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.
=Ou monon Ephesou alla schedo pasês tês Asias ho Paulos houtos
peisas metestêsen hikano ochlon= (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 Colossae.[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 Colossae, 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
_Encyclopaedia 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] =Tois hagiois tois ousin ... kai pistois en Christô Iêsou.= The
interposition of the heterogeneous attributive between =hagiois= and
=pistois= 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
=pistois= as the complement of =tois ousin=.
[24] Origen, in his fanciful way, makes of =tois ousin= 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.
=Hous proegnô, kai proôrisen
symmorphous tês eikonos tou huiou autou,
eis to einai auto prôtotokon en pollois adelphois;
hous de proôrisen, toutous kai ekalesen;
kai hous ekalesen, toutous kai edikaiôsen;
hous de edikaiôsen, toutous kai edoxasen.=
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 aeons 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] =eis auton=, _for Him_; not =autô=, _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: _phronesis_ 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] =Chaire, kecharitômenê.= 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 =klêrousthai= in the classical dictionaries; and in
O.T. usage the _lot_ (=klêros=) 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 =klêrousthai= in the
sense of the A.V. requires an object; but that is virtually supplied by
=en hô=: "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 Phoenician 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 oecumenical.
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.