grow insensibly into family
tyrants, forgetting the days of youth and the kindness of their
espousals. “There are many,” says Bengel (on this point unusually
caustic), “who out of doors are civil and kind to all; when at home,
toward their wives and children, whom they have no need to fear, they
freely practise secret bitterness.”

“Love your wives, _even as the Christ loved the Church_.” What a glory
this confers upon the husband’s part in marriage! His devotion pictures,
as no other love can, the devotion of Christ to His redeemed people. His
love must therefore be a spiritual passion, the love of soul to soul,
that partakes of God and of eternity. Of the three Greek words for
love,--_eros_, familiar in Greek poetry and mythology, denoting the
flame of sexual passion, is not named in the New Testament; _philia_,
the love of friendship, is tolerably frequent, in its verb at least; but
_agapé_ absorbs the former and transcends both. This exquisite word
denotes love in its spiritual purity and depth, the love of God and of
Christ, and of souls to each other in God. This is the specific
Christian affection. It is the attribute of God who “loved the world and
gave His Son the Only-begotten,” of “the Christ” who “loved the Church
and gave up Himself for her.” Self-devotion, not self-satisfaction, is
its note. Its strength and authority it uses as material for sacrifice
and instruments of service, not as prerogatives of pride or titles to
enjoyment. Let this mind be in you, O husband, toward your wife, which
was also in Christ Jesus, who was meek and lowly in heart, counting it
His honour to serve and His reward to save and bless.

From verse 26 we gather that Christ is the husband’s model, not only in
the rule of self-devotion, but in the end toward which that devotion is
directed: “that He might sanctify the Church,--that He might present her
to Himself a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle,--_that she might
be holy and without blemish_.” The perfection of the wife’s character
will be to the religious husband one of the dearest objects in life. He
will desire for her that which is highest and best, as for himself. He
is put in charge of a soul more precious to him than any other, over
which he has an influence incomparably great. This care he cannot
delegate to any priest or father-confessor. The peril of such delegation
and the grievous mischiefs that arise when there is no spiritual
confidence between husband and wife, when through unbelief or
superstition the head of the house hands over his priesthood to another
man, are painfully shown by the experience of Roman Catholic countries.
The irreligion of laymen, the carelessness and unworthiness of fathers
and husbands are responsible for the baneful influences of the
confessional. The apostle bade the Corinthian wives, who were eager for
religious knowledge, to “ask their husbands at home” (1 Cor. xiv. 35).
Christian husbands should take more account of their office than they
do; they should not be strangers to the spiritual trials and experiences
of the heart so near to them. It might lead them to walk more worthily
and to seek higher religious attainments, if they considered that the
shepherding of at least one soul devolves upon themselves, that they are
unworthy of the name of husband without such care for the welfare of the
soul linked to their own as Christ bears toward His bride the Church.
Those who have no father or husband to look to, or who look in vain to
this quarter for spiritual help, St Paul refers, beside the light and
comfort of Scripture and the public ministry and fellowship of the
Church, to the “aged women” who are the natural guides and exemplars of
the younger in their own sex (Titus ii. 3-5).

The selfishness of the stronger sex, supported by the force of habit and
social usage, was hard to subdue in the Greek Christian Churches.
Through some eight verses St Paul labours this one point. In verse 28 he
adduces another reason, added to the example of Christ, for the love
enjoined. “So ought men indeed to love their wives as their own bodies.
He that loveth his wife loveth himself.” The “So” gathers its force from
the previous example. In loving us Christ does not love something
foreign and, as it were, outside of Himself. “We are members of His
body” (ver. 30). It is the love of the Head to the members, of the Son
of man to the sons of men, whose race-life is founded in Him. Jesus
Christ laid it down as the highest law, under that of love to God: “Thou
shalt love thy neighbour _as thyself_.” His love to us followed this
rule. His life was wrapped up in ours. By such community of life
self-love is transfigured, and exalted into the purest self-forgetting.

Thus it is with true marriage. The wedding of a human pair makes each
the other’s property. They are “one flesh” (ver. 31); and so long as
the flesh endures there remains this consciousness of union, whose
violation is deadly sin. As the Church is not her own, nor Christ His
own since He became man with men, so the husband and wife are no longer
independent and self-complete personalities, but incorporated into a new
existence common to both. Their love must correspond to this fact. If
the man loves himself, if he values his own limbs and tends and guards
from injury his bodily frame (ver. 29), he must do the same equally by
his wife; for her life and limbs are as a part of his own. This the
apostle lays down as an obvious duty. Nature teaches the obligation, by
every manly instinct.

The saying the apostle quotes in verse 31 dates from the origin of the
human family; it is taken from the lips of the first husband and father
of the race, while as yet unstained by sin (Gen. ii. 23, 24). Christ
infers from it the singleness and indelibility of the marriage covenant.
But this doctrine, natural as it is, was not inferred by natural
religion. The cultivated Greek took a wife for the production of
children. Her rights put no restriction upon his appetite. Love was not
in the marriage contract. If she received the maintenance due to her
rank and the mistress-ship of the house, and was the mother of his
lawful children, she had all that a free-born woman could demand. The
slave-woman had no rights. Her body was at her owner’s disposal. Nothing
in Christianity appeared more novel and more severe, in comparison with
the dissolute morals of the time, than the Christian view of marriage.
Even Christ’s Jewish disciples seemed to think the state of wedlock
intolerable under the condition He imposed. This want of reverence and
constancy between the sexes was a main cause of the degeneracy of the
age. All virtues disappear with this one. Roman manliness and
uprightness, Greek courtesy and courage, filial piety, civic worth,
loyalty in friendship--the qualities that once in a high degree adorned
the classic nations, were now rare amongst men. In the most exalted
ranks infamous vices flourished; and purity of life was a cause for
odium and suspicion.

Amidst this seething mass of corruption the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus created new hearts and new homes. It kindled a pure fire on the
desecrated hearth. It taught man and woman a chaste love; and their
alliances were formed “in sanctification and honour, not in the passion
of lust as it is with the Gentiles who know not God” (1 Thess. iv. 3-6).
Every Christian house, thus based on an honourable and religious union,
became the centre of a leaven that wrought upon the corrupt society
around. It held forth an example of wedded loyalty and domestic joy
beautiful and strange in that loveless Pagan world. Children grew up
trained in pure and gentle manners. From that hour the hope of a better
day began. The influence of the new ideal, filtrating everywhere into
the surrounding heathenism and assimilating even before it converted the
hostile world, raised society, though gradually and with many relapses,
from the extreme debasement of the age of the Cæsars. Never subsequently
have the morals of civilized mankind sunk to a level quite so low. The
Christian conception of love and marriage opened a new era for mankind.

FOOTNOTES:

[139] See Dr. Maclaren’s admirable words on this subject in _Colossians
and Philemon_ (Expositor’s Bible), pp. 336-40; and Dr. Dale’s _Lectures
on Ephesians_, Lect. xix., “Wives and Husbands.”

[140] In verse 24 St Paul resumes with ἀλλά, the _but_ of opposition and
not mere contrast, indicating a case where the claims of husband and
Saviour may, conceivably, be in competition.




CHAPTER XXVI.

CHRIST AND HIS BRIDE.

    “The Christ is the head of the Church, _being_ Himself the Saviour
    of the body.... The Church is subject to the Christ in
    everything....

    “The Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her; that He
    might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with
    the word, that He might present the Church to Himself a glorious
    _Church_, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she
    should be holy and without blemish....

    “The Christ [nourisheth and cherisheth] the Church; because we are
    members of His body. ‘For this cause shall a man leave his father
    and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become
    one flesh.’ This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ
    and of the Church.”--EPH. v. 23-32.


We have extracted from the apostle’s homily upon marriage the sentences
referring to Christ and His Church, in order to gather up their
collective import. The main topic of the epistle here again asserts
itself; and under the figure of marriage St Paul brings to its
conclusion his doctrine on the subject of the Church. This passage
answers, theologically, a purpose similar to that of the allegory of
Hagar and Sarah in the epistle to the Galatians: it lights up for the
imagination the teaching and argument of the former part of the epistle;
it shows how the doctrine of Christ and the Church has its counterpart
in nature, as the struggle between the legal and evangelical spirit had
its counterpart in the patriarchal history. The three detached
paragraphs present us three considerations, of which we shall treat the
second first in order of exposition: Christ’s _love to the Church_; His
_authority over the Church_; and _the mystery of the Church’s origin in
Him_.

I. “Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ also loved the Church,
and gave up Himself for her.” This is parallel to the declaration of
Galatians ii. 20: “He loved me; He gave up Himself for me.” The
sacrifice of the cross has at once its personal and its collective
purpose. Both are to be kept in mind.

On the one hand, we must value infinitely and joyfully assert our
individual part in the redeeming love of the Son of God; but we must
equally admit the sovereign rights of the Church in the Redeemer’s
passion. Our souls bow down before the glory of the love with which He
has from eternity sought her for His own. There is in some Christians an
absorption in the work of grace within their own hearts, an
individualistic salvation-seeking that, like all selfishness, defeats
its end; for it narrows and impoverishes the inner life thus sedulously
cherished. The Church does not exist simply for the benefit of
individual souls; it is an eternal institution, with an affiance to
Christ, a calling and destiny of its own; within that universal sphere
our personal destiny holds its particular place.

It is “the Christ” who stands, throughout this context (vv. 23-29), over
against “the Church” as her Lover and Husband; whereas in the context of
Galatians ii. 20 we read “Christ”--the bare personal name--repeated
again and again without the distinguishing article. _Christ_ is the
Person whom the soul knows and loves, with whom it holds communion in
the Spirit. _The Christ_ is the same regarded in the wide scope of His
nature and office,--the Christ of humanity and of the ages. “The Christ”
of this epistle expands the Saviour’s title to its boundless
significance, and gives breadth and length to that which in “Christ” is
gathered up into a single point.[141]

This Christ “gave Himself up for the Church,”--yielded Himself to the
death which the sins of His people merited and brought upon Him. Under
the same verb, the apostle says in Romans iv. 25: He “_was delivered_
because of our trespasses, and raised up because of our
justification”--the sacrifice being there regarded on its passive side.
Here, as in Galatians ii. 20, the act is made His own,--a voluntary
surrender. “No man taketh my life from me,” He said (John x. 18). In His
case alone amongst the sons of men, death was neither natural nor
inevitable. His surrender of life was an absolute sacrifice. He “laid
down His life for His friends,” as no other friend of man could do--the
One who died for all. The love measured by this sacrifice is
proportionately great.

The sayings of verses 25-27 set the glory of the vicarious death in a
vivid light. Of such worth was the person of the Christ, of such
significance and moral value His sacrificial death, that it weighed
against the trespass, not of a man--Paul or any other--but of a world of
men. He “purchased through His own blood,” said Paul to the Ephesian
elders, “the Church of God” (Acts xx. 28)--the whole flock that feeds in
the pastures of the Great Shepherd, that has passed or will pass through
the gates of His fold. Great was the honour and glory with which he was
crowned, when led as victim to the altar of the world’s atonement (Heb.
ii. 9). Who will not say, as the meek Son of man treads so willingly
His mournful path to Calvary, “Worthy is the Lamb!” Is not the heavenly
Bridegroom worthy of the bride, that He consents to win by the sacrifice
of Himself!

He is worthy; and _she must be made worthy_. “He gave up Himself, that
He might sanctify her,--that He might Himself present to Himself a
glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or anything of the
kind,--that she may be holy and without blemish.” The sanctification of
the Church is the grand purpose of redeeming grace. This was the design
of God for His sons in Christ before the world’s foundation, “that we
should be holy and unblemished before Him” (i. 4). This, therefore, was
the end of Christ’s mission upon earth; this was the intention of His
sacrificial death. “For their sakes,” said Jesus concerning His
disciples, “I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in
truth” (John xvii. 19). His purchase of the Church is no selfish act. To
God His Father Christ devotes every spirit of man that is yielded to
Him. As the Priest of mankind it was His office thus to consecrate
humanity, which is already in purpose and in essence “sanctified through
the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. x. 10).

Only in this passage, where the apostle is thinking of the preparation
of the Church for its perfect union with its Head, does he name Christ
as our _Sanctifier_; in 1 Corinthians i. 2 he comes near this
expression, addressing his readers as men “sanctified in Christ Jesus.”
In the epistle to the Hebrews this character is largely ascribed to Him,
being the function of His priesthood. One in nature with the sanctified,
Jesus our great Priest “sanctifies us through His own blood,” so that
with cleansed consciences we may draw near to the living God.[142] As
Christ the Priest stands towards His people, so Christ the Husband
towards His Church. He devotes her with Himself to God. He cleanses her
that she may dwell with Him for ever, a spotless bride, dead unto sin
and living unto God through Him.

“That He might sanctify her, _having cleansed her_ in the laver of water
by the word.” The Church’s purification is antecedent in thought to her
sanctification through the sacrifice of Christ; and it is a means
thereto. “Ye were washed, ye were sanctified,” writes the apostle in 1
Corinthians vi. 11, putting the two things in the same order. It is the
order of doctrine which he has laid down in the epistle to the Romans,
where sanctification is built on the foundation laid in justification
through the blood of Christ. Through the virtue of the sacrificial death
the Church in all her members was washed from the defilements of sin,
that she might enter upon God’s service. Of the same initial
purification of the heart St John writes in his first epistle (i. 7-9):
“The blood of Jesus, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin.... He is
faithful and just, that He should forgive us our sins and cleanse us
from all unrighteousness.” This is “the redemption through Christ’s
blood,” for which St Paul in his first words of praise called upon us to
bless God (i. 7). It is the special distinction of the New Covenant,
which renders possible its other gifts of grace, that “the worshippers
once cleansed” need have “no further consciousness of sins” (Heb. x. 2,
14-18). In the theological use here made of the idea of _cleansing_, St
Paul comes into line with St John and the epistle to the Hebrews. The
purification is nothing else than that which he has elsewhere styled
_justification_. He employs the terms synonymously in the later epistle
to Titus (ii. 14; iii. 7).

“Having cleansed” is a phrase congruous with the figure of _the laver_,
or _bath_ (comp. again Tit. iii. 5-7),--an image suggested, as one would
think, by the bride-bath of the wedding-day in the ancient marriage
customs. To this St Paul sees a counterpart in baptism, “the laver of
water in the word.” The cleansing and withal refreshing virtues of water
made it an obvious symbol of regeneration. The emblem is twofold; it
pictures at once the removal of guilt, and the imparting of new
strength. One goes into the bath exhausted, and covered with dust; one
comes out clean and fresh. Hence the baptism of the new believer in
Christ had, in St Paul’s view, a double aspect.[143] It looked backward
to the old life of sin abandoned, and forward to the new life of
holiness commenced. Thus it corresponded to the burial of Jesus (Rom.
vi. 4), the point of juncture between death and resurrection. Baptism
served as the visible and formal expression of the soul’s passage
through the gate of forgiveness into the sanctified life.

Along with this older teaching, a further and kindred significance is
now given to the baptismal rite. It denotes the soul’s affiance to its
Lord. As the maiden’s bath on the morning of her marriage betokened the
purity in which she united herself to her betrothed, so the baptismal
laver summons the Church to present herself “a chaste virgin unto
Christ” (2 Cor. xi. 2). It signifies and seals her forgiveness, and
pledges her in all her members to await the Bridegroom in garments
unspotted from the world, with the pure and faithful love which will not
be ashamed before Him at His coming. For this end Christ set up the
baptismal laver.

Upon our construction of the text, the words “that He might sanctify
her” express a purpose complete in itself--viz., that of the Church’s
consecration to God. Then follow the means to this sanctification:
“having cleansed her in the water-bath through the word,”--which
washing, at the same time, has its purpose on the part of the Lord who
appointed it--viz., “that He might present her to Himself” a glorious
and spotless Church.

At the end of verse 27 the sentence doubles back upon itself, in Paul’s
characteristic fashion. The twofold aim of Christ’s sacrifice of love on
the Church’s behalf--viz., her consecration to God, and her spotless
purity fitting her for perfect union with her Lord--is restated in the
final clause, by way of contrast with the “spots and wrinkles and
such-like things” that are washed out: “but that she may be holy and
without blemish.”

We passed by, for the moment, the concluding phrase of verse 26, with
which the apostle qualifies his reference to the baptismal cleansing; we
are by no means forgetting it. “Having cleansed her,” he writes, “by the
laver of water _in_ [_the_] _word_.” This adjunct is deeply significant.
It impresses on baptism a spiritual character, and excludes every
theurgic conception of the rite, every doctrine that gives to it in the
least degree a mechanical efficacy. “Without the word the sacrament
could only influence man by magic, outward or inward” (Dorner). The
“word” of which the apostle speaks,[144] is that of chapter vi. 17,
“God’s word--the Spirit’s sword”; of Romans x. 8, “the word of faith
which we proclaim”; of Luke i. 37, “the word from God which shall not be
powerless”; of John xvii. 8, etc., “the words” that the Father had
given to the Son, and the Son in turn to men. It is the Divine
utterance, spoken and believed. In this accompaniment lies the power of
the laver. The baptismal affusion is the outward seal of an inward
transaction, that takes place in the spirit of believing utterers and
hearers of the gospel word. This saving word receives in baptism its
concrete expression; it becomes the _verbum visibile_.

The “word” in question is defined in Romans x. 8, 9: “If thou shalt
confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God
raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved!” Let the hearer respond,
“I do so confess and believe,” on the strength of this confession he is
baptized, and in the conjoint act of faith and baptism--in the
_obedience_ of faith signified by his baptism--he is saved from his past
sins and made an heir of life eternal. The rite is the simplest and most
universal in application one can conceive. In heathen countries baptism
recovers its primitive significance, as the decisive act of rupture with
idolatry and acceptance of Christ as Lord, which in our usage is often
overlaid and forgotten.

This interpretation gives a key to the obscure text of St Peter upon the
same subject (1 Ep. iii. 21): “Baptism saves you--not the putting away
of the filth of the flesh, but the questioning with regard to God of a
good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” The vital
constituent of the rite is not the application of water to the body, but
the challenge which the word makes therein to the conscience respecting
the things of God,--the inquiry thus conveyed, to which a sincere
believer in the resurrection of Christ makes joyful and ready answer. It
is, in fine, _the appeal to faith_ contained in baptism that gives to
the latter its saving worth.

The “word” that makes Christian ordinances valid, is not the past
utterance of God alone, which may remain a dead letter, preserved in the
oracles of Scripture or the official forms of the Church, but that word
alive and active, re-spoken and transmitted from soul to soul by the
breath of the Holy Spirit. Without this animating word of faith, baptism
is but the pouring or sprinkling of so much water on the body; the
Lord’s Supper is only the consumption of so much bread and wine.

All the nations will at last, in obedience to Christ’s command, be
baptized into the thrice-holy Name; and the work of baptism will be
complete. Then the Church will issue from her bath, cleansed more
effectually than the old world that emerged with Noah from the deluge.
Every “spot and wrinkle” will pass from her face: the worldly passions
that stained her features, the fears and anxieties that knit her brow or
furrowed her cheek, will vanish away. In her radiant beauty, in her
chaste and spotless love, Christ will lead forth His Church before His
Father and the holy angels, “as a bride adorned for her husband.” From
eternity He set His love upon her; on the cross He won her back from her
infidelity at the price of His blood. Through the ages He has been
wooing her to Himself, and schooling her in wise and manifold ways that
she might be fit for her heavenly calling. Now the end of this long task
of redemption has arrived. The message goes forth to Christ’s friends in
all the worlds: “Come, gather yourselves to the great supper of God!
The marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready!
He hath given her fine linen bright and pure, that she may array
herself. Let us rejoice and exult, and give to Him the glory!” Through
what cleansing fires, through what baptisms even of blood she has still
to pass ere the consummation is reached, He only knows who loved her and
gave Himself for her. He will spare to His Church nothing, either of
bounty or of trial, that her perfection needs.

II. Concerning Christ’s lordly _authority_ over His Church we have had
occasion to speak already in other places. A word or two may be added
here.

We acknowledge the Church to be “subject to Christ in everything.” We
proclaim ourselves, like the apostle, “slaves of Christ Jesus.” But this
subjection is too often a form rather than a fact. In protesting our
independence of Popish and priestly lords of God’s heritage, we are
sometimes in danger of ignoring our dependence upon Him, and of
dethroning, in effect, the one Lord Jesus Christ. Christian communities
act and speak too much in the style of political republics. They assume
the attitude of self-directing and self-responsible bodies.

The Church is no democracy, any more than it is an aristocracy or a
sacerdotal absolutism: it is a _Christocracy_. The people are not rulers
in the house of God; they are the ruled, laity and ministers alike. “One
is your Master, even the Christ; and all ye are brethren.” We
acknowledge this in theory; but our language and spirit would oftentimes
be other than they are, if we were penetrated by the sense of the
continual presence and majesty of the Lord Christ in our assemblies.
Royalties and nobilities, and the holders of popular power--all whose
“names are named in this world,” along with the principalities in
heavenly places, when they come into the precincts of the Church must
lay aside their robes and forget their titles, and speak humbly as in
the Master’s presence. What is it to the glorious Church of Jesus Christ
that Lord So-and-so wears a coronet and owns half a county? or that
Midas can fill her coffers, if he is pleased and humoured? or that this
or that orator guides at his will the fierce democracy? He is no more
than a man who will die, and appear before the judgement-seat of Christ.
The Church’s protection from human tyranny, from schemes of ambition,
from the intrusion of political methods and designs, lies in her sense
of the splendour and reality of Christ’s dominion, and of her own
eternal life in Him.

III. We come now to the profound mystery disclosed, or half-disclosed at
the end of this section, that of _the origination of the Church from
Christ_, which accounts for His love to the Church and His authority
over her. He nourishes and cherishes the Church, we are told in verses
29, 30, “because we are members of His body.”

Now, this membership is, in its origin, as old as creation. God “chose
us in Christ before the world’s foundation” (i. 4). We were created in
the Son of God’s love, antecedently to our redemption by Him. Such is
the teaching of this and the companion epistle (Col. i. 14-18). Christ
recovers through the cross that which pertains inherently to Him, which
belonged to Him by nature and is as a part of Himself. From this
standpoint the connexion of verses 30 and 31 becomes intelligible.[145]
It is not, strictly speaking, “on account of this”; but “in
correspondence with this”[146] says the apostle, suiting the original
phrase to his purpose. The derivation of Eve from the body of Adam, as
that is affirmed in the mysterious words of Genesis, is analogous to the
derivation of the Church from Christ. The latter relationship existed in
its ideal, and as conceived in the purpose of God, prior to the
appearance of the human race. In St Paul’s theory, the origin of woman
in man which forms the basis of marriage in Scripture, looked further
back to the origin of humanity in Christ Himself.

The train of thought that the apostle resumes here he followed in 1
Corinthians xi. 3-12: “I would have you know that the head of every man
is the Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of
Christ is God.... Man is the image and glory of God: but the woman is
the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of
the man.” So it is with Christ and His bride the Church.

“The LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept;
and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof:
and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man, made He a woman,
and brought her to the man. And the man said,

        This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:
        She shall be called Woman [_Isshah_], because she was taken out
            of Man [_Ish_].
    Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall
            cleave unto his wife:
          And they shall be one flesh” (Gen. ii. 21-24).

Thus the first father of our race prophesied, and sang his wedding song.
In some mystical, but real sense, marriage is a _reunion_, the
reincorporation of what had been sundered. Seeking his other self, the
complement of his nature, the man breaks the ties of birth and founds a
new home. So the inspired author of the passage in Genesis explains the
origin of marriage, and the instinct which draws the bridegroom to his
bride.

But our apostle sees within this declaration a deeper truth, kept secret
from the foundation of the world. When he speaks of “this great
_mystery_,” he means thereby not marriage itself, but _the saying of
Adam about it_. This text was a standing problem to the Jewish
interpreters. “But for my part,” says the apostle, “I refer it to Christ
and to the Church.” St Paul, who has so often before drawn the parallel
between Adam and Christ, by the light of this analogy perceives a new
and rich meaning in the old dark sentence. It helps him to see how
believers in Christ, forming collectively His body, are not only grafted
into Him (as he puts it in the epistle to the Romans), but were derived
from Him and formed in the very mould of His nature.

What is affirmed in Colossians i. 16, 17 concerning the universe in
general, is true in its perfect degree of redeemed humanity: “_In Him_
were created all things,” as well as “through Him and for Him.” Eve was
created in Adam; and Adam in Christ. We are “partakers of a Divine
nature,” by our spiritual origin in Him who is the image of God and the
root of humanity. The union of the first human pair and every true
marriage since, being in effect, as Adam puts it, a restoration and
redintegration, symbolizes the fellowship of Christ with mankind. This
intention was in the mind of God at the institution of human life; it
took expression in the prophetic words of the Book of Genesis, whose
deeper sense St Paul is now able for the first time to unfold.

In our union through grace and faith with Christ crucified, we realize
again the original design of our being. Christ has purchased by His
blood no new or foreign bride, but her who was His from eternity,--the
child who had wandered from the Father’s house, the betrothed who had
left her Lord and Spouse. In regard to this “mystery of our coherence in
Christ,” Richard Hooker says, in words that suggest many aspects of this
doctrine: “The Church is in Christ, as Eve was in Adam. Yea, by grace we
are every one of us in Christ and in His Church, as by nature we are in
our first parents. God made Eve of the rib of Adam. And His Church He
frameth out of the very flesh, the very wounded and bleeding side of the
Son of man. His body crucified and His blood shed for the life of the
world are the true elements of that heavenly being which maketh us such
as Himself is of whom we come. For which cause the words of Adam may be
fitly the words of Christ concerning His Church, ‘flesh of my flesh and
bone of my bones--a true native extract out of mine own body,’ So that
in Him, even according to His manhood, we according to our heavenly
being are as branches in that root out of which they grow.”[147]

FOOTNOTES:

[141] Compare pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.

[142] Heb. ii. 9-12, ix. 14, 15, x. 5-22, xiii. 12.

[143] See Rom. vi. 1-11; Col. ii. 11, 12; 1 Cor. x. 2, xii. 13.

[144] Ἐν ῥήματι. Λόγος is word as expressive of _thought_. Ῥῆμα, the
utterance of a living voice,--a _sentence_, _pronouncement_, _message_;
it is the Greek term employed in all the passages here cited.

[145] The words “of His flesh and of His bones,” following “members of
His body” in the A.V., appear to be an ancient gloss adopted by the
Greek copyists, which was suggested by Gen. ii. 23. They are unsuitable
to the idea of a spiritual union, and interrupt rather than help the
apostle’s exposition.

[146] St Paul changes the Ἕνεκεν τούτου of the original to Ἀντὶ τούτου,
which conveys the idea that marriage has its counterpart in the fact
that we are members of Christ.

[147] _Ecclesiastical Polity_; v. 56 7.




CHAPTER XXVII.

_THE CHRISTIAN HOUSEHOLD._

    “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. ‘Honour
    thy father and mother,’ which is a first commandment, _given_ in
    promise,--‘that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long
    on the earth.’ And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath:
    but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord.

    “Servants, be obedient to them that according to the flesh are your
    lords, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto
    the Christ; not in the way of eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as
    servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the soul; with good
    will doing service, as unto the Lord, and not unto men: knowing that
    whatsoever good thing each one doeth, the same shall he receive
    again from the Lord, whether _he be_ bond or free. And, ye lords, do
    the same things unto them, and forbear threatening: knowing that
    both their Lord and yours is in heaven, and there is no respect of
    persons with Him.”--EPH. vi. 1-9.


The Christian family is the cradle and the fortress of the Christian
faith. Here its virtues shine most brightly; and by this channel its
influence spreads through society and the course of generations.
Marriage has been placed under the guardianship of God; it is made
single, chaste and enduring, according to the law of creation and the
pattern of Christ’s union with His Church. With parents thus united,
family honour is secure; and a basis is laid for reverence and
discipline within the house.

I. Thus the apostle turns, in the opening words of chapter vi., from the
husband and wife to the _children_ of the household. He addresses them
as present in the assembly where his letter is read. St Paul accounted
the children “holy,” if but one parent belonged to the Church (1 Cor.
vii. 14). They were baptized, as we presume, with their fathers or
mothers, and admitted, under due precautions,[148] to the fellowship of
the Church so far as their age allowed. We cannot limit this exhortation
to children of adult age. The “discipline and admonition of the Lord”
prescribed in verse 4, belong to children of tender years and under
parental control.

_Obedience_ is the law of childhood. It is, in great part, the child’s
religion, to be practised “in the Lord.” The reverence and love, full of
a sweet mystery, which the Christian child feels towards its Saviour and
heavenly King, add new sacredness to the claims of father and mother.
Jesus Christ, the Head over all things, is the orderer of the life of
boys and girls. His love and His might guard the little one in the
tendance of its parents. The wonderful love of parents to their
offspring, and the awful authority with which they are invested, come
from the source of human life in God.

The Latin _pietas_ impressed a religious character upon filial duty.
This word signified at once dutifulness towards the gods, and towards
parents and kindred. In the strength of its family ties and its deep
filial reverence lay the secret of the moral vigour and the unmatched
discipline of the Roman commonwealth. The history of ancient Rome
affords a splendid illustration of the fifth commandment.

_For this is right_, says the apostle, appealing to the instincts of
natural religion. The child’s conscience begins here. Filial obedience
is the primary form of duty. The loyalties of after life take their
colour from the lessons learnt at home, in the time of dawning reason
and incipient will. Hard indeed is the evil to remove, where in the
plastic years of childhood obedience has been associated with base fear,
with distrust or deceit, where it has grown sullen or obsequious in
habit. From this root of bitterness there spring rank growths of hatred
toward authority, jealousies, treacheries, and stubbornness. Obedience
rendered “in the Lord” will be frank and willing, careful and constant,
such as that which Jesus rendered to the Father.

St Paul reminds the children of the law of the Ten Words, taught to them
in their earliest lessons from Scripture. He calls the command in
question “_a first_ [or _chief_] commandment”--just as the great rule,
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” is _the_ first commandment; for this
is no secondary rule or minor precept, but one on which the continuance
of the Church and the welfare of society depend. It is a law fundamental
as birth itself, written not on the statute-book alone but on the tables
of the heart.

Moreover, it is a “command _in promise_”--that takes the form of
promise, and holds out to obedience a bright future. The two
predicates--“first” and “in promise”--as we take it, are distinct. To
merge them into one blunts their meaning. This commandment is primary in
its importance, and promissory in its import. The promise is quoted from
Exodus xx. 12, as it stands in the Septuagint, where the Greek
Christian children would read it. But the last clause is abbreviated; St
Paul writes “upon _the earth_” in place of “the good land which the Lord
thy God giveth thee.” This blessing is the heritage of dutiful children
in every land. Those who have watched the history of godly families of
their acquaintance, will have seen the promise verified. The obedience
of childhood and youth rendered to a wise Christian rule, forms in the
young nature the habits of self-control and self-respect, of diligence
and promptitude and faithfulness and kindliness of heart, which are the
best guarantees for happiness and success in life. Through parental
nurture “godliness” secures its “promise of the life that now is.”

Children are exhorted to submission: fathers to _gentleness_. “Do not,”
the apostle says, “anger your children”; in the corresponding place in
Colossians, “Do not irritate your children, lest they be disheartened”
(ch. iii. 21). In these parallel texts two distinct verbs are rendered
by the one English word “provoke.” The Colossian passage warns against
the chafing effect of parental exactions and fretfulness, that tend to
break the child’s spirit and spoil its temper. Our text warns the father
against angering his child by unfair or oppressive treatment. From this
verb comes the noun “wrath” (or “provocation”) used in chapter iv. 26,
denoting that stirring of anger which gives peculiar occasion to the
devil.

Not that the father is forbidden to cross his child’s wishes, or to do
anything or refuse anything that may excite its anger. Nothing is worse
for a child than to find that parents fear its displeasure, and that it
will gain its ends by passion. But the father must not be exasperating,
must not needlessly thwart the child’s inclinations and excite in order
to subdue its anger, as some will do even of set purpose, thinking that
in this way obedience is learnt. This policy may secure submission; but
it is gained at the cost of a rankling sense of injustice.

Household rule should be equally firm and kind, neither provoking nor
avoiding the displeasure of its subjects, inflicting no severity for
severity’s sake, but shrinking from none that fidelity demands. With
much parental fondness, there is sometimes in family government a want
of seriousness and steady principle, an absence in father or mother of
the sense that they are dealing with moral and responsible beings in
their little ones, and not with toys, which is reflected in the caprice
and self-indulgence of the children’s maturer life. Such parents will
give account hereafter of their stewardship with an inconsolable grief.

It is almost superfluous to insist on the apostle’s exhortation to treat
children kindly. For them these are days of Paradise, compared with
times not far distant. Never were the wants and the fancies of these
small mortals catered for as they are now. In some households the danger
lies at the opposite extreme from that of over-strictness. The children
are idolized. Not their comfort and welfare only, but their humours and
caprices become the law of the house. They are “nourished” indeed, but
not “in the discipline and admonition of the Lord.” It is a great
unkindness to treat our children so that they shall be strangers to
hardship and restriction, so that they shall not know what real
obedience means, and have no reverence for age, no habits of deference
and self-denial. It is the way to breed monsters of selfishness,
pampered creatures who will be useless and miserable in adult life.

“Discipline and admonition” are distinguished as positive and negative
terms. The first is the “training up of the child in the way that he
should go”; the second checks and holds him back from the ways in which
he should not go. The former word (_paideia_)--denoting primarily
_treating-as-a-boy_--signifies very often “chastisement”;[149] but it
has a wider sense, embracing instruction besides.[150] It includes the
whole course of training by which the boy is reared into a
man.--_Admonition_ is a still more familiar word with St Paul.[151] It
may be reproof bearing upon errors in the past; or it may be warning,
that points out dangers lying in the future. Both these services parents
owe to their children. Admonition implies faults in the nature of the
child, and wisdom in the father to see and correct them.

“Foolishness,” says the Hebrew proverb, “is bound up in the heart of a
child.” In the Old Testament discipline there was something over-stern.
The “hardness of heart” censured by the Lord Jesus, which allowed of two
mothers in the house, put barriers between the father and his offspring
that rendered “the rod of correction” more needful than it is under the
rule of Christ. But correction, in gentler or severer sort, there must
be, so long as children spring from sinful parents. The child’s
conscience responds to the kindly and searching word of reproof, to the
admonition of love. This faithful dealing with his children wins for the
father in the end a deep gratitude, and makes his memory a guard in
days of temptation and an object of tender reverence.

The child’s “obedience _in the Lord_” is its response to “the discipline
and admonition _of the Lord_” exercised by its parents. The discipline
which wise Christian fathers give their children, is the Lord’s
discipline applied through them. “Correction and instruction should
proceed from the Lord and be directed by the Spirit of the Lord, in such
a way that it is not so much the father who corrects his children and
teaches them, as the Lord through him” (Monod). Thus the Father of whom
every family on earth is named, within each Christian house works all in
all. Thus the chief Shepherd, through His under-shepherds, guides and
feeds the lambs of His flock. By the gate of His fold fathers and
mothers themselves have entered; and the little ones follow with them.
In the pastures of His word they nourish them, and rule them with His
rod and staff. To their offspring they become an image of the Good
Shepherd and the Father in heaven. Their office teaches them more of
God’s fatherly ways with themselves. From their children’s humbleness
and confidence, from their simple wisdom, their hopes and fears and
ignorances, the elders learn deep and affecting lessons concerning their
own relations to the heavenly Father.

St Paul’s instruction to fathers applies to all who have the charge of
children: to schoolmasters of every degree, whose work, secular as it
may be called, touches the springs of moral life and character; to
teachers in the Sunday school, successors to the work that Christ
assigned to Peter, of shepherding His lambs. These instructors supply
the Lord’s nurture to multitudes of children, in whose homes Christian
faith and example are wanting. The ideas which children form of Christ
and His religion, are gathered from what they see and hear in the
school. Many a child receives its bias for life from the influence of
the teacher before whom it sits on Sunday. The love and meekness of
wisdom, or the coldness or carelessness of the one who thus stands
between Christ and the infant soul, will make or mar its spiritual
future.

II. From the children of the house the apostle proceeds to address the
_servants_--slaves as they were, until the gospel unbound their chains.
The juxtaposition of children and slaves is full of significance; it is
a tacit prophecy of emancipation. It brings the slave within the
household, and gives a new dignity to domestic service.[152]

The Greek philosophers regarded slavery as a fundamental institution,
indispensable to the existence of civilized society. That the few might
enjoy freedom and culture, the many were doomed to bondage. Aristotle
defines the slave as an “animated tool,” and the tool as an “inanimate
slave.” Two or three facts will suffice to show how utterly slaves were
deprived of human rights in the brilliant times of the classic humanism.
In Athens it was the legal rule to admit the evidence of a slave only
upon torture, as that of a freeman was received upon oath. Amongst the
Romans, if a master had been murdered in his house, the whole of his
domestic servants, amounting sometimes to hundreds, were put to death
without inquiry. It was a common mark of hospitality to assign to a
guest a female slave for the night, like any other convenience. Let it
be remembered that the slave population outnumbered the free citizens of
the Roman and Greek cities by many times; that they were frequently of
the same race, and might be even superior in education to their masters.
Indeed, it was a lucrative trade to rear young slaves and train them in
literary and other accomplishments, and then to let them out in these
capacities for hire. Let any one consider the condition of society which
all this involved, and he will have some conception of the degradation
in which the masses of mankind were plunged, and of the crushing tyranny
that the world laboured under in the boasted days of republican liberty
and Hellenic art.

No wonder that the new religion was welcome to the slaves of the Pagan
cities, and that they flocked into the Church. Welcome to them was the
voice that said: “Come unto me, all ye that are burdened and heavy
laden”; welcome the proclamation that made them Christ’s freedmen,
“brethren beloved” where they had been “animated tools” (Philem. 16). In
the light of such teaching, slavery was doomed. Its re-adoption by
Christian nations, and the imposition of its yoke on the negro race, is
amongst the great crimes of history,--a crime for which the white man
has had to pay rivers of his blood.

The social fabric, as it then existed, was so entirely based upon
slavery, that for Christ and the apostles to have proclaimed its
abolition would have meant universal anarchy. In writing to Philemon
about his converted slave Onesimus, the apostle does not say, “Release
him,” though the word seems to be trembling on his lips. In 1
Corinthians vii. 20-24 he even advises the slave who has the chance of
manumission to remain where he is, content to be “the Lord’s freedman.”
To the Christian slave what mattered it who ruled over his perishing
body! his spirit was free, death would be his discharge and
enfranchisement. No decree is issued to abolish bond-service between man
and man; but it was destroyed in its essence by the spirit of Christian
brotherhood. It melted away in the spread of the gospel, as snow and
winter melt before the face of spring.

“Ye slaves, obey your lords according to the flesh.” The apostle does
not disguise the slave’s subservience; nor does he speak in the language
of pity or of condescension. He appeals as a man to men and equals, on
the ground of a common faith and service to Christ. He awakens in these
degraded tools of society the sense of spiritual manhood, of conscience
and loyalty, of love and faith and hope. As in Colossians iii. 22-iv. 1,
the apostle designates the earthly master not by his common title
(_despotēs_), but by the very word (_kyrios_) that is the title of the
_Lord_ Christ, giving the slave in this way to understand that he has,
in common with his master (ver. 9), a higher Lord in the spirit. “Ye are
slaves to the Lord Christ!” (Col. iii. 24). St Paul is accustomed to
call himself “a slave of Christ Jesus.”[153] Nay, it is even said, in
Philippians ii. 7, that Christ Jesus “took the form of a slave!”

How much there was, then, to console the Christian bondman for his lot.
In self-abnegation, in the willing forfeiture of personal rights, in his
menial and unrequited tasks, in submission to insult and injustice, he
found a holy joy. His was a path in which he might closely follow the
steps of the great Servant of mankind. His position enabled him to
“adorn the Saviour’s doctrine” above other men (Tit. ii. 9, 10).
Affectionate, gentle, bearing injury with joyful courage, the Christian
slave held up to that hardened and jaded Pagan age the example which it
most required. God chose the base things of the world to bring to nought
the mighty.

       *       *       *       *       *

The relations of servant and master will endure, in one shape or other,
while the world stands. And the apostle’s injunctions bear upon servants
of every order. We are all, in our various capacities, servants of the
community. The moral worth of our service and its blessing to ourselves
depend on the conditions that are here laid down.

1. There must be _a genuine care for our work_.

“Obey,” he says, “with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart,
as unto the Christ.” The fear enjoined is no dread of human displeasure,
of the master’s whip or tongue. It is the same “fear and trembling” with
which we are bidden to “work out our own salvation” (Phil. ii. 12). The
inward work of the soul’s salvation and the outward work of the busy
hands labouring in the mine or at the loom, or in the lowliest domestic
duties,--all alike are to be performed under a solemn responsibility to
God and in the presence of Christ, the Lord of nature and of men, who
understands every sort of work, and will render to each of His servants
a just and exact reward. No man, whether he be minister of state or
stable-groom, will dare to do heedless work, who lives and acts in that
august Presence,--

    “As ever in the great Task-master’s eye.”

2. The sense of Christ’s Lordship ensures _honesty in work_.

So the apostle continues: “Not with _eye-service_, as _men-pleasers_.”
Both these are rare compound words,--the former indeed occurring only
here and in the companion letter, being coined, probably, by the writer
for this use. It is the common fault and temptation of servants in all
degrees to observe the master’s eye, and to work busily or slackly as
they are watched or not. Such workmen act as they do, because they look
to men and not to God. Their work is without conscience and
self-respect. The visible master says “Well done!” But there is another
Master looking on, who says “Ill done!” to all pretentious doings and
works of eye-service,--who sees not as man sees, but judges with the act
the motive and intent.

              “Not on the vulgar mass
              Called ‘work’ must sentence pass,
    Things done, which took the eye and had the price.”

In His book of accounts there is a stern reckoning in store for
deceitful dealers and the makers-up of unsound goods, in whatever
handicraft or headcraft they are engaged.

Let us all adopt St Paul’s maxim; it will be an immense economy. What
armies of overlookers and inspectors we shall be able to dismiss, when
every servant works as well behind his master’s back as to his face,
when every manufacturer and shopkeeper puts himself in the purchaser’s
place and deals as he would have others deal with him. It was for the
Christian slaves of the Greek trading cities to rebuke the Greek spirit
of fraud and trickery, by which the common dealings of life in all
directions were vitiated.

3. To the carefulness and honesty of the slave’s daily labour he must
even add _heartiness_: “as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from
the soul, with good will doing service, as to the Lord and not to men.”

They must do _the will of God_ in the service of men, as Jesus Christ
Himself did it,--and with His meekness and fortitude and unwearied love.
Their work will thus be rendered from inner principle, with thought and
affection and resolution spent upon it. That alone is the work of a man,
whether he preaches or ploughs, which comes from the soul behind the
hands and the tongue, into which the workman puts as much of his soul,
of himself, as the work is capable of holding.

4. Add to all this, the servant’s _anticipation of the final reward_. In
each case, “whatsoever one may do that is good, this he will receive
from the Lord, whether he be a bondman or a freeman.” The complementary
truth is given in the Colossian letter: “He who does wrong, will receive
back the wrong that he did.”

The doctrine of equal retribution at the judgement-seat of Christ
matches that of equal salvation at the cross of Christ. How trifling and
evanescent the differences of earthly rank appear, in view of these
sublime realities. There is a “Lord in heaven,” alike for servant and
for master, “with whom is no respect of persons” (ver. 9). This grand
conviction beats down all caste-pride. It teaches justice to the mighty
and the proud; it exalts the humble, and assures the down-trodden of
redress. No bribery or privilege, no sophistry or legal cunning will
avail, no concealment or distortion of the facts will be possible in
that Court of final appeal. The servant and the master, the monarch and
his meanest subject will stand before the bar of Jesus Christ upon the
same footing. And the poor slave, wonderful to think, who was faithful
in the “few things” of his drudging earthly lot, will receive the “many
things” of a son of God and a joint-heir with Christ!

       *       *       *       *       *

“_And_, _ye lords_, do the same things towards them”--be as good to your
slaves as they are required to be towards you. A bold application this
of Christ’s great rule: “What you would that men should do to you, do
even so to them.” In many instances this rule suggested _liberation_,
where the slave was prepared for freedom. In any case, the master is to
put himself in his dependant’s place, and to act by him as he would
desire himself to be treated if their positions were reversed.

Slaves were held to be scarcely human. Deceit and sensuality were
regarded as their chief characteristics. They must be ruled, the
moralists said, by the fear of punishment. This was the only way to keep
them in their place. The Christian master adopts a different policy. He
“desists from threatening”; he treats his servants with even-handed
justice, with fit courtesy and consideration. The recollection is ever
present to his mind, that he must give account of his charge over each
one of them to his Lord and theirs. So he will make, as far as in him
lies, his own domain an image of the kingdom of Christ.

FOOTNOTES:

[148] We cannot absolutely _prove_ infant baptism from the New Testament
texts adduced on its behalf; but they afford a strong presumption in its
favour, which is confirmed on the one hand by the analogy of
circumcision, and on the other by the immemorial usage of the early
Church. Titus i. 6 shows that stress was laid on the faith of children,
and that discrimination was used in their recognition as Church members.

[149] 1 Cor. xi. 32; Heb. xii. 5, 11, etc.

[150] Acts vii. 22, xxii. 3; Rom. ii. 20; 2 Tim. ii. 25, iii. 14.

[151] 1 Cor. x. 11; Col. i. 28, iii. 16; 1 Thess. v. 14, etc.

[152] The word _family_ (Latin _familia_) denoted originally the
servants of the establishment, the domestic slaves. Its modern usage is
an index to the elevating influence of Christianity upon social
relations.

[153] Rom. i. 1; 2 Cor. iv. 5; Gal. i. 10, etc.




_ON THE APPROACHING CONFLICT._

CHAPTER vi. 10-20.

    Ἰδοὺ ὁ Σατανᾶς ἐξῃτήσατο ὑμᾶς, τοῦ σινιάσαι ὡς τὸν σῖτον.

    LUKE xxii. 31.




CHAPTER XXVIII.

_THE FOES OF THE CHURCH._

    “From henceforth be strong in the Lord, and in the might of His
    strength. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
    stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not
    against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the
    powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the
    spiritual _hosts_ of wickedness, in the heavenly _places_.”--EPH.
    vi. 10-12.


We follow the Revised reading of the opening word of this paragraph, and
the preferable rendering given by the Revisers in their margin. The
adverb is the same that is found in Galatians vi. 17 (“_Henceforth_ let
no man trouble me”); not that used in Philippians iii. 1 and elsewhere
(“_Finally_, my brethren,” etc.). The copyists have conformed our text,
seemingly, to the latter passage. We are recalled to the circumstances
and occasion of the epistle. High as St Paul soars in meditation, he
does not forget the situation of his readers. The words of chapter iv.
14 showed us how well aware he is of the dangers looming before the
Asian Churches.

The epistle to the Colossians is altogether a letter of conflict (see
ch. ii. 1 ff.). In writing that letter St Paul was wrestling with
spiritual powers, mighty for evil, which had commenced their attack upon
this outlying post of the Ephesian province. He sees in the sky the
cloud portending a desolating storm. The clash of hostile arms is heard
approaching. This is no time for sloth or fear, for a faith half-hearted
or half-equipped. “You have need of your best manhood and of all the
weapons of the spiritual armoury, to hold your ground in the conflict
that is coming upon you. _Henceforth be strong in the Lord, and in the
might of His strength._”

It is the apostle’s call to arms!--“Be strengthened in the Lord,” he
says (to render the imperative literally: so in 2 Timothy ii. I). _Make
His strength your own._ The strength he bids them assume is _power_,
_ability_, strength adequate to its end.[154] “The might of His
strength” repeats the combination of terms we found in chapter i. 19.
That sovereign power of the Almighty which raised Jesus our Lord from
the dead, belongs to the Lord Christ Himself. From its resources He will
clothe and arm His people. “In the Lord,” says Israel evermore, “is
righteousness and strength. The rock of my salvation and my refuge is in
God.” The Church’s strength lies in the almightiness of her risen Lord,
the Captain of her warfare.

“The _panoply_ of God” (ver. II) reminds us of the saying of Jesus in
reference to His casting out of demons, recorded in Luke xi. 21, 22--the
only other instance in the New Testament of this somewhat rare Greek
word. The Lord Jesus describes Himself in conflict with Satan, who as
“the strong one armed keeps his possessions in peace,”--until there
“come upon him the stronger than he,” who “conquers him and takes away
his panoply wherein he trusted, and divides his spoils.” In this text
the situation is reversed; and the “full armour” belongs to Christ’s
servants, who are equipped to meet the counter-attack of Satan and the
powers of evil. There is a Divine and a Satanic panoply--arms tempered
in heaven and in hell, to be wielded by the sons of light and of
darkness respectively (comp. Rom. xiii. 12). The weapons of warfare on
the two sides are even as the two leaders that furnish them--“the strong
one armed” and the “Stronger than he.” Mightier are faith and love than
unbelief and hate; “greater is He that is in you than he that is in the
world.”

Let us review the forces marshalled against us,--their _nature_, their
_mode of assault_, and _the arena of the contest_.

1. The Asian Christians had to “stand against _the wiles_ [_schemes_, or
_methods_[155]] _of the devil_.”

Unquestionably, the New Testament assumes the personality of Satan. This
belief runs counter to modern thought, governed as it is by the tendency
to depersonalize existence. The conception of evil spirits given us in
the Bible is treated as an obsolete superstition; and the name of the
Evil One with multitudes serves only to point a profane or careless
jest. To Jesus Christ, it is very certain, Satan was no figure of
speech; but a thinking and active being, of whose presence and influence
He saw tokens everywhere in this evil world (comp. ii. 2). If the Lord
Jesus “speaks what He knows, and testifies what He has seen” concerning
the mysteries of the other world, there can be no question of the
existence of a personal devil. If in any matter He was bound, as a
teacher of spiritual truth, to disavow Jewish superstition, surely
Christ was so bound in this matter. Yet instead of repudiating the
current belief in Satan and the demons, He earnestly accepts it; and it
entered into His own deepest experiences. In the visible forms of sin
Jesus saw the shadow of His great antagonist. “From the Evil One” He
taught His disciples to pray that they might be delivered. The victims
of disease and madness whom He healed, were so many captives rescued
from the malignant power of Satan. And when Jesus went to meet His
death, He viewed it as the supreme conflict with the usurper and
oppressor who claimed to be “the prince of this world.”[156]

Satan is the consummate form of depraved and untruthful intellect. We
read of his “thoughts,” his “schemes,” his subtlety and deceit and
impostures;[157] of his slanders against God and man,[158] from which,
indeed, the name devil (_diabolus_) is given him. Falsehood and hatred
are his chief qualities. Hence Jesus called him “the manslayer” and “the
father of falsehood” (John viii. 44). He was the first sinner, and the
fountain of sin (1 John iii. 8). All who do unrighteousness or hate
their brethren are, so far, his offspring (1 John iii. 10). With a realm
so wide, Satan might well be called not only “the prince,” but the very
“god of this world” (2 Cor. iv. 4). Plausibly he said to Jesus, in
showing Him the kingdoms of the world, at the time when Tiberius Cæsar
occupied the imperial throne: “All this authority and glory are
delivered unto me. To whomsoever I will, I give it.” His power is
exercised with an intelligence perhaps as great as any can be that is
morally corrupt; but it is limited on all sides. In dealing with Jesus
Christ he showed conspicuous ignorance.

Chief amongst the wiles of the devil at this time was the “scheme of
error,” the cunningly woven net of the Gnostical delusion, in which the
apostle feared that the Asian Churches would be entangled. Satan’s
empire is ruled with a settled policy, and his warfare carried on with a
system of strategy which takes advantage of every opening for
attack.[159] The manifold combinations of error, the various arts of
seduction and temptation, the ten thousand forms of the deceit of
unrighteousness constitute “the wiles of the devil.”

Such is the gigantic opponent with whom Christ and the Church have been
in conflict through all ages. But Satan does not stand alone. In verse
12 there is called up before us an imposing array of spiritual powers.
They are “the angels of the devil,” whom Jesus set in contrast with the
angels of God that surround and serve the Son of man (Matt. xxv. 41).
These unhappy beings are, again, identified with the “demons,” or
“unclean spirits,” having Satan for their “prince,” whom our Lord
expelled wherever He found them infesting the bodies of men.[160] They
are represented in the New Testament as fallen beings, expelled from a
“principality” and “habitation of their own” (Jude 6) which they once
enjoyed, and reserved for the dreadful punishment which Christ calls
“the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” They are here
entitled _principalities_ and _powers_ (or _dominions_), after the same
style as the angels of God, to whose ranks, as we are almost compelled
to suppose, these apostates once belonged.

In contrast with the “angels of light” (2 Cor. xi. 14) and “ministering
spirits” of the kingdom of God (Heb. i. 14), the angels of Satan have
constituted themselves _the world-rulers of this darkness_. We find the
compound expression _cosmo-krator_ (world-ruler) in later rabbinical
usage, borrowed from the Greek and applied to “the angel of death,”
before whom all mortal things must bow. Possibly, St Paul brought the
term with him from the school of Gamaliel. Satan being the god of this
world and swaying “the dominion of darkness,”[161] according to the same
vocabulary his angels are “the rulers of the world’s darkness”; and the
provinces of the empire of evil fall under their direction.

The darkness surrounding the apostle in Rome and the Churches in
Asia--“this darkness,” he says--was dense and foul. With Nero and his
satellites the masters of empire, the world seemed to be ruled by demons
rather than by men. The frightful wish of one of the Psalmists was
fulfilled for the heathen world: “Set a wicked man over him, and let
Satan stand at his right hand.”

The last of St Paul’s synonyms for the satanic forces, “the spiritual
[powers] of wickedness,” may have served to warn the Church against
reading a political sense into the passage and regarding the civil
constitution of society and the visible world-rulers as objects for
their hatred. Pilate was a specimen, by no means amongst the worst, of
the men in power. Jesus regarded him with pity. His real antagonist
lurked behind these human instruments. The above phrase, “spirituals of
wickedness,” is Hebraistic, like “judge” and “steward of
unrighteousness,”[162] and is equivalent to “wicked spirits.” The
adjective “spiritual,” which does duty for a substantive--“the
spiritual [forces, or elements] of wickedness”[163]--brings out the
collective character of these hostile powers.

St Paul’s demonology[164] is identical with that of Jesus Christ. The
two doctrines stand or fall together. The advent of Christ appears to
have stirred to extraordinary activity the satanic powers. They asserted
themselves in Palestine at this particular time in the most open and
terrifying manner. In an age of scepticism and science like our own, it
belongs to “the wiles of the devil” to work obscurely. This is dictated
by obvious policy. Moreover, his power is greatly reduced. Satan is no
longer the god of this world, since Christianity rose to its ascendant.
The manifestations of demonism are, at least in Christian lands, vastly
less conspicuous than in the first age of the Church. But those are more
bold than wise who deny their existence, and who profess to explain all
occult phenomena and phrenetic moral aberrations by physical causes. The
popular idolatries of his own day, with their horrible rites and inhuman
orgies, St Paul ascribed to devilry. He declared that those who sat at
the feast of the idol and gave sanction to its worship, were partaking
of “the cup and the table of demons” (1 Cor. x. 20, 21). Heathen
idolatries at the present time are, in many instances, equally
diabolical; and those who witness them cannot easily doubt the truth of
the representations of Scripture upon this subject.

II. The conflict against these spiritual enemies is essentially a
_spiritual_ conflict. “Our struggle is not against blood and flesh.”

They are not human antagonists whom the Church has to fear,--mortal men
whom we can look in the face and meet with equal courage, in the contest
where hot blood and straining muscle do their part. The fight needs
mettle of another kind. The foes of our faith are untouched by carnal
weapons. They come upon us without sound or footfall. They assail the
will and conscience; they follow us into the regions of spiritual
thought, of prayer and meditation. Hence the weapons of our warfare,
like those which the apostle wielded (2 Cor. x. 2-5), “are not carnal,”
but spiritual and “mighty toward God.”

It is true that the Asian Churches had visible enemies arrayed against
them. There were the “wild beasts” with whom St Paul “fought at
Ephesus,” the heathen mob of the city, sworn foes of every despiser of
their great goddess Artemis. There was Alexander the coppersmith, ready
to do the apostle evil, and “the Jews from Asia,” a party of whom all
but murdered him in Jerusalem (Acts xxi. 27-36); there was Demetrius the
silversmith, instigator of the tumult which drove him from Ephesus, and
“the craftsmen of like occupation,” whose trade was damaged by the
progress of the new religion. These were formidable opponents, strong in
everything that brings terror to flesh and blood. But after all, these
were of small account in St Paul’s view; and the Church need never
dread material antagonism. The centre of the struggle lies elsewhere.
The apostle looks beyond the ranks of his earthly foes to the power of
Satan by which they are animated and directed,--“impotent pieces of the
game he plays.” From this hidden region he sees impending an attack more
perilous than all the violence of persecution, a conflict urged with
weapons of finer proof than the sharp steel of sword and axe, and with
darts tipped with a fiercer fire than that which burns the flesh or
devours the goods.

Even in outward struggles against worldly power, our wrestling is not
simply against blood and flesh. Calvin makes a bold application of the
passage when he says: “This sentence we should remember so often as we
are tempted to revengefulness, under the smart of injuries from men. For
when nature prompts us to fling ourselves upon them with all our might,
this unreasonable passion will be checked and reined in suddenly, when
we consider that these men who trouble us are nothing more than darts
cast by the hand of Satan; and that while we stoop to pick up these, we
shall expose ourselves to the full force of his blows.” _Vasa sunt_,
says Augustine of human troublers, _alius utitur_; _organa sunt, alius
tangit_.

The crucial assaults of evil, in many instances, come in no outward and
palpable guise. There are sinister influences that affect the spirit
more directly, fires that search its inmost fibres, a darkness that
sweeps down upon the very light that is in us threatening its
extinction. “Doubts, the spectres of the mind,” haunt it; clouds brood
over the interior sky and fierce storms sweep down on the soul, that
rise from beyond the seen horizon. “Jesus was led of the Spirit into the
wilderness, to be tempted of the devil.” Away from the tracks of men
and the seductions of flesh and blood the choicest spirits have been
tested and schooled. So they are tempered in the spiritual furnace to a
fineness which turns the edge of the sharpest weapons the world may use
against them.

Some men are constitutionally more exposed than others to these interior
assaults. There are conditions of the brain and nerves, tendencies lying
deep in the organism, that give points of vantage to the enemy of souls.
These are the opportunities of the tempter; they do not constitute the
temptation itself, which comes from a hidden and objective source.
Similarly in the trials of the Church, in the great assaults made upon
her vital truths, historical conditions and the external movements of
the age furnish the material for the conflicts through which it has to
pass; but the spring and moving agent, the master will that dominates
these hostile forces is that of Satan.

The Church was engaged in a double conflict--of the flesh and of the
spirit. On the one hand, it was assailed by the material seductions of
heathenism and the terrors of ruthless persecution. On the other hand,
it underwent a severe intellectual conflict with the systems of error
that were rooted in the mind of the age. These forces opposed the
Christian truth from without; but they became much more dangerous when
they found their way within the Church, vitiating her teaching and
practice, and growing like tares among the wheat. It is of heresy more
than persecution that the apostle is thinking, when he writes these
ominous words. Not blood and flesh, but the mind and spirit of the Asian
believers will bear the brunt of the attack that the craft of the devil
is preparing for the apostolic Church.

III. The last clause of verse 12, _in the heavenly places_, refuses to
combine with the above description of the powers hostile to the Church.
The heavenly places are the abode of God and the blessed angels. This is
the region where the Father has blessed us in Christ (i. 3); where He
seated the Christ at His own right hand (i. 20), and has in some sense
seated us with Christ (ii. 6); and where the angelic princedoms dwell
who follow with keen and studious sympathy the Church’s fortunes (iii.
10). To locate the devil and his angels _there_ seems to us highly
incongruous; the juxtaposition is out of the question with St Paul.
Chapter ii. 2 gives no real support to this view: supposing “the air” to
be literally intended in that passage, it belongs to _earth_ and not to
heaven.[165] Nor do the parallels from other Scriptures adduced supply
any but the most precarious basis for an interpretation against which
the use of the exalted phrase in our epistle revolts.

No; Satan and his hosts do not dwell with Christ and the holy angels “in
the heavenly places.” But the Church dwells there already, by her faith;
and it is in the heavenly places of her faith and hope that she is
assailed by the powers of hell. This final prepositional clause should
be separated by a comma from the words immediately foregoing; it forms a
distinct predicate to the sentence contained in verse 12. It specifies
the _locality_ of the struggle; it marks out the battle-field. “Our
wrestling is ... in the heavenly places.”[166] So we construe the
sentence, following the ancient Greek commentators.

The life of the Church “is hid with the Christ in God”; her treasure is
laid up in heaven. She is assailed by a philosophy and vain deceit that
perverts her highest doctrines, that clouds her vision of Christ and
limits His glory, and threatens to drag her down from the high places
where she sits with her ascended Lord.[167] Such was, in effect, the aim
of the Colossian heresy, and of the great Gnostical movement to which
this speculation was a prelude, that for a century and more entangled
Christian faith in its metaphysical subtleties and false mysticism. The
epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians strike the leading note of the
controversies of the Church in this region during its first ages. Their
character was thoroughly transcendental. “The heavenly things” were the
subject-matter of the great conflicts of this epoch.

The questions of religious controversy characteristic of our own times,
though not identical with those of Colossæ or Ephesus, concern matters
equally high and vital. It is not this or that doctrine that is now at
stake--the nature or extent of the atonement, the procession of the Holy
Spirit from the Son with the Father, the verbal or plenary inspiration
of Scripture; but the personal being of God, the historical truth of
Christianity, the reality of the supernatural,--these and the like
questions, which formed the accepted basis and the common assumptions of
former theological discussions, are now brought into dispute. Religion
has to justify its very existence. Christianity must answer for its
life, as at the beginning. God is denied. Worship is openly renounced.
Our treasures in heaven are proclaimed to be worthless and illusive.
The entire spiritual and celestial order of things is relegated to the
region of obsolete fable and fairy tales. The difficulties of modern
religious thought lie at the foundation of things, and touch the core of
the spiritual life. Unbelief appears, in some quarters, to be more
serious and earnest than faith. While we quarrel over rubrics and
ritual, thoughtful men are despairing of God and immortality. The
Churches are engaged in trivial contentions with each other, while the
enemy pushes his way through our broken ranks to seize the citadel.

“The apostle incites the readers,” says Chrysostom, “by the thought of
the prize at stake. When he has said that our enemies are powerful, he
adds thereto that these are great possessions which they seek to wrest
from us. When he says _in the heavenly places_, this implies _for the
heavenly things_. How it must rouse and sober us to know that the hazard
is for great things, and great will be the prize of victory. Our foe
strives to take _heaven_ from us.” Let the Church be stripped of all her
temporalities, and driven naked as at first into the wilderness. She
carries with her the crown jewels; and her treasure is unimpaired, so
long as faith in Christ and the hope of heaven remain firm in her heart.
But let these be lost; let heaven and the Father in heaven fade with our
childhood’s dreams; let Christ go back to His grave--then we are utterly
undone. We have lost our all in all!

FOOTNOTES:

[154] Ἐνδυναμοῦσθε [from δύναμις] ἐν Κυρίῳ καὶ ἐν τῷ κράτει τῆς ἰσχύος
αὐτοῦ. See the note on these synonyms, on p. 76. Comp., for this verb,
Col. i. II; 2 Tim. iv. 17; Phil. iv. 13: Πάντα ἰσχύω ἐν τῳ ἐνδυναμοῦντί
με,--“I have strength for everything in Him that _enables_ me.”]

[155] Comp. remark on μεθοδεία (iv. 14), p. 247.

[156] John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11: comp. Luke iv. 5-7; Heb. ii. 14.

[157] 2 Cor. ii. 11, xi. 3; 2 Thess. ii. 9, 10; 2 Tim. ii. 26, etc.

[158] Rev. xii, 7-10; Gen. iii. 4, 5; Zech. iii. 1; Job i.

[159] Ch. iv. 27; 2 Cor. ii. 11; Luke xxii. 31.

[160] Luke x. 17-20, xi. 14-26.

[161] Col. i. 13: comp. Acts xxvi. 18, etc.

[162] Luke xvi. 8, xviii. 6.

[163] Τὰ πνευματικὰ tῆs πονηρίας.

[164] Mr. Moule aptly observes, in his excellent and most useful
Commentary on Ephesians in the _Cambridge Bible for Schools and
Colleges_: St Paul’s “testimony to the real and objective existence” of
evil spirits “gains in strength when it is remembered that the epistle
was addressed (at least, among other designations) to Ephesus, and that
Ephesus (see Acts xix.) was a peculiarly active scene of asserted
magical and other dealings with the unseen darkness. Supposing that the
right line to take in dealing with such beliefs and practices had been
to say that the whole basis of them was a fiction of the human mind, not
only would such a verse as this [vi. 12] not have been written, but, we
may well assume, something would have been written strongly
contradictory to the thought of it” (p. 176).

[165] See p. 103.

[166] The objection against the common rendering taken from the absence
of the Greek article (τά) before the phrase ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις,
required to link it to τὰ πνευματικὰ τῆς πονηρίας, is not decisive.

[167] Col. ii. 8-10, iii. 1-4; Phil. iii. 20, 21: comp. Eph. i. 3, ii.
6, 18, iv. 10, 15; Heb. vi. 19, 20, etc.




CHAPTER XXIX.

_THE DIVINE PANOPLY._

    “Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
    withstand in the evil day, and, having conquered all, to stand.
    Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put
    on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with
    the readiness of the gospel of peace; withal taking up the shield of
    faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of
    the evil _one_. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of
    the Spirit, which is the word of God: with all prayer and
    supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching
    thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the
    saints.”--EPH. vi. 13-18.


_Stand_ is the watchword for this battle, the apostle’s order of the
day: “that you may be able to _stand_ against the stratagems of the
devil, ... that you may be able to _withstand_ in the evil day, and
mastering all your enemies[168] to _stand_.... _Stand_ therefore,
girding your loins about with truth.” The apostle is fond of this
martial style, and such appeals are frequent in the letters of this
period.[169] The Gentile believers are raised to the heavenly places of
fellowship with Christ, and invested with the lofty character of sons
and heirs of God: let them hold their ground; let them maintain the
honour of their calling and the wealth of their high estate, standing
fast in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. _Pro aris et focis_ the
patriot draws his sword, and manfully repels the invader. Even so the
good soldier of Christ Jesus contends for his heavenly city and the
household of faith. He defends the dearest interests and hopes of human
life.

This defence is needed, for an “evil day” is at hand! This emphatic
reference points to something more definite than the general day of
temptation that is co-extensive with our earthly life. St Paul foresaw a
crisis of extreme danger impending over the young Church of Christ. The
prophecies of Jesus taught His disciples, from the first, that His
kingdom could only prevail by means of a severe conflict, and that some
desperate struggle would precede the final Messianic triumph. This
prospect looms before the minds of the New Testament writers, as “the
day of Jehovah” dominated the imagination of the Hebrew prophets. Paul’s
apocalypse in 1 and 2 Thessalonians is full of reminiscences of Christ’s
visions of judgement. It culminates in the prediction of the evil day of
Antichrist, which is to usher in the second, glorious coming of the Lord
Jesus. The consummation, as the apostle was then inclined to think,
might arrive within that generation (1 Thess. iv. 15, 17), although he
declares its times and seasons wholly unknown. In his later epistles,
and in this especially, it is clear that he anticipated a longer
duration for the existing order of things; and “the evil day” for which
the Asian Churches are to prepare can scarcely have denoted, to the
apostle’s mind, the final day of Antichrist, though it may well be an
epoch of similar nature and a token and shadow of the last things.

In point of fact, a great secular crisis was now approaching. The six
years (64-70 after Christ) extending from the fire of Rome to the fall
of Jerusalem, were amongst the most fateful and calamitous recorded in
history. This period was, in a very real sense, the day of judgement for
Israel and the ancient world. It was a foretaste of the ultimate doom of
the kingdom of evil amongst men; and through it Christ appears to have
looked forward to the end of the world. Already “the days are evil” (v.
16); and “the evil day” is at hand--a time of terror and despair for all
who have not a firm faith in the kingdom of God.

Two chief characteristics marked this crisis, as it affected the people
of Christ: _persecution from without_, and _apostasy within the Church_
(Matt. xxiv. 5, 8-12). To the latter feature St Paul refers
elsewhere.[170] Of persecution he took less account, for this was indeed
his ordinary lot, and had already visited his Churches; but it was
afterwards to assume a more violent and appalling form.

When we turn to the epistle to the Seven Churches (Rev. ii., iii.)
written in the next ensuing period, we find a fierce battle raging,
resembling that for which this letter warns the Asian Churches to
prepare. The storm which our apostle foresees, had then burst. The
message addressed to each Church concludes with a promise to “him that
overcometh.” To the faithful it is said: “I know thy endurance.” The
angel of the Church of Pergamum dwells where is “the throne of Satan,”
and where “Antipas the faithful martyr was killed.” There also, says the
Lord Jesus, “are those who hold the teaching of Balaam, and the teaching
of the Nicolaitans,” with whom “I will make war with the sword of my
mouth” (comp. Eph. vi. 17). Laodicea has shrunk from the trial, and
grown rich by the world’s friendship. Thyatira “suffers the woman
Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce” the
servants of Christ. Sardis has but “a few names that have not defiled
their garments.” Even Ephesus, though she had tried the false teachers
and found them wanting (surely Paul’s epistles to Timothy had helped her
in this examination), has yet “left her first love.” The day of trial
has proved an evil day to these Churches. Satan has been allowed to sift
them; and while some good wheat remains, much of the faith of the
numerous and prosperous communities of the province of Asia has turned
out to be faulty and vain. The presentiments that weighed on St Paul’s
mind when four years ago he took leave of the Ephesian elders at
Miletus, and which reappear in this passage, were only too well
justified by the course of events. Indeed, the history of the Church in
this region has been altogether mournful and admonitory.

       *       *       *       *       *

But it is time to look at the _armour_ in which St Paul bids his readers
equip themselves against the evil day. It consists of seven weapons,
offensive or defensive--if we count prayer amongst them: the _girdle of
truth_, the _breastplate of righteousness_, the _shoes of readiness to
bear the message of peace_, the _shield of faith_, the _helmet of
salvation_, the _sword of the word_, and the continual _cry of prayer_.

1. In girding himself for the field, the first thing the soldier does is
to fasten round his waist the military _belt_. With this he binds in his
under-garments, that there may be nothing loose or trailing about him,
and braces up his limbs for action. Peace admits of relaxation. The
girdle is unclasped; the muscles are unstrung. But everything about the
warrior is tense and firm; his dress, his figure and movements speak of
decision and concentrated energy. He stands before us an image of
resolute conviction, of _a mind made up_. Such a picture the words “girt
about with truth” convey to us.

The epistle is pervaded by the sense of the Church’s need of
intellectual conviction. Many of the Asian believers were children,
half-enlightened and irresolute, ready to be “tossed to and fro and
carried about with every wind of doctrine” (iv. 14). They had “heard the
truth as it is in Jesus,” but had an imperfect comprehension of its
meaning.[171] They required to add to their faith knowledge,--the
knowledge won by searching thought respecting the great truths of
religion, by a thorough mental appropriation of the things revealed to
us in Christ. Only by such a process can truth brace the mind and knit
its powers together in “the full assurance of the understanding in the
knowledge of the mystery of God, which is Christ” (Col. ii, 2, 3).

Such is the faith needed by the Church, now as then, the faith of an
intelligent, firm and manly assurance. There is in such faith a security
and a vigour of action that the faith of mere sentiment and emotional
impression, with its nerveless grasp, its hectic and impulsive fervours,
cannot impart. The luxury of agnosticism, the languors of doubt, the
vague sympathies and hesitant eclecticism in which delicate and cultured
minds are apt to indulge; the lofty critical attitude, as of some
intellectual god sitting above the strife of creeds, which others find
congenial--these are conditions of mind unfit for the soldier of Christ
Jesus. He must have sure knowledge, definite and decided purposes--a
soul girdled with truth.

2. Having girt his loins, the soldier next fastens on his _breastplate_,
or cuirass.

This is the chief piece of his defensive armour; it protects the vital
organs. In the picture drawn in 1 Thessalonians v. 8, the breastplate is
made “of faith and love.” In this more detailed representation, faith
becomes the outlying defensive “shield,” while righteousness serves for
the innermost defence, the rampart of the heart. But, in truth, the
Christian righteousness is compounded of faith and love.

This attribute must be understood in its full Pauline meaning. It is the
state of one who is right with God and with God’s law. It is the
righteousness both of standing and of character, of imputation and of
impartation, which begins with justification and continues in the new,
obedient life of the believer. These are never separate, in the true
doctrine of grace. “The righteousness that is of God by faith,” is the
soul’s main defence against the shafts of Satan. It wards off deadly
blows, both from this side and from that. Does the enemy bring up
against me my old sins? I can say: “It is God that justifieth; who is he
that condemneth?”--Am I tempted to presume on my forgiveness, and to
fall into transgression once more? From this breastplate the arrow of
temptation falls pointless, as it resounds: “He that doeth righteousness
is righteous. He that is born of God doth not commit sin.” The
completeness of pardon for past offence and the integrity of character
that belong to the justified life, are woven together into an
impenetrable mail.

3. Now the soldier, having girt his loins and guarded his breast, must
look well to his feet. There are lying ready for him _shoes_ of wondrous
make.

What is the quality most needed in the soldier’s shoes? Some say, it is
_firmness_; and they so translate the Greek word employed by the
apostle, occurring only here in the New Testament, which in certain
passages of the Septuagint seems to acquire this sense, under the
influence of Hebrew idiom.[172] But firmness was embodied in the girdle.
_Expedition_ belongs to the shoes. The soldier is so shod that he may
move with alertness over all sorts of ground.

Thus shod with speed and willingness were “the beautiful feet” of those
that brought over desert and mountain “the good tidings of peace,” the
news of Israel’s return to Zion (Isai. lii. 7-9). With such swift
strength were the feet of our apostle shod, when “from Jerusalem round
about unto Illyricum” he had “fulfilled the gospel of Christ,” and is
“ready,” as he says, “to preach the glad tidings to you also that are in
Rome” (Rom. i. 15). This readiness belonged to His own holy feet, who
“came and preached peace to the far off and the near” (ii. 17),--when,
for example, sitting a weary traveller by the well-side at Sychar, He
found refreshment in revealing to the woman of Samaria the fountain of
living water. Such readiness befits His servants, who have heard from
Him the message of salvation and are sent to proclaim it everywhere.

The girdle and breastplate look to one’s own safety. They must be
supplemented by the evangelic zeal inseparable from the spirit of
Christ. This is, moreover, a safeguard of Church life. Von Hofmann says
admirably upon this point: “The objection [brought against the above
interpretation] that the apostle is addressing the faithful at large,
who are not all of them called to preach the gospel, is mistaken. Every
believer should be prepared to witness for Christ so often as
opportunity affords, and needs a _readiness_ thereto. The knowledge of
Christ’s peace qualifies him to convey its message. He brings it with
him into the strife of the world. And it is the consciousness that he
possesses himself such peace and has it to communicate to others, which
enables him to walk firmly and with sure step in the way of faith.” When
we are bidden to “_stand_ in the evil day,” that does not mean to stand
idle or content to hold our ground. Attack is often the best mode of
defence. We keep our faith by spreading it. We defend ourselves from our
opponents by converting them to the gospel, which breathes everywhere
reconciliation and fraternity. Our Foreign Missions are our grand modern
apologetic; and God’s peacemakers are His mightiest warriors.

4. With his body girt and fenced and his feet clad with the gospel
shoes, the soldier reaches out his left hand to “take up withal the
_shield_,” while his right hand grasps first the helmet which he places
on his head, and then the sword that is offered to him in the word of
God.

The shield signified is not the small round buckler, or target, of the
light-armed man; but the door-like shield,[173] measuring four feet by
two-and-a-half and rounded to the shape of the body, that the Greek
hoplite and the Roman legionary carried. Joined together, these large
shields formed a wall, behind which a body of troops could hide
themselves from the rain of the enemy’s missiles. Such is the office of
faith in the conflicts of life: it is the soldier’s main defence, the
common bulwark of the Church. Like the city’s outer wall, faith bears
the brunt and onset of all hostility. On this shield of faith the darts
of Satan are caught, their point broken and their fire quenched. These
military shields were made of wood, covered on the outside with thick
leather, which not only deadened the shock of the missile, but protected
the frame of the shield from the “fire-tipped darts” that were used in
the artillery of the ancients. These flaming arrows, armed with some
quickly burning and light combustible, if they failed to pierce the
warrior’s shield, fell in a moment extinguished at his feet.

St Paul can scarcely mean by his “fiery darts” incitements to passion in
ourselves, inflammatory temptations that seek to rouse the inward fires
of anger or lust. For these missiles are “fire-pointed darts _of the
Evil One_.” The fire belongs to the enemy who shoots the dart. It
signifies the malignant hate with which Satan hurls slanders and threats
against the people of God through his human instruments. A bold faith
wards off and quenches this fire even at a distance, so that the soul
never feels its heat. The heart’s confidence is unmoved and the Church’s
songs of praise are undisturbed, while persecution rages and the enemies
of Christ gnash their teeth against her. Such a shield to him was the
faith of Stephen the proto-martyr.

    “I heard the defaming of many; there was terror on every side.
    But I trusted in Thee, O Jehovah: I said, Thou art my God!”

To “take up the shield of faith,” is it not, like the Psalmist, to meet
injuries and threats, the boasts of unbelief and of worldly power, the
poisoned arrows of the deceitful and the bitter words of unjust
reproach, with faith’s quiet counter-assertion? “Who shall separate us
from the love of Christ?” says the apostle in the midst of tribulation.
“God is my witness, whom I serve in the gospel of His Son,” he answers
when his fidelity is questioned. No shaft of malice, no arrow of fear
can pierce the soul that holds such a shield.

5. At this point (ver. 17), when the sentence beginning at verse 14 has
drawn itself out to such length, and the relative clause of verse 16_b_
makes a break and eddy in the current of thought, the writer pauses for
a moment. He resumes the exhortation in a form slightly changed and with
rising emphasis, passing from the participle to the finite verb: “And
take _the helmet of salvation_.”

The word _take_, in the original, differs from the _taking up_ of verses
13 and 16. It signifies the _accepting_ of something offered by the hand
of another. So the Thessalonians “_accepted_ the word” brought them by
St Paul (1 Thess. i. 6) and Titus “_accepted_ the consolation” given him
by the Corinthians (2 Cor. viii. 17)--in each case a welcome gift. God’s
hand is stretched out to bestow on His chosen warrior the helmet of
salvation and the sword of His word, to complete his equipment for the
perilous field. We accept these gifts with devout gratitude, knowing
from what source they come and where the heavenly arms were fashioned.

The “helmet of salvation” is worn by the Lord Himself, as He is depicted
by the prophet coming to the succour of His people (Isai. lix. 17). This
helmet, on the head of Jehovah, is the crest and badge of their Divine
champion. Given to the human warrior, it becomes the sign of his
protection by God. The apostle does not call it “the _hope_ of
salvation,” as he does in 1 Thessalonians v. 8, thinking of the
believer’s assurance of victory in the last struggle. Nor is it the
sense and assurance of past salvation that here guards the Christian
soldier. The presence of his Saviour and God in itself constitutes his
highest safeguard.

    “O Jehovah my Lord, the strength of my salvation,
    Thou hast covered my head in the day of battle.”

The warrior’s head rising above his shield was frequently open to
attack. The arrow might shoot over the shield’s edge, and inflict a
mortal blow. Our faith, at the best, has its deficiencies and its
limits; but God’s salvation reaches beyond our highest confidence in
Him. His overshadowing presence is the crown of our salvation, His love
its shining crest.

Thus the equipment of Christ’s soldier is complete; and he is arrayed in
the full armour of light. His loins girt with truth, his breast clad
with righteousness, his feet shod with zeal, his head crowned with
safety, while faith’s all-encompassing shield is cast about him, he
steps forth to do battle with the powers of darkness, “strong in the
Lord, and in the might of His strength.”

6. It only remains that “the _sword_ of the Spirit” be put into his
right hand, while his lips are open in continual prayer to the God of
his strength.

The “cleansing word” of chapter v. 26, by whose virtue we passed through
the gate of baptism into the flock of Christ, now becomes the guarding
and smiting word, to be used in conflict with our spiritual foes. Of the
Messiah it was said, in language quoted by the apostle against
Antichrist (2 Thess. ii. 8): “He shall smite the earth with the rod of
His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked”
(Isai. xi. 4). Similarly, in Hosea the Lord tells how He has “hewed” the
unfaithful “by His prophets, and slain them by the words of His mouth”
(Hos. vi. 5). From such sayings of the Old Testament the idea of the
sword of the Divine word is derived. We find it again in Hebrews iv. 12:
“The word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword”;
and in the “sword, two-edged, sharp,” which John in the Revelation saw
“coming out of the mouth of the Son of man”: it belongs to Him whose
name is “the word of God,” and with it “He shall smite the
nations.”[174]

This sword of the inspired word Paul himself wielded with supernatural
effect, as when he rebuked Elymas the sorcerer, or when he defended his
gospel against the Judaizers of Galatia and Corinth. In his hand it was
even as

                      “The sword
    Of Michael, from the armoury of God,
        ... tempered so that neither keen
    Nor solid might resist that edge.”

With what piercing reproofs, what keen thrusts of argument, what
double-edged irony and dexterous sword-play did this mighty combatant
smite the enemies of the cross of Christ! In times of conflict never may
such leaders be wanting to the Church, men using weapons of warfare not
carnal, but mighty to “cast down strongholds,” to “bring down every high
thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and make captive
every thought to Christ’s obedience.”

In her struggle with the world’s gigantic lusts and tyrannies, the
Israel of God must be armed with this lofty and lightning-like power,
with the flaming sword of the Spirit. No less in the secret, internal
conflicts of the religious life, the sword of the word is the decisive
weapon. The Son of man put it to proof in His combat in the wilderness.
Satan himself sought to wrest this instrument to his purpose. With pious
texts in his mouth he addressed our Lord, like an angel of light, fain
to deceive Him by the very Scripture He had Himself inspired! until,
with the last thrust of quotation, Jesus unmasked the tempter and drove
him from the field, saying, “Get thee behind me, Satan!”

7. We have surveyed the Christian soldier with his harness on. From head
to foot he is clothed in arms supernatural. No weapon of defence or
offence is lacking, that the spiritual combat needs. Nothing seems to be
wanting: yet everything is wanting, if this be all. Our text began: “Be
strong in the Lord.” It is _prayer_ that links the believer with the
strength of God.

What avails Michael’s sword, if the hand that holds it is slack and
listless? what the panoply of God, if behind it beats a craven heart? He
is but a soldier in semblance who wears arms without the courage and the
strength to use them. The life that is to animate that armed figure, to
beat with high resolve beneath the corslet, to nerve the arm as it lifts
the strong shield and plies the sharp sword, to set the swift feet
moving on their gospel errands, to weld the Church together into one
army of the living God, comes from the inspiration of God’s Spirit
received in answer to believing prayer. So the apostle adds: “With all
prayer and supplication praying at every time in the Spirit.”

There is here no needless repetition. “Prayer” is the universal word for
reverent address to God; and “supplication” the entreaty for such help
as “on every occasion”--at each turn of the battle, in each emergency of
life--we find ourselves to need. And Christian prayer is always “in the
Spirit,”--being offered in the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, who
is the element of the believer’s life in Christ, who helps our
infirmities and, virtually, intercedes for us (Rom. viii. 26, 27). When
the apostle continues, “_watching_ [or _keeping awake_] thereunto,” he
reminds us, as perhaps he was thinking himself, of our Lord’s warning to
the disciples sleeping in Gethsemane: “Watch and pray, lest ye enter
into temptation.” The “perseverance” he requires in this wakeful
attention to prayer, is the resolute persistence of the suppliant, who
will neither be daunted by opposition nor wearied by delay.[175]

The word “supplication” is resumed at the end of verse 18, in order to
enlist the prayers of the readers for the service of the Church at
large: “with wakeful heed thereto, in all persistence and _supplication
for all the saints_.” Prayer for ourselves must broaden out into a
catholic intercession for all the servants of our Master, for all the
children of the household of faith. By the bands of prayer we are knit
together,--a vast multitude of saints throughout the earth, unknown by
face or name to our fellows, but one in the love of Christ and in our
heavenly calling, and all engaged in the same perilous conflict.

“All the saints,” St Paul said (i. 15), were interested in the faith of
the Asian believers; they were called “with all the saints” to share in
the comprehension of the immense designs of God’s kingdom (iii. 18).
The dangers and temptations of the Church are equally far-reaching; they
have a common origin and character in all Christian communities. Let our
prayers, at least, be catholic. At the throne of grace, let us forget
our sectarian divisions. Having access in one Spirit to the Father, let
us realize in His presence our communion with all His children.

FOOTNOTES:

[168] Comp. Rom. viii. 37, xvi. 20. _To bring down_, _overpower_,
_conquer_ is the military sense of κατεργάζομαι,--not found elsewhere in
the New Testament, but, as it seems to us, unmistakable here. It occurs
in Ezek. xxxiv. 4 (LXX), and 1 Esdr. iv. 4.

[169] Col. i. 23, ii. 5; Phil. i. 27-30, iv. 1: comp. 1 Thess. v. 8;
Rom. xiii. 11-14; 1 Cor. xvi. 13; 2 Cor. x. 3-6.

[170] 2 Thess. ii. 3; Acts xx. 29, 30; 1 Tim. iv. 1; 2 Tim. iii. 1.

[171] Ch. 1. 17-23, iii. 16-19, iv. 13-15, 20-24.

[172] Ἑτοιμασία is adopted by the Greek translators as the equivalent of
the Hebrew word for _foundation_, or _base_, in Ps. lxxxix. 14; Ezra ii.
68, iii. 3; Dan. xi. 7, 20, 21. See, however, the note of Meyer, who
thinks that they misunderstood the Hebrew.

[173] Θυρεός: Latin _scutum_; only here in N.T.

[174] Rev. i. 16, ii. 12, xix. 13-15.

[175] Ἐν πάσῃ προσκαρτερήσει: _in every kind of persistence_,--a
perseverance that tries all arts and holds its ground at every point.
The verb προσκαρτερέω appears in the parallel passages: Col. iv. 2; Rom.
xii. 12; also in Acts i. 14.




THE CONCLUSION.

CHAPTER vi. 19-24.

    Πέπεισμαι γὰρ ὅτι οὔτε θάνατος οὔτε ζωὴ οὔτε ἄγγελοι οὔτε ἀρχαὶ οὔτε
    ἐνεστῶτα οὔτε μέλλοντα οὔτε δυνάμεις οὔτε ὕψωμα οὔτε βάθος οὔτε τις
    κτίσις ἑτέρα δυνήσεται ἡμᾶς χωρίσαι ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ Θεοῦ τῆς ἐν
    Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν--ROM. viii. 38, 39.

    “Love for Christ is immortal.”--R. W. DALE.




CHAPTER XXX.

_REQUEST: COMMENDATION: BENEDICTION._

    “And [pray] on my behalf, that the word may be given unto me in
    opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the
    gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may
    speak boldly, as I ought to speak.

    “But that ye also may know my affairs, how I do, Tychicus, the
    beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, shall make known
    to you all things: whom I have sent unto you for this very purpose,
    that ye may know our state, and that he may comfort your
    hearts.”--EPH. vi. 19-22.


The apostle has bidden his readers apply themselves with wakeful and
incessant earnestness to prayer (ver. 18). For this is, after all, the
chief arm of the spiritual combat. By this means the soul draws
reinforcements of mercy and hope from the eternal sources (ver. 10). By
this means the Asian Christians will be able not only to carry on their
own conflict with vigour, but to help all the saints (ver. 18); and
through their aid the whole Church of God will be sustained in its war
with the prince of this world.

The apostle Paul himself stood in the forefront of this battle. He was
suffering for the cause of common Christendom; he was a mark for the
attack of the enemies of the gospel.[176] On him, more than on any other
man, the safety and progress of the Church depended (Phil. i. 25). In
this position he naturally says: “Watching unto prayer in all
perseverance and supplication for all the saints--_and for me_.” If his
heart should fail him, or his mouth be closed, if the word of
inspiration ceased to be given him and the great teacher of the Gentiles
in faith and truth no longer spoke as he ought to speak, it would be a
heavy blow and sore discouragement to the friends of Christ throughout
the world. “My afflictions are your glory (iii. 13). My unworthy
testimony to Christ is showing forth His praise to all men and
angels.[177] Pray for me then, that I may speak and act in this hour of
trial in a manner worthy of the dispensation given to me.”

Strong and confident as the apostle Paul was, he felt himself to be
nothing without prayer. It is his habit to expect the support of the
intercessions of all who love him in Christ.[178] He knew that he was
helped by this means, on numberless occasions and in wonderful ways. He
asks his present readers to entreat that “the word[179] may be given me
when I open my mouth, so that I may freely make known the mystery of the
gospel, on which behalf I serve as ambassador in bonds, that in it I may
speak freely, as I ought to speak.” This sentence hangs upon the verb
“may-be-given.” Jesus said to His apostles: “It shall be _given_ you in
that hour what you shall speak, when brought before rulers and kings”
(Matt x. 18-20). The apostle stands now before the Roman world. He has
appealed to Cæsar, and awaits his trial. If he has not yet appeared at
the Emperor’s tribunal, he will shortly have to do so. Christ’s
ambassador is about to plead in chains before the highest of human
courts. It is not his own life or freedom that he is concerned about;
the ambassador has only to consider how he shall represent his
Sovereign’s interests. The importance which Paul attached to this
occasion, is manifest from the words written to Timothy (2 Ep. iv. 17)
referring to his later trial. St Paul has this special need in his
thoughts, in addition to the help from above continually required in the
discharge of his ministry, under the hampering conditions of his
imprisonment (comp. Col. iv. 3, 4).

The Church must entreat on Paul’s behalf that the word he utters may be
God’s, and not his own. It is in vain to “open the mouth,” unless there
is this higher prompting and through the gates of speech there issues a
Divine message, unless the speaker is the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit
rather than of his individual thought and will. “The words that I speak
unto you,” Jesus said, “I speak not of myself.” The bold apostle intends
to open his mouth; but he must have the true “word given” him to say. We
should pray for Christ’s ambassadors, and especially for the more public
and eloquent pleaders of the Christian cause, that it may be thus with
them. Rash and vain words, that bear the stamp of the mere man who
utters them and not of the Spirit of his Master, do a hurt to the cause
of the gospel proportioned to the blessing that comes from such lips
when they speak the word given to them.

Such inspiration would enable the apostle to “make known the mystery of
the gospel _with freedom and confidence of speech_”: the expression
rendered “with boldness”[180] means all this. Before the emperor Nero,
or the slave Onesimus, he will be able with the same aptness and dignity
and self-command to declare his message and to vindicate his Master’s
name. “The mystery of the gospel” is no other secret than that which
this epistle unfolds (iii. 3-9), the great fact that Jesus Christ is the
Saviour and the Lord of the whole world. Jesus proclaimed Himself to
Pilate, who represented at Jerusalem the imperial rule, as the King of
all who are of the truth; and the apostle Paul has the like message to
convey to the head of the Empire. It needed the greatest boldness and
the greatest wisdom in the ambassador of the Messianic King to play his
part at Rome; an unwise word might make his own life forfeit, and bring
incalculable dangers on the Church.

St Paul’s trial, we suppose, passed off successfully, as he at this time
anticipated.[181] The Roman government was perfectly aware that the
political charge against their prisoner was frivolous; and Nero, if he
personally gave Paul a hearing on this earlier trial, in all probability
viewed his spiritual pretensions on his Master’s behalf with
contemptuous tolerance. If he did so, the toleration was not due to any
want of courage or clearness on the defendant’s part. It is possible
even that the courage and address of the advocate of the “new
superstition” pleased the tyrant, who was not without his moments of
good humour nor without the instincts of a man of taste. The apostle, we
may well believe, made an impression on the supreme court at Rome
similar to that made on his judges in Cæsarea.

St Paul’s bonds in Christ have now become widely “manifest” in Rome
(Phil. i. 13). He pleads in circumstances of disgrace. But God brings
good for His servants out of evil. As he said at a later time, so he
could say now: “They have bound me; but they cannot bind the word of
God.”[182] He was “not ashamed of the gospel” in the prospect of coming
to Rome years before (Rom. i. 16); and he is not ashamed now, though he
has come in chains as an evil-doer. Through the intercessions of
Christ’s people all these injuries of Satan are turning to his salvation
and to the “furtherance of the gospel”; and Paul rejoices and triumphs
in them, well assured that Christ will be magnified whether by his life
or death, whether by his freedom or his chains (Phil. i. 12-26). The
prayers which the imprisoned apostle asks from the Church were
fulfilled. For we read in the last verses of the Acts of the Apostles,
which put into a sentence the history of this period: “He received all
that came to him, preaching the kingdom and teaching the things
concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, _with all boldness_, none forbidding
him.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The paragraph relating to Tychicus is almost identical with that of
Colossians iv. 7, 8. It begins with a “But” connecting what follows with
the statement the apostle has just made respecting his position at Rome.
As much as to say: “I want your prayers, set as I am for the defence of
the gospel and in circumstances of difficulty and peril. But Tychicus
will tell you more about me than I can convey by letter. I am sending
him, in fact, for this very purpose.”

St Paul knew the great anxiety of the Christians of Asia on his account.
Epaphras of Colossæ had “shown him the love in the Spirit” that was
felt towards him even by those in this region who had never seen him in
the flesh (Col. i. 8). The tender heart of the apostle is touched by
this assurance. So he sends Tychicus to visit as many of the Asian
Churches as he may be able to reach, bringing news that will cheer their
hearts and relieve their discouragement (iii. 13).[183] The note sent at
this time to Philemon indicates the hopeful tidings that Tychicus was
able to convey to Paul’s friends in the East: “I trust that through your
prayers I shall be given to you” (Philem. 22). To the Philippians he
writes, perhaps a little later, in the same strain: “I trust in the Lord
that I myself shall come shortly” (Phil. ii. 24). He anticipates, with
some confidence, his speedy acquital and release: it is not likely that
this expectation, on the part of such a man as St Paul, was
disappointed. The good news went round the Asian and Macedonian
Churches: “Paul is likely soon to be free, and we shall see and hear him
again!”

In the parallel epistle he writes, “that you may know” (Col. iv. 8);
here it is, “that you _also_ may know my affairs.” The added word is
significant. The writer is imagining his letter read in the various
assemblies which it will reach. He has the other epistle in his mind,
and remembering that he there introduced Tychicus in similar terms, he
says to this wider circle of Asian disciples: “That you also, as well as
the Churches of the Lycus valley, may know how things are with me, I
send Tychicus to give you a full report.” It is not necessary, however,
to look beyond the last two verses for the reference of the _also_ of
verse 21: “I have asked your prayers on my behalf; and I wish you in
turn to know how things go with me.” Possibly, there were some matters
connected with St Paul’s trial at Rome that could not be fitly or safely
communicated by letter. Hence he adds: “He shall make known unto you all
things.” When he writes “that ye may know my affairs, how I do,” we
gather that Tychicus was to communicate to those he visited everything
about the beloved apostle that would be of interest to his Asian
brethren.

The apostle commends Tychicus in language identical in the two letters,
except that in Colossians “fellow-servant” is added to the honourable
designations of “beloved brother and faithful minister,” under which he
is here introduced. We find him first associated with St Paul in Acts
xx. 4, where “Tychicus and Trophimus” represent Asia in the number of
those who accompanied the apostle on his voyage to Jerusalem, when he
carried the contributions of his Gentile Churches to the relief of the
Christian poor in Jerusalem. Trophimus, his companion, is called a
“Greek” and an “Ephesian” (Acts xxi. 28, 29). Whether Tychicus belonged
to the same city or not, we cannot tell. He was almost certainly a
Greek. The Pastoral epistles show Tychicus still in the apostle’s
service in his last years. He appears to have joined St Paul’s staff and
remained with him from the time that he accompanied him to Jerusalem in
the year 59. From 2 Timothy iv 9-12 we gather that Tychicus was sent to
Ephesus to relieve Timothy, when St Paul desired the presence of the
latter at Rome. It is evident that he was a man greatly valued by the
apostle and endeared to him.

Tychicus was well known in the Asian Churches, and suitable therefore to
be sent upon this errand. And the commendation given to him would be
very welcome to the circle to which he belonged. The apostle has great
tact in these personal matters, the tact which belongs to delicate
feeling and a generous mind. He calls his messenger “the beloved
brother” in his relation to the Church in general, and “faithful
minister in the Lord” in his special relation to himself. So he
describes Epaphroditus to the Philippians as “your apostle and minister
of my need.” In conveying these letters and messages, this worthy man
was Paul’s apostle and minister of his need in regard to the Asian
Churches. He is a “_minister in the Lord_,” inasmuch as this office lies
within the range of his service to the Lord Christ.

We observe that in writing to the Colossians the apostle applies to
Onesimus, the converted slave, the honourable epithets applied here to
this long-tried friend: “the faithful and beloved brother” (Col. iv. 9).
Every Christian believer should be in the eyes of his fellows a “beloved
brother.” And every true servant of Christ and His people is a “faithful
minister in the Lord,” be his rank high or low, and whether official
hands have been laid upon his head or not. We are apt, by a trick of
words, to limit to the order which we suitably call “the ministry”
expressions that the New Testament applies to the common ministry of
Christ’s saints (comp. iv. 12). This devoted servant of Christ is
employed just now as a newsman and letter-carrier. But what a high
responsibility it was, to be the bearer to the Asian cities, and to the
Church for all time, of the epistles of Paul the apostle to the
Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon. Had Tychicus been careless or
dishonest, had he lost these precious documents or tampered with them,
how great the loss to mankind! We cannot read them without feeling our
debt to this beloved brother and faithful servant of the Church. Those
who travel upon Christ’s business, who link distant communities to each
other and convey from one to another the Holy Spirit’s fellowship and
grace, are “the messengers of the Churches and the glory of Christ” (2
Cor. viii. 23).


THE BENEDICTION.

    “Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith,
      From God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
    Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ
                                In incorruption” (vv. 23, 24).

Grace and Peace were the first words of the epistle,--the apostle’s
salutation to all his Churches. In _Peace and Grace_ he breathes out his
final blessing. The benediction is fuller than in most of the epistles,
and exhibits several peculiar features.

To the Thessalonians (2 Ep. iii. 16) St Paul wished: “Peace continually,
in all ways, from the Lord of peace Himself”; and he commends the Romans
twice to “the God of peace” (ch. xv. 33, xvi. 20): the Corinthians he
bids to “live in peace,” so that “the God of love and peace” may be with
them (2 Cor. xiii. 11). There is nothing in the least degree strange or
un-Pauline in the wishes here expressed, except the fact that they are
put in the third person--“_Peace to the brethren_,” etc.--instead of
being addressed directly to the readers in the second person, as in all
other of the apostle’s extant closing benedictions. This peculiarity, as
we observed in the first Chapter, is in accordance with the encyclical
and impersonal stamp of the epistle.[184] It is Paul’s most catholic
benediction, his blessing upon “all the Israel of God” (comp. Gal. vi.
16).

“With faith,” that “love” is desired whereby, according to the Pauline
ethics of salvation, faith works (Gal. v. 6), the love which as a
vitalizing organic force creates the new man, formed in all his doings
and dispositions after the image of Jesus Christ. From chapter iv. 1-3
we have learnt how “peace” and “love” attend each other. Love is the
source of the forbearance, the mutual consideration and self-sacrifice,
without which there is no peace within the Church. Peace springs from
love: love waits on faith. Amongst brethren in Christ, members of the
same household of faith, peace and love have their home. These are the
sons of peace: with good will and good hope, entering or quitting their
abode, we say, “Peace be to this house!”

The peace that the apostle looks for amongst Christian brethren is the
fruit of peace with God through Christ. Such “peace guarding the
thoughts and heart” of each Christian man, nothing contrary thereto will
arise amongst them. Calm and quiet hearts make a peaceful Church. There
are no clashing interests, no selfish competitions, no strife as to who
shall be greatest. Differences of opinion and taste are kept within the
bounds of mutual submission. The awe of God’s presence with His people,
the remembrance of the dear price at which His Church was purchased, the
sense of Christ’s Lordship in the Spirit and of the sacredness of our
brotherhood in Him, check all turbulence and rivalry and teach us to
seek the things that make for peace.

“Peace _and love_,” the apostle desires. Love includes peace, and more;
for it labours not to prevent contention only, but to help and enrich in
all ways the body of Christ. By such “toil of love” faith is made
complete. We are bidden indeed, in certain matters, to “have faith to
ourselves before God” (Rom. xiv. 22). This maxim holds where one has a
special faith in regard to such things as eating flesh or drinking wine,
in which any one of us may without offence differ from his brethren. But
it is a poor faith that dwells upon questions of this nature, and makes
its religion of them. The essentials of faith, as we saw them delineated
in chapter iv. 1-6, are things that unite and not distinguish us.

As faith grows and deepens, it makes new channels in which love may
flow. “We are bound to thank God always for you,” writes St Paul to the
Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 3), “for that your faith groweth exceedingly,
and the love of each one of you all toward one another multiplieth.”
This is the sound and true growth of faith. Where an intenser faith
makes men disputatious and exclusive; where it fails to breed meekness
and courtesy, we cannot but suspect its quality. Such faith may be
sincere; but it is mixed with a lamentable ignorance, and a resistance
to the Holy Spirit that is likely to end in grave offence. “Contending
earnestly for the faith” does not mean contending angrily, with the
weapons of satire and censoriousness. It is well to remember that we are
not the judges of our brethren. There are many questions raised and
discussed amongst us, which we may safely leave to the judgement of the
last day. It is too easy to fill the air with matters of contention, and
to excite a sore and suspicious temper destructive of peace, and in
which nothing but fault-finding will flourish. If we must contend, we
may surely debate quietly on secondary matters, while we are one in
Christ. If we have not _love with faith_, our faith is worthless (1 Cor.
xiii. 2).

Deep beneath the peace that dwells in the Church and the love that
fills each believer’s heart, is the eternal fountain of _grace_. “Grace
be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ,” says the apostle.
Grace is theirs already; and they desire nothing so much as its
increase. Their love to Christ is the fruit of the grace of God that is
with them. This wish includes all good wishes; it surpasses both our
deservings and desires. All that God prepared for us in His eternal
counsels, and that Christ purchased by His redeeming love, all of good
that our nature can receive now and for ever, is embraced in this one
word: _Grace be with you._

“With all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul says; for it is to
lovers of Christ that God gives the continuance of His grace. If our
love to Christ fails, grace leaves us. God cannot look with favour upon
the man who has no love to His Son Jesus Christ. In giving his blessing
to the Corinthians, St Paul was compelled to write with his own hand:
“If any man love not the Lord, let him be anathema.” The blessing
involves the anathema. God’s love is not a love of indifference, an
indiscriminate, immoral affection. It is a love of choice and
predilection--“If any man love me,” said Jesus, “my Father will love
him.” Is not the condition reasonable,--and the inference inevitable?
The Father cannot grant His grace to those who have seen and hated Him
in His Son and image. By that hatred they refuse His grace, and cast it
from them.

On the other hand, a sincere love to the Lord Jesus Christ opens the
heart to all the rich and purifying influences of Divine grace. The
sinful woman, stained with false and foul love, who washed the Saviour’s
feet with her tears, attained in that act to a height of purity
undreamed of by the virtuous Pharisee. This new and holy flame burns
out impure passion from the soul: it kindles lofty thoughts; it makes
crooked natures straight, and timid and weak natures brave and strong.
“To them that love God, we know, all things work together for good.” To
them that love Christ, all things contribute blessing; all conditions
and events of life become means of grace. If we love Christ, we shall
love His people,--the Church, the bride of Christ from whom He will
never be parted in our thoughts. If we love Christ, we shall love the
work He has laid upon us, and the word He has taught us, and the
sacramental pledges He has given us in remembrance of Him and assurance
of His coming. If we love Him, we shall “keep His commandments,” and He
will keep His promise to send us the “other Helper, to be with us for
ever, even the Spirit of truth.” The gift of the Holy Spirit is the
all-sufficiency of grace.[185] Here is the innermost sanctuary of our
religion, the fountain and beginning of the soul’s eternal life,--in the
love which joins it to the Lord in one spirit.

_In incorruption_ is the last and sealing word of this letter, which we
have been so long studying together. It “stands as the crown and climax
of this glorious epistle” (Alford). Like so many other words of the
epistle, at first sight its interpretation is not clear. The apostle has
used the term in several other passages, as synonymous with
_immortality_[186] and denoting the state of the blessed after the
resurrection, when they will stand before God complete in body and in
spirit, with all that is mortal in them swallowed up of life--“raised in
incorruption.” But there is nothing in this context to lead up to the
idea of personal, bodily immortality. Those who construe the apostle’s
words in this sense, place a comma before the final clause and treat it
as a qualification of the main predicate of the sentence: “Grace be with
all them that love our Lord,--grace [culminating] in incorruption”--or
in other words, “grace crowned with glory!” But it must be admitted that
this is somewhat strained.

The rendering of our ordinary version, “in sincerity” (in the Revised
rendering, “uncorruptness”), gives an ethical sense to the word that is
scarcely borne out by usage. It is a different, though kindred
expression that St Paul employs to express “uncorruptness” in Titus ii.
7.[187]

It appears to us that the term “incorruption,” in its ordinary
significance, applies fitly to the believer’s love for the Lord, when
the word is read in accordance with the symbolism of the epistle. This
love is the life of the body of Christ. In it lies the Church’s
immortality. The gates of death prevail not against her, rooted and
grounded as she is in love to the risen and immortal Christ. “May that
love be maintained,” the apostle says, “in its deathless power. Let it
be an unspoilt and unwasting love.”

Of earthly love we often say with sadness:--

    “Space is against thee: it can part!
    Time is against thee: it can chill!”

Not so with the love of Christ. Neither death nor life parts the soul
from Him. Our love to the Lord Jesus Christ seats us with Him in the
heavenly places,--above the realm of decay, above this wasting flesh and
perishing world.

FOOTNOTES:

[176] Col. i. 24--ii. 1; Phil. i. 16.

[177] Ch. ii. 7, iii. 10; Phil. i. 20; 2 Tim. iv. 17.

[178] I Thess. v. 25; 2 Thess. iii. 1; Rom. xv. 30-32; Col. iv. 3, etc.

[179] Out of the instances in which the English Version renders λόγος in
St Paul by _utterance_, the Revisers have substituted _word_ for
_utterance_ only in Col. iv. 3. One wishes they had done so throughout.
For λόγος surely implies the _content_, the _import_ of what is said.
This passage reminds us of John xvii. 14: “I have given them Thy word”;
and xiv. 24: “The word which ye hear is not mine, but His.”

[180] Ἐν παρρησίᾳ: comp. iii. 12; Phil. i. 20; Philem. 8; 2 Cor. vii. 4;
1 Thess. ii. 2, etc.

[181] Phil. i. 25, 26, ii. 23, 24; Philem. 22.

[182] 2 Tim. i. 7-12, ii. 3-10.

[183] Comp. Phil. i. 24-26.

[184] See pp. 13-17.

[185] Ch. i. 14, iv. 30. See Chapter IV., above.

[186] Rom. ii. 7; 1 Cor. xv. 42, 50, 53, 54; 2 Tim. i. 10. See Alford’s
excellent note on this passage.

[187] Ἀφθορία: ἀφθαρσία is deleted in the critical texts.

       *       *       *       *       *




_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._


THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS (_Expositor’s Bible_). Crown 8vo, cloth.

COMMENTARY ON COLOSSIANS (_Pulpit Commentary_).

COMMENTARY ON I. & II. THESSALONIANS (_Cambridge Bible for Schools and
Colleges_).

AN ESSAY ON THE PASTORAL EPISTLES (SABATIER’S _The Apostle Paul_).

THE EPISTLES OF PAUL THE APOSTLE: _a Sketch of their Origin and
Contents._




THE EXPOSITOR’S BIBLE.

_Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. each vol._


FIRST SERIES, 1887-8.

  Colossians.
  By A. MACLAREN, D.D.

  St. Mark.
  By Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.

  Genesis.
  By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.

  1 Samuel.
  By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.

  2 Samuel.
  By the same Author.

  Hebrews.
  By Principal T. C. EDWARDS, D.D.


SECOND SERIES, 1888-9.

  Galatians.
  By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.

  The Pastoral Epistles.
  By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.

  Isaiah I.--XXXIX.
  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. I.

  The Book of Revelation.
  By Prof. W. MILLIGAN, D.D.

  1 Corinthians.
  By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.

  The Epistles of St. John.
  By Most Rev. the Archbishop of Armagh.


THIRD SERIES, 1889-90.

  Judges and Ruth.
  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.

  Jeremiah.
  By Rev. C. J. BALL, M.A.

  Isaiah XL.--LXVI.
  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. II.

  St. Matthew.
  By Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.

  Exodus.
  By Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.

  St. Luke.
  By Rev. H. BURTON, M.A.


FOURTH SERIES, 1890-1.

  Ecclesiastes.
  By Rev. SAMUEL COX, D.D.

  St. James and St. Jude.
  By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.

  Proverbs.
  By Rev. R. F. HORTON, D.D.

  Leviticus.
  By Rev. S. H. KELLOGG, D.D.

  The Gospel of St. John.
  By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. I.

  The Acts of the Apostles.
  By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. I.


FIFTH SERIES, 1891-2.

  The Psalms.
  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. I.

  1 and 2 Thessalonians.
  By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

  The Book of Job.
  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.

  Ephesians.
  By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.

  The Gospel of St. John.
  By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. II.

  The Acts of the Apostles.
  By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. II.


SIXTH SERIES, 1892-3.

  1 Kings.
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  Philippians.
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  Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
  By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.

  Joshua.
  By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.

  The Psalms.
  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. II.

  The Epistles of St. Peter.
  By Prof. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.


SEVENTH SERIES, 1893-4.

  2 Kings.
  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.

  Romans.
  By H. C. G. MOULE, M.A., D.D.

  The Books of Chronicles.
  By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.

  2 Corinthians.
  By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

  Numbers.
  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.

  The Psalms.
  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. III.


EIGHTH SERIES, 1895-6.

  Daniel.
  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.

  The Book of Jeremiah.
  By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.

  Deuteronomy.
  By Prof. ANDREW HARPER, B.D.

  The Song of Solomon and Lamentations.
  By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.

  Ezekiel.
  By Prof. JOHN SKINNER, M.A.

  The Book of the  Twelve Prophets.
  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Two Vols.






End of Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians, by G. G. Findlay