hierarchical movement would probably have made that city, rather than
Rome, its centre. This was in fact the tendency, if not the express
purpose of the Judaistic party in the Church. St Paul had vindicated in
his earlier epistles the freedom of the Gentile Christian communities,
and their right of non-conformity to Jewish usage. In the words "each
several building, fitly framed together," there is an echo of this
controversy. The Churches of his mission claim a standing side by side
with those founded by other apostles. For himself and his Gentile
brethren he seems to say, in the presence of the primitive Church and
its leaders: "As they are Christ's, so also are we."
The co-operation of the different parts of the body of Christ is
essential to their collective growth. Let all Churches beware of
crushing dissent. Blows aimed at our Christian neighbours recoil upon
ourselves. Undermining their foundation, we shake our own. Next to
positive corruption of doctrine and life, nothing hinders so greatly the
progress of the kingdom of God as the claim to exclusive legitimacy made
on behalf of ancient Church organizations. Their representatives would
have every part of God's temple framed upon one pattern. They refuse a
place on the apostolic foundation to all Churches, however numerous,
however rich in faith and good works, however strong the historical
justification for their existence, however clear the marks they bear of
the Spirit's seal, which do not conform to the rule they themselves have
received. Their rites and ministry, they assert, are those alone
approved by Christ and authorized by His apostles, within a given area.
They refuse the right hand of fellowship to men who are doing Christ's
work by their side; they isolate their flocks, as far as possible, from
intercourse with the Christian communities around them.
This policy on the part of any Christian Church, or Church party, is
contrary to the mind of Christ and to the example of His apostles. Those
who hold aloof from the comity of the Churches and prevent the many
buildings of God's temple being fitly framed together, must bear their
judgement, whosoever they be. They prefer conquest to peace, but that
conquest they will never win; it would be fatal to themselves. Let the
elder sister frankly allow the birthright of the younger sisters of
Christ's house in these lands, and be our example in justice and in
charity. Great will be her honour; great the glory won for our common
Lord.
"Every building fitly framed together _groweth into a holy temple_ in
the Lord." The subject is distributive; the predicate collective. The
parts give place to the whole in the writer's mind. As each several
piece of the structure, each cell or chapel in the temple, spreads out
to join its companion buildings and adjusts itself to the parts around
it, the edifice grows into a richer completeness and becomes more fit
for its sacred purpose. The separate buildings, distant in place or
historical character, approximate by extension, as they spread over the
unoccupied ground between them and as the connecting links are
multiplied. At last a point is reached at which they will become
continuous. Growing into each other step by step and forming across the
diminishing distance a web of mutual attachment constantly thickening,
they will insensibly, by a natural and vital growth, become one in
visible communion as they are one in their underlying faith.
When each organ of the body in its own degree is perfect and holds its
place in keeping with the rest, we think no longer of their individual
perfection, of the charm of this feature or of that; they are forgotten
in the beauty of the perfect frame. So it will be in the body of Christ,
when its several communions, cleansed and filled with His Spirit, each
honouring the vocation of the others, shall in freedom and in love by a
spontaneous movement be gathered into one. Their strength will then be
no longer weakened and their spirit chafed by internal conflict. With
united forces and irresistible energy, they will assail the kingdom of
darkness and subjugate the world to Christ.
For this consummation our Saviour prayed in the last hours before His
death: "that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me and I in
Thee, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that Thou
didst send me" (John xvii. 21). Did He fear that His little flock of the
Twelve would be parted by dissensions? Or did He not look onward to the
future, and see the "offences that must come," the alienations and
fierce conflicts that would arise amongst His people, and the blood that
would be shed in His name? Yet beyond these divisions, on the horizon of
the end of the age, He foresaw the day when the wounds of His Church
would be healed, when the sword that He had brought on the earth would
be sheathed, and through the unity of faith and love in His people all
mankind would at last come to acknowledge Him and the Father who had
sent Him.
III. To appearance, we are many rather than one who bear the name of
Christ. But we are one notwithstanding, if below the variety of
superstructure our faith rests upon the witness of the apostles, and the
several buildings have Christ Jesus Himself for chief corner-stone. The
_one foundation_ and the _one Spirit_ constitute the unity of God's
temple in the Church.
"The apostles and prophets" are named as a single body, _the prophets_
being doubtless, in this passage and in chapters iii. 5 and iv. 11, the
existing prophets of the apostolic Church, whose inspired teaching
supplemented that of the apostles and helped to lay down the foundation
of revealed truth. That foundation has been, through the providence of
God, preserved for later ages in the Scriptures of the New Testament, on
which the faith of Christians has rested ever since. Such a prophet
Barnabas was in the first days (Acts xiii. 1), and such was the unknown,
but deeply inspired writer of the epistle to the Hebrews; such prophets,
again, were SS. Mark and Luke, the Evangelists. Prophecy was not a
stated gift of office. Just as there were "teachers" in the early Church
whose knowledge and eloquence did not entitle them to bear rule, so
prophecy was frequently exercised by private persons and carried with it
no such official authority as belonged in the highest degree to the
apostles.
It is thought surprising that St Paul should write thus, in so general
and distant a fashion, of the order to which he belonged (comp. iii. 5).
This, it is said, is the language of a later generation, which looks
back with reverence to the inspired Founders. But this letter is
written, as we observed at the outset, from a peculiarly objective and
impersonal standpoint. It differs in this respect from other epistles of
St Paul. He is addressing a number of Churches, with some of which his
personal relations were slight and distant. He is contemplating the
Church in its most general character. He is not the only founder of
Churches; he is one of a band of colleagues, working in different
regions. It is natural that he should use the plural here. He sets his
successors an example of the recognition due to fellow-labourers whose
work bears the seal of Christ's Spirit.
These men have laid _the foundation_--Peter and Paul, John and James,
Barnabas and Silas, and the rest. They are our spiritual progenitors,
the fathers of our faith. We see Jesus Christ through their eyes; we
read His teaching, and catch His Spirit in their words. Their testimony,
in its essential facts, stands secure in the confidence of mankind. Nor
was it their word alone, but the men themselves--their character, their
life and work--laid for the Church its historical foundation. This
"glorious company of the apostles" formed the first course in the new
building, on whose firmness and strength the stability of the entire
structure depends. Their virtues and their sufferings, as well as the
revelations made through them, have guided the thoughts and shaped the
life of countless multitudes of men, of the best and wisest men in all
ages since. They have fixed the standard of Christian doctrine and the
type of Christian character. At our best, we are but imitators of them
as they were of Christ.
In regard to the chief part of their teaching, both as to its meaning
and authority, the great bulk of Christians in all communions are
agreed. The keen disputes which engage us upon certain points, testify
to the cardinal importance which is felt on all hands to attach to the
words of Christ's chosen apostles. Their living witness is in our midst.
The self-same Spirit that wrought in them, works amongst men and dwells
in the communion of saints. He still reveals the things of Christ, and
guides into truth the willing and obedient.
So "the firm foundation of God standeth"; though men, shaken themselves,
seem to see it tremble. On that basis we may labour confidently and
loyally, with those amongst whom the Master has placed us. Some of our
fellow-workmen disown and would hinder us: that shall not prevent us
from rejoicing in their good work, and admiring the gold and precious
stones that they contribute to the fabric. The Lord of the temple will
know how to use the labour of His many servants. He will forgive and
compose their strife, who are jealous for His name. He will shape their
narrow aims to His larger purposes. Out of their discords He will draw a
finer harmony. As the great house grows to its dimensions, as the
workmen by the extension of their labours come nearer to each other and
their sectional plans merge in Christ's great purpose, reproaches will
cease and misunderstandings vanish. Over many who followed not with us
and whom we counted but as "strangers and sojourners," as men whose
place within the walls of Zion was doubtful and unauthorized, we shall
hereafter rejoice with a joy not unmixed with self-upbraiding, to find
them in the fullest right our fellow-citizens amongst the saints and of
the household of God.
The Holy Spirit is the supreme Builder of the Church, as He is the
supreme witness to Jesus Christ (John xv. 26, 27). The words _in the
Spirit_, closing the verse with solemn emphasis, denote not the mode of
God's habitation--that is self-evident--but the agency engaged in
building this new house of God. With one "chief corner-stone" to rest
upon and one Spirit to inspire and control them, the apostles and
prophets laid their foundation and the Church was "builded together" for
a habitation of God. Hence its unity. But for this sovereign influence
the primitive founders of Christianity, like later Church leaders, would
have fallen into fatal discord. Modern critics, reasoning upon natural
grounds and not understanding the grace of the Holy Spirit, assume that
they did thus quarrel and contend. Had this been so, no foundation could
ever have been laid; the Church would have fallen to pieces at the very
beginning.
In the hands of these faithful and wise stewards of God's dispensation,
"the stone which the builders rejected was made the head of the corner."
Their work has been tried by fire and by flood; and it abides. The rock
of Zion stands unworn by time, unshaken by the conflict of ages,--amidst
the movements of history and the shifting currents of thought the one
foundation for the peace and true welfare of mankind.
FOOTNOTES:
[91] =Pasa oikodomê=, according to the well-established critical
reading. For =pas= without the article, implying a various whole,
compare =pasês ktiseôs= in Col. i. 15; =pasa graphê=, 2 Tim. iii. 16;
=en pasê anastrophê=, 1 Peter i. 15; and =Theos pasês charitos=, 1 Peter
v. 10.
CHAPTER XII.
_THE SECRET OF THE AGES._
"For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of
you Gentiles,--if so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of
that grace of God which was given me toward you; how that by
revelation was made known unto me the mystery (as I wrote afore in
few words, whereby, when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding
in the mystery of Christ), which in other generations was not made
known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed unto His
holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; _to wit_, that the
Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and
fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,
whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of that grace
of God which was given me according to the working of His power.
Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace
given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of
Christ; and to bring to light what is the dispensation of the
mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God who created all
things."--EPH. iii. 1-9.
Verses 2-13 are in form a parenthesis. They interrupt the prayer which
appears to be commencing in the first verse and is not resumed until
verse 14. This intervening period is parenthetical, however, in
appearance more than in reality. The matter it contains is so weighty
and so essential to the argument and structure of the epistle, that it
is impossible to treat it as a mere _aside_. The writer intends, at the
pause which occurs after the paragraph just concluded (ii. 22), to
interpose a few words of prayer before passing on to the next topic.
But in the act of doing so, this subject of which his mind is
full--viz., that of his own relation to God's great purpose for
mankind--forces itself upon him; and the prayer that was on his lips is
pent up for a few moments longer, until it flows forth again, in richer
measure, in verses 14-19.
Like chapter i. 3-14, this passage is an extreme instance of St Paul's
amorphous style. His sentences are not composed; they are spun in a
continuous thread, an endless chain of prepositional, participial, and
relative adjuncts. They grow under our eyes like living things, putting
forth new processes every moment, now in this and now in that direction.
Within the main parenthesis we soon come upon another parenthesis
including verses 3_b_ and 4 ("as I wrote afore," etc.); and at several
points the grammatical connexion is uncertain. In its general scope,
this intricate sentence resolves itself into a statement of _what God
has wrought in the apostle_ toward the accomplishment of His great plan.
It thus completes the exposition given already of that which _God
wrought in Christ for the Church_, and that which _He has wrought
through Christ in Gentile believers_ in fulfilment of the same end.
* * * * *
Verses 1-9 speak (1) of the mystery itself--God's gracious intention
toward the human race, unknown in earlier times; and (2) of the man to
whom, above others, it was given to make known the secret.
I. _The mystery_ is defined twice over. First, it consists in the fact
that "in Christ Jesus through the gospel the Gentiles are co-heirs and
co-incorporate and co-partners in the promise" (ver. 6); and secondly,
it is "the unsearchable riches of Christ" (ver. 8). The latter phrase
gathers to a point what is diversely expressed in the former.
Christ is, to St Paul, the centre and the sum of the mysteries of Divine
truth, of the whole enigma of existence. In the parallel epistle he
calls Him "the mystery of God--in whom are all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge hidden" (Col. ii. 2, 3: R.V.). The mystery of God,
discovered in Christ, was hidden out of the sight and reach of previous
times. Now, by the preaching of the gospel, it is made the common
property of mankind (Col. i. 25-28).
In close connexion with these statements, St Paul speaks there, as he
does here, of his own heavy sufferings endured on this account and the
joy they gave him. He is the instrument of a glorious purpose worthy of
God; he is the mouthpiece of a revelation waiting to be spoken since the
world began, that is addressed to all mankind and interests heaven along
with earth. The greatness of his office is commensurate with the
greatness of the truth given him to announce.
The mystery, as we have said, consists in _Christ_. This we learned from
chapter i. 4, 5, and 9, 10. In Christ the Eternal lodged His purpose and
laid His plans for the world. It is His fulness that the fulness of the
times dispenses. The Old Testament, the reservoir of previous
revelation, had Him for its close-kept secret, "held in silence through
eternal times" (Rom. xvi. 25-27). The drift of its prophecies, the focus
of its converging lights, the veiled magnet towards which its spiritual
indications pointed, was "Christ." He "was the spiritual rock that
followed" Israel in its wanderings, from whose springs the people
drank, as it answered to the touch of one and now another of the holy
men of old. The revelation of Jesus Christ gives unity, substance, and
meaning to the history of Israel, which is otherwise a pathway without
goal, a problem without solution. Priest and prophet, law and sacrifice;
the kingly Son of David, and the suffering Servant of Jehovah; the Seed
of the woman with bruised foot bruising the serpent's head; the Lord
whom His people seek, suddenly coming to His temple; the Stone hewn from
the mountains without hands, that grows till it fills the earth--the
manifold representations of Israel's ideal, centre in the Lord Jesus
Christ. The lines of the great figure drawn on the canvas of
prophecy--disconnected as they seemed and without a plan, giving rise to
a thousand dreams and speculations--are filled out and drawn into shape
and take life and substance in Him. They are found to be parts of a
consistent whole, sketches and studies of this fragment or of that
belonging to the consummate Person and the comprehensive plan manifest
in the revelation of Jesus Christ.
But while Christ gathers into Himself the accumulated wealth of former
revelation, His fulness is not measured thereby or exhausted. He solves
the problems of the past; He unseals the ancient mysteries. But He
creates new and deeper problems, some explained in the continued
teaching of His Spirit and His providence, others that remain, or emerge
from time to time to tax the faith and understanding of His Church.
There are the mysteries surrounding His own Person, with which the Greek
Church struggled long--His eternal Sonship, His pre-incarnate relation
to mankind and the creatures, the final outcome of the mediatorial reign
and its subordination to the absolute sovereignty of God. These depths
St Paul sounded with his plummet; but he found them unfathomable.
Theological science has explored and defined them, and illuminated them
on many sides, but cannot reach to their inmost mystery. Then there is
the problem of the atonement, with all the cognate difficulties touching
the origin of sin, its heredity and its personal guilt, touching the
adjustment of law and grace, the method of justification, the extent and
efficacy of Christ's redeeming work, touching the future destiny and
eternal state of souls. Another class of questions largely occupies the
minds of thoughtful men to-day. They are studying the relation of Christ
and His Church to nature and the outward world, the bearings of
Christian truth upon social conditions, the working of the Spirit of God
in communities, and the place of man's collective life in the progress
and upbuilding of the kingdom of Christ.
For such inquiries the Spirit of wisdom and revelation is given to those
who humbly seek His light. He is given afresh in every age. Out of
Christ's unsearchable riches ever-new resources are forthcoming at His
Church's need, new treasures lying hidden in the old for him who can
extract them. But His riches, however far they are investigated, remain
unsearchable, and inexhaustible however largely drawn upon. God's ways
may be tracked further and further in each generation; they will remain
to the end, as they were to the mind of Paul at the limit of his bold
researches, "past finding out." The inspired apostle confesses himself a
child in Divine learning: "We know in part," he says, "we prophesy in
part." Oh the depths of "hidden wisdom" unimagined now, that are in
store for us in Christ, "foreordained before the worlds unto our
glory!"
The particular aspect of the mystery of Christ with which the apostle is
concerned, is that of His relationship to the Gentile world. "The grace
of God," he says in verse 2, "was given me _for you_." Such is "the
dispensation" in which God is now engaged. Upon this lavish and
undreamed-of scale He is dealing forth salvation to men. St Paul
describes this revelation of God's goodness to the Gentiles by three
parallel but distinct terms in verse 6. They "are fellow-heirs"--a word
that carries us back to chapter i. 11-13, and assures the Gentile
readers of their final redemption and heavenly glory.[92] They "are of
the same body"--which sums up all that we have learnt from chapter ii.
11-22. And they "are fellow-partakers of the promise"--receiving upon a
footing of equal privilege with Jewish believers the gift of the Spirit
and the blessings promised to Israel in the Messianic kingdom.
In virtue of the dispensation committed to him, St Paul formally
proclaims the incorporation of the Gentiles into the body of Christ,
their investiture with the franchise of faith. The forgiveness of sins
is theirs, the light of God's smile, the breath of His Spirit, the
worship and fellowship of His Church, the tasks and honours of His
service. The incarnation of Christ is theirs; His life, teaching, and
miracles; His cross is theirs, His resurrection and ascension, and His
second coming, and the glories of His heavenly kingdom--all made their
own on the bare condition of a penitent and obedient faith. The past is
theirs--is ours, along with the present and the future. The God of
Israel is our God. Abraham is our father, though his sons after the
flesh acknowledge us not. Their prophets prophesied of the grace that
should come unto us. Their poets sing the songs of Zion to Gentile
peoples in a hundred tongues. They lead our prayers and praises. In
their words we find expression for our heart-griefs and joys. At the
wedding-feast or by the grave-side, amidst "the multitude that keep holy
day" and in "dry lands" where the soul thirsts for God's ordinances, we
carry the Psalmists with us and the teachers of Israel.
What a boundless wealth we Gentiles, taught by Jesus Christ, have
discovered in the Jewish Bible! When will the Jewish people understand
that their greatness is in Him, that the light which lightens the
Gentiles is their true glory? When will they accept their part in the
riches of which they have made all the world partakers? The mystery of
our participation in their Christ has now been "revealed to the sons of
men" long enough. Is it not time that they themselves should see it,
that the veil should be lifted from the heart of Israel? The disclosure
was in the first instance so astounding, so contrary to their cherished
expectations, that one can scarcely wonder if it was at first rejected.
But God the King of the ages has been asserting and re-asserting the
fact in the course of history ever since. How vain to fight against Him!
how useless to deny the victory of the Nazarene!
II. But there was in Israel an election of grace,--men of unveiled heart
to whom the mystery of ages was disclosed. "The secret of Jehovah is
with them that fear Him, and He will show them His covenant." Such is
the rule of revelation. To the like effect Christ said: "The pure in
heart shall see God. He that willeth to do His will shall know of the
doctrine."
The light of God's universal love had come into the world; but where it
fell on cold or impure hearts, it shone in vain. The mystery "was made
manifest to His _saints_," writes the apostle in Colossians i. 26. So in
this passage: "revealed to His _holy_ apostles and prophets in the
Spirit." The pure eye sees the true light. This was the condition which
made it possible for Paul himself and his partners in the gospel to be
the bearers of this august revelation. It needed sincere and devoted
men, willing to be taught of God, willing to surrender every prejudice
and the preconceptions of flesh and blood, in order to receive and
convey to the world thoughts of God so much larger and loftier than the
thoughts of men. To such men--true disciples, loyal at all costs to God
and truth, holy and humble of heart--Jesus Christ gave His great
commission and bade them "go and make disciples of all the nations."
The secret was further disclosed to Peter, when he was taught at the
house of Cornelius "not to call any man common or unclean." He saw, and
the Church of Jerusalem saw and confessed that God "gave the like gift"
to uncircumcised Gentiles as to themselves and had "purified their
hearts by faith." Many prophetic voices, unrecorded, confirmed this
revelation. Of all this Paul is thinking here. It is to his predecessors
in the knowledge of the truth rather than to himself that he refers when
he speaks of "holy apostles and prophets" in verse 5. His readers would
naturally turn to them in coming to this plural expression. The original
apostles of Jesus and witnesses of His truth first attested the doctrine
of universal grace; and that they did so was a fact of vital importance
to Paul and the Gentile Church. The significance of this fact is shown
by the stress which is laid upon it and the prominence given to it in
the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles.
The apostle frequently alludes to revelations made to himself; he never
claims that this chief matter was _revealed_ personally to himself. It
was an open secret when Saul entered the Church. "Whereof," he says, in
verse 7, "I _became minister_"; again, "to me was this grace given, to
_preach to the Gentiles_ Christ's unsearchable riches." The leaders of
the Jewish Christian Church knew well that their message was meant for
all the world. But the abstract knowledge of a truth is one thing; the
practical power to realize it is another. Until the new apostle came
upon the field, there was no man ready for this great task and equal to
it. It was at this crisis that Paul was raised up. Then "it pleased God
to reveal His Son" in him, that he might "preach Him among the
Gentiles."
The effect of this summons upon Paul himself was overwhelming, and
continued to be so till the end of life. The immense favour humbles him
to the dust. He strains language, heaping comparative upon superlative,
to describe his astonishment as the import of his mission unfolds
itself: "To me, less than the least of all the saints, was this grace
given." That Saul the Pharisee and the persecutor, the most unworthy and
most unlikely of men, should be the chosen vessel to bear Christ's
riches to the Gentile world, how shall he sufficiently give thanks for
this! how express his wonder at the unfathomable wisdom and goodness
that the choice displays in the mind of God! But we can see well that
this choice was precisely the fittest. A Hebrew of the Hebrews, steeped
in Jewish traditions and glorying in his sacred ancestry, none knew
better than the apostle Paul how rich were the treasures stored in the
house of Abraham that he had to make over to the Gentiles. A true son of
that house, he was the fittest to lead in the aliens, to show them its
precious things and make them at home within its walls.
To himself the office was an unceasing delight. The universalism of the
gospel--a commonplace of our modern rhetoric--had burst upon his mind in
its unspoilt freshness and undimmed splendour. He is sailing out into an
undiscovered ocean, with a boundless horizon. A new heaven and earth are
opened to him in the revelation that the Gentiles are partakers of the
promise in Christ Jesus. He is entranced, as he writes, with the
largeness of the Divine purpose, with the magnificent sweep and scope of
the designs of grace. These verses give us the warm and genuine
impression made upon the hearts of its first recipients by the
disclosure of the universal destination of the gospel of Christ.
St Paul's work, in carrying out the dispensation of this mystery, was
twofold. It was both external and internal. He was a "herald and
apostle"; he was also "teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth" (1
Tim. ii. 7). He had in the former capacity to carry the good tidings
from one end to the other of the Roman empire, to spread it abroad as
far as his feet could travel and his voice reach, and thus "to fulfil
the gospel of Christ." But there was another, mental task, as necessary
and still more difficult, which likewise fell to his lot. He had to
_think out_ the gospel. It was his office to unfold and apply it to the
wants of a new world, to solve by its aid the problems that confronted
him as evangelist and pastor,--questions that contained the seed and
beginning of the intellectual difficulties of the Church in future
times. He had to free the gospel from the swaddling-bands of Judaism,
to emancipate the spirit from the letter of a mechanical and legal
interpretation. On the other hand, he had equally to guard the truth as
it is in Jesus from the dissolving influences of Gentile scepticism and
theosophy. Fighting his way through fierce and incessant opposition on
both sides, the apostle Paul led the mind of the Church onwards and
guides it still in the faith and knowledge of the Son of God. These
noble epistles are the fruit and record of St Paul's theological work.
Through them he has left a deeper mark on the conscience of the world
than any one man besides, except the Master of truth who was more than
man.
The apostle was not unaware of the vast influence he now possessed, and
that must accrue to him in the future from the transcendent interest of
the doctrines committed to his charge. There is no false modesty about
this splendidly gifted man. It is his not only to "preach to the
Gentiles the good news of Christ's unsearchable riches"; but more than
that, "to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery that
has been hidden away from the ages in God who created all things." The
great secret was out while Saul of Tarsus was still a persecutor and
blasphemer. But as to the _management_ and _dispensation_ of the
mystery, the practical handling of it, as to the mode and way in which
God would convey and apply it to the world at large, and as to the
bearings and consequences of this momentous truth,--the apostle Paul,
and no one but he, had all this to expound and set in order. He was, in
fact, the architect of Christian doctrine.
Theologically, Peter and John himself were Paul's debtors; and are
included amongst the "all men" of verse 9 (if this reading of the text
is correct). St John had, it is true, a more direct intuition into the
mind of Christ and rose to an even loftier height of contemplation; but
the labours and the logic of St Paul provided the field into which he
entered in his ripe old age spent at Ephesus. John, who absorbed and
assimilated everything that belonged to Christ and found for everything
its principle and centre in the Master of his youth--"the way, the
truth, and the life"--passed through the school of Paul. With the rest,
he learnt through the new apostle to see more perfectly "what is the
dispensation of the mystery hidden from the ages in God."
* * * * *
Well persuaded is our apostle that all readers of this letter in the
Asian towns, if they have not known it before, will now "perceive" his
"understanding in the mystery of Christ." All ages have discerned it
since. And the ages to come will measure its value better than we can do
now.
FOOTNOTES:
[92] See Gal. iii. 7, v. 5; Rom. viii. 14-25; 1 Peter i. 4, 5.
CHAPTER XIII.
_EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN._
"To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the
heavenly _places_ might be made known through the Church the
manifold wisdom of God, according to the purpose of the ages which
He formed in the Christ, _even_ Jesus our Lord: in whom we have
boldness and access in confidence through our faith in Him.
Wherefore I ask that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which
are your glory."--EPH. iii. 10-13.
_The mystery hidden since the ages began, in God who created all
things_: so the last paragraph concluded. The added phrase "through
Jesus Christ" is a comment of the pious reader, that has been
incorporated in the received text; but it is wanting in the oldest
copies, and is out of place. The apostle is not concerned with the
prerogatives of Christ, but with the scope of the Christian economy. He
is displaying the breadth and grandeur of the dispensation of grace, the
infinite range of the Divine plans and operations of which it forms the
centre. Its secret was cherished in the Eternal Mind. Its foundations
are laid in the very basis of the world. And the disclosure of it now
being made brings new light and wisdom to the powers of the celestial
realms.
"There is nothing covered," said Jesus, "which shall not be revealed,
and hidden which shall not be known." The mysteries which God sets
before His intelligent creatures, are promises of knowledge; they are
drafts, to be honoured in due time, upon the treasures of wisdom hidden
in Christ. So this great secret of the destiny of the Gentile world was
"from all ages hidden, in order that now through the Church it might be
made known," and by its means God's wisdom, to these sublime
intelligences. This intention was a part of the "plan of the ages"
formed in Christ (ver. 11). God designed by our redemption to bless
higher races along with our own. The elder sons of God, those "morning
stars" of creation, are schooled and instructed by what is transpiring
here upon earth.
To some this will appear to be mere extravagance. They see in such
expressions the marks of an unrestrained enthusiasm, of theological
speculation pushed beyond its limits and unchecked by any just knowledge
of the physical universe. This censure would be plausible and it might
seem that the apostle had extended the mission of the gospel beyond its
province, were it not for what he says in verse 11: This "purpose of the
ages" God "made in _the Christ_, even _Jesus our Lord_." Jesus Christ
links together angels and men. He draws after Him to earth the eyes of
heaven. Christ's coming to this world and identification with it unite
to it enduringly the great worlds above us. The scenes enacted upon this
planet and the events of its religious history have sent their shock
through the universe. The incarnation of the Son of God gives to human
life a boundless interest and significance. It is idle to oppose to this
conviction the fact of the littleness of the terrestrial globe.
Spiritual and physical magnitudes are incommensurable. You cannot
measure a man's soul by the size of his dwelling-house. Science teaches
us that the most powerful forces may exist and operate within the
narrowest space. A microscopic cell may contain the potential life of a
world. If our earth is but a grain of sand to the astronomer, it has
been the home of Godhead. It is the world for which God spared not to
give His own Son!
Here, then, lies the centre of the apostle's thoughts in this paragraph:
_God's all-comprehending purpose in Christ_. The magnitude and
completeness of this plan are indicated by the fact that it embraces in
its purview _the angelic powers and their enlightenment_. So
understanding it, our _human faith gains confidence and courage_ (vv.
12, 13).
* * * * *
I. The textual critics restore the definite article which later copyists
had dropped before the word _Christ_ in verse 11. We have already
remarked the frequency of "the Christ" in this epistle.[93] Once besides
this peculiar combination of the names of our Saviour occurs--in
Colossians ii. 6, where Lightfoot renders it _the Christ, even Jesus the
Lord_. So it should be rendered in this place. St Paul sets forth the
purpose of "God who created all things." He is looking back through "the
ages" during which the Divine plan was kept secret. God was all the time
designing His work of mercy, pointing meanwhile the hopes of men by
token and promise to the Coming One. The Messiah was the burden of those
prophetic ages. That inscrutable Christ of the Old Testament, the veiled
mystery of Jewish hope, stands manifested before us and challenges our
faith in the glorious person of "Jesus our Lord." This singular turn of
expression identifies the ideal and the real, the promise and
fulfilment, the dream of Old Testament prophecy and the fact of New
Testament history. For Jesus our Lord is the very Christ to whom the
generations before His coming looked forward out of their twilight with
wistful expectancy.
Not without meaning is He called "Jesus _our Lord_." The "principalities
and powers" of the heavenly places are in our view (ver. 10). These
potentates some of the Asian Christians were fain to worship. "See ye do
it not," Paul seems to say. "Jesus, the Christ of God, is alone our
Lord; not these. He is our Lord _and theirs_ (i. 21, 22). As our Lord He
commands their homage, and gives them lessons through His Church in
God's deep counsels." Everything that the apostle says tends to exalt
our Redeemer and to enhance our confidence in Him. His position is
central and supreme, in regard alike to the ages of time and the powers
of the universe. In His hand is the key to all mysteries. He is the
Alpha and Omega, the beginning, middle, and end of God's ways. He is the
centre of Israel, Israel of the world and the human ages; while the
world of men is bound through Him to the higher spheres of being, over
which He too presides.
There is a splendid intellectual courage, an incredible boldness and
reach of thought in St Paul's conception of the sovereignty of Christ.
Remember that He of whom these things are said, but thirty years before
died a felon's death in the sight of the Jewish people. It is not _our_
Lord Jesus Christ, whose name is hallowed by the lips of millions and
glorified by the triumphs of centuries upon centuries past, but the
Nazarene with the obscurity of His life and the cruel shame of Calvary
fresh in the recollection of all men. With what immense force had the
facts of His glorification wrought upon men's minds--His resurrection
and ascension, the witness of His Spirit and the virtue of His
gospel--for it to be possible to speak of Him thus, within a generation
of His death! While "the foolishness of preaching" such a Christ and the
weakness in which He was crucified were patent to all eyes, unrelieved
by the influence of time and the glamour of success, how was it that the
first believers raised Jesus to this limitless glory and dominion? It
was through the conviction, certified by outward fact and inward
experience, that "He liveth by the power of God." Thus Peter on the day
of Pentecost: "By the right hand of God exalted, He hath shed forth this
which ye now see and hear." The resurrection from the dead, the
demonstration of the Spirit proved Jesus Christ to be that which He had
claimed to be, the Saviour of men and the eternal Son of God.
The supremacy here assigned to Christ is a consequence of the exaltation
described at the close of the first chapter. There we see the height,
here the breadth and length of His dominion. If He is raised from the
grave so high that all created powers and names are beneath His feet, we
cannot wonder that the past ages were employed in preparing His way,
that the basis of His throne lies in the foundation of the world.
II. The universe is one. There is a solidarity of rational and moral
interests amongst all intelligences. Granting the existence of such
beings as the angels of Scripture, we should expect them to be
profoundly concerned in the redeeming work of Christ. They are the
"watchers" and "holy ones" spoken of by the later Isaiah and Daniel,
whom the Lord has "set upon the walls of Jerusalem" and who survey the
affairs of nations. Such was "the angel who talked" with Zechariah in
his vision, and whom the prophet overheard pleading for Jerusalem. In
the Apocalypse, again, we find the angels acting as God's unseen
executive. We decline to believe that these superhuman creatures are
nothing more than apocalyptic machinery, that they are creations of
fancy employed to give a livelier aspect to spiritual truth. "Cannot I
pray to my Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve
legions of angels?" So Jesus said, in the most solemn hour of His life.
And who can forget His tender words concerning the little children,
whose "angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven"?
The apostle Paul, who denounces "worship of the angels" in the fellow
epistle to this, earnestly believed in their existence and their
interest in human affairs. If he did not write the words of Hebrews i.
14, he certainly held that "they are ministering spirits sent forth to
do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation." Most
clearly is their relationship to the Church affirmed by the words of the
revealing angel to the apostle John: "I am a fellow-servant with thee
and with thy brethren the prophets, and with them that keep the words of
this book."
Christ's service is the high school of wisdom for the universe. These
princes of heaven win by their ministry to Christ and His Church a great
reward. Their intelligence, however lofty its range, is finite. Their
keen and burning intuition could not penetrate the mystery of God's
intentions toward this world. The revelations of the latter days--the
incarnation, the cross, the publication of the gospel, the outpouring
of the Spirit--were full of surprises to the heavenly watchers. They
sang at Bethlehem; they hid their faces and shrouded heaven in blackness
at the sight of Calvary. They bent down with eager observation and
searching thought "desiring to look into" the things made known to men
(1 Peter i. 12),--close and sympathetic students of the Church's
history. The apostle felt that there were other eyes bent upon him than
those of his fellow-men, and that he was acting in a grander arena than
the visible world. "We are a spectacle," he says, "_to angels_ and to
men." So he enjoins faithfulness on Timothy, and with Timothy on all who
bear the charge of the gospel, "before God and Christ Jesus, and the
elect angels." What is public opinion, what the applause or derision of
the crowd, to him who lives and acts in the presence of these august
spectators?
"Through the Church," we are told, the angels of God are "now" having
His "manifold wisdom made known" to them. It is not from the abstract
scheme of salvation, from the theory or theology of the Church that they
get this education, but through the living Church herself. The Saviour's
mission to earth created a problem for them, the development of which
they follow with the most intense and sympathetic interest. With what
solicitude they watch the conflict between good and evil and the varying
progress of Christ's kingdom amongst men! Many things, doubtless, that
engage our attention and fill a large space in our Church records, are
of little account with them; and much that passes in obscurity, names
and deeds unchronicled by fame, are written in heaven and pondered in
other spheres. No brave and true blow is struck in Christ's battle, but
it has the admiration of these high spectators. No advance is made in
character and habit, in Christian intelligence and efficiency and the
application of the gospel to human need, but they notice and approve.
When the cause of the Church and the salvation of mankind go forward,
when righteousness and peace triumph, the morning stars sing together
and the sons of God shout for joy. The joy that there is in the presence
of the angels of God over the repenting sinner, is not the joy of
sympathy or pity only; it is the delight of growing wisdom, of deepening
insight into the ways of God, into the heart of the Father and the love
that passes knowledge.
One would suppose from what the apostle hints, that our world presents a
problem unique in the kingdom of God, one which raises questions more
complicated and crucial than have elsewhere arisen. The heavenly
princedoms are learning through the Church "the _manifold_ wisdom of
God." His love, in its pure essence, those happy and godlike beings
know. They have lived for ages in its unclouded light. His power and
skill they may see displayed in proportions immensely grander than this
puny globe of ours presents. God's justice, it may be, and the thunders
of His law have issued forth in other regions clothed with a splendour
of which the scenes of Sinai were but a faint emblem. It is in the
combination of the manifold principles of the Divine government that the
peculiarity of the human problem appears to lie. The delicate and
continuous balancing of forces in God's plan of dealing with this world,
the reconciliation of seeming incompatibilities, the issue found from
positions of hopeless contradiction, the accord of goodness with
severity, of inflexible rectitude and truth with fatherly compassion,
afford to the greatest minds of heaven a spectacle and a study
altogether wonderful. So amongst ourselves the child of a noble house,
reared in cultured ease and shielded from moral peril, in visiting the
homes of poverty in the crowded city finds a new world opened to him,
that can teach him Divine lessons if he has the heart to learn. His mind
is awakened, his sympathies enriched. He hears the world's true voice,
"the still, sad music of humanity." He measures the heights and depths
of man's nature. A host of questions are thrust upon him, whose urgency
he had scarcely guessed; and wide ranges of truth are lighted up for
him, which before were distant and unreal. The highest have ever to
learn from the lowest in Christ's school, the seeming-wise from the
simple; even the pure and good, from contact with the fallen whom they
seek to save.
And "the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places" are, it
seems, willing to learn from those below them. As they traced the course
of human history in those "eternal times" during which the mystery lay
wrapped in silence, the angel watchers were too wise to play the
sceptic, too cautious to criticize an unfinished plan and arraign a
justice they could not yet understand. With a dignified patience they
waited the uplifting of the curtain and the unravelling of the entangled
plot. They looked for the coming of the Promised One. So in due time
they witnessed and, for their reward, assisted in His manifestation.
With the same docility these high sharers of our theological inquiries
still wait to see the end of the Lord and to take their part in the
dénouement of the time-drama, in the revelation of the sons of God. Let
us copy their long patience. God has not made us to mock us. "What thou
knowest not now," said the great Revealer, the Master of all mysteries,
to His disciple, "thou shalt know hereafter."
These wise elder brothers of ours, rich in the lore of eternity, foresee
the things to come as we cannot do. They are far above the smoke and
dust of the earthly conflict. The doubts that shake the strongest souls
amongst us, the cries of the hour which confuse and deceive us, do not
trouble them. They behold us in our weakness, our fears and our
divisions; but they also look on Him who "sits expecting till His
enemies are made His footstool." They see how calmly He sits, how
patiently expectant, while the sound of clashing arms and the rage and
tumult of the peoples go up from the earth. They mark the steadiness
with which through century after century, in spite of refluent waves,
the tide of mercy rises, and still rises on the shores of earth.
Thrones, systems, civilizations have gone down; one after another of the
powers that strove to crush or to corrupt Christ's Church has
disappeared; and still the name of Jesus lives and spreads. It has
traversed every continent and sea; it stands at the head of the living
and moving forces of the world. Those who come nearest to the angelic
point of view, and judge of the progress of things not by the froth upon
the surface but by the trend of the deeper currents, are the most
confident for the future of our race. The kingdom of Satan will not fall
without a struggle--a last struggle, perhaps more furious than any in
the past--but it is doomed, and waning to its end. So far has the
kingdom of Christ advanced, so mightily does the word of God grow and
prevail in the earth, that faith may well assure itself of the promised
triumph. Soon we shall shout: "Alleluia! The Lord God Omnipotent
reigneth!"
III. Suddenly, according to his wont, the apostle drops down from the
heights of contemplation to the level of ordinary fact. He descends in
verse 12 from the thought of the eternal purpose and the education of
the angels to the struggling Church. The assurance of its life in the
Spirit corresponds to the grandeur of that Divine order to which it
belongs. "In whom," he says--in this Christ, the revealed mystery of
ages past, the Teacher of angels and archangels--"we have our freedom
and confident access to God through faith in Him."
If it be "Jesus our Lord" to whom these attributes belong, and He is not
ashamed of us, well may we draw near with _confidence_ to the Father,
unashamed in the presence of His holy angels. We have no need to be
abashed, if we approach the Divine Majesty with a true faith in Christ.
His name gives the sinner access to the holiest place. The cherubim
sheathe their swords of flame. The heavenly warders at this passport
open the golden gates. We "come unto Mount Sion, the city of the living
God, and to an innumerable company of angels." Not one of these
mightinesses and ancient peers of heaven, not Gabriel or Michael
himself, would wish or dare to bar our entrance.
"We _have_ boldness and access," says the apostle, as in chapter i. 7:
"We have redemption in His blood." He insists upon the conscious fact.
This freedom of approach to God, this sonship of faith, is no hope or
dream of what may be; it is a present reality, a filial cry heard in a
multitude both of Gentile and Jewish hearts (comp. ii. 18).
This sentence exhibits the richness of synonyms characteristic of the
epistle. There is _boldness_ and _access_, _confidence_ as well as
_faith_. The three former terms Bengel nicely distinguishes: "libertatem
_oris_ in orando," and "admissionem in fiducia _in re_, et
_corde_"--freedom of _speech_ (in prayer), of _status_, and of
_feeling_. The second word (as in chapter ii. 18 and Romans v. 2)
appears to be active rather than passive in its force, denoting
_admittance_ rather than _access_. So that while the former of the
parallel terms (_boldness_) describes the liberty with which the
new-born Church of the redeemed address themselves to God the Father and
the unchecked freedom of their petitions, the latter (_admittance_)
takes us back to the act of Christ by which He introduced us to the
Father's presence and gave us the place of sons in the house. Being thus
admitted, we may come with confidence of heart, though we be less than
the least of saints. Accepted in the Beloved, we are within our right if
we say to the Father:--
"Yet in Thy Son divinely great,
We claim Thy providential care.
Boldly we stand before Thy seat;
Our Advocate hath placed us there!"
"Wherefore," concludes the imprisoned apostle, "I beg you not to lose
heart at my afflictions for you." Assuredly Paul did not pray that _he_
should not lose heart, as some interpret his meaning. But he knew how
his friends were fretting and wearying over his long captivity. Hence he
writes to the Philippians: "I would have you know that the things which
have happened to me have turned out rather to the furtherance of the
gospel." Hence, too, he assures the Colossians earnestly of his joy in
suffering for their sake (ch. i. 24).
The Church was fearful for Paul's life and distressed by his prolonged
sufferings. It missed his cheering presence and the inspiration of his
voice. But if the Church is so dear to God as the pages of this letter
show, and grounded in His eternal purposes, then let all friends of
Christ take courage. The ark freighted with such fortunes cannot sink.
St Paul is a martyr for Christ, and for Gentile Christendom! Every
stroke that falls upon him, every day added to the months of his
imprisonment helps to show the worth of the cause he has espoused and
gives to it increased lustre: "my afflictions for you, which are your
glory."
Those that love him should _boast_ rather than grieve over his
afflictions. "We make our boast in you amongst the Churches of God," he
wrote to the distressed Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 4), "for your patience
and faith in all your persecutions and afflictions"; so he would have
the Churches think of him. When good men suffer in a good cause, it is
not matter for pity and dread, but rather for a holy pride.
FOOTNOTES:
[93] See note on p. 47; also pp. 83, 189.
_PRAYER AND PRAISE._
CHAPTER iii. 14-21.
=To hyperechon tês gnôseôs Christou Iêsou tou Kyriou mou.=--PHIL.
iii. 8.
CHAPTER XIV.
_THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST._
"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every
family in heaven and upon earth is named, that He would grant you,
according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened
with power through His Spirit in the inward man; that the Christ may
dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted
and grounded in love, may be strong to comprehend with all the
saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth."--EPH.
iii. 14-18.
In verse 14 the prayer is resumed which the apostle was about to offer
at the beginning of the chapter, when the current of his thoughts
carried him away. The supplication is offered "for this cause" (vv. 1,
14),--it arises out of the teaching of the preceding pages. Thinking of
all that God has wrought in the Christ, and has accomplished by means of
His gospel in multitudes of Gentiles as well as Jews, reconciling them
to Himself in one body and forming them together into a temple for His
Spirit, the apostle bows his knees before God on their behalf. So much
he had in mind, when at the end of the second chapter he was in act to
pray for the Asian Christians that they might be enabled to enter into
this far-reaching purpose. Other aspects of the great design of God rose
upon the writer's mind before his prayer could find expression. He has
told us of his own part in disclosing it to the world, and of the
interest it excites amongst the dwellers in heavenly places,--thoughts
full of comfort for the Gentile believers troubled by his imprisonment
and continued sufferings. These further reflections add new meaning to
the "For this cause" repeated from verse 1.
The prayer which he offers here is no less remarkable and unique in his
epistles than the act of praise in chapter i. Addressing himself to God
as the Father of angels and of men, the apostle asks that He will endow
the readers in a manner corresponding to _the wealth of His glory_--in
other words, that the gifts He bestows may be worthy of the universal
Father, worthy of the august character in which God has now revealed
Himself to mankind. According to this measure, St Paul beseeches for the
Church, in the first instance, two gifts, which after all are
one,--viz., _the inward strength of the Holy Spirit_ (ver. 16), and _the
permanent indwelling of Christ_ (ver. 17). These gifts he asks on his
readers' behalf with a view to their gaining two further blessings,
which are also one,--viz., _the power to understand the Divine plan_
(ver. 18) as it has been expounded in this letter, and so _to know the
love of Christ_ (ver. 19). Still, beyond these there rises in the
distance a further end for man and the Church: _the reception of the
entire fulness of God_. Human desire and thought thus reach their limit;
they grasp at the infinite.
In this Chapter we will strive to follow the apostle's prayer to the end
of the eighteenth verse, where it arrives at its chief aim and touches
the main thought of the epistle, expressing the desire that all
believers may have power to realize the full scope of the salvation of
Christ in which they participate.
Let us pause for a moment to join in St Paul's invocation: "I bow my
knees to the Father, of whom [not _the whole family_, but] _every
family_ in heaven and upon earth is named." The point of St Paul's
original phrase is somewhat lost in translation. The Greek word for
_family_ (_patria_) is based on that for _father_ (_pater_). A
distinguished father anciently gave his name to his descendants; and
this paternal name became the bond of family or tribal union, and the
title which ennobled the race. So we have "the sons of Israel," the
"sons of Aaron" or "of Korah"; and in Greek history, the Atridae, the
Alcmaeonidae, who form a family of many kindred households--a _clan_, or
_gens_, designated by their ancestral head. Thus Joseph (in Luke ii. 4)
is described as "being of the house and family [_patria_] of David"; and
Jesus is "the Son of David." Now Scripture speaks also of _sons of God_;
and these of two chief orders. There are those "in heaven," who form a
race distinct from ourselves in origin--divided, it may be, amongst
themselves into various orders and dwelling in their several homes in
the heavenly places.
Of these are "the sons of God" whom the Book of Job pictures appearing
in the Divine court and forming a "family in heaven." When Christ
promises (Luke xx. 36) that His disciples in their immortal state will
be "equal to the angels," because they are "sons of God," it is implied
that the angels are already and by birthright sons of God. Hence in
Hebrews xii. 22, 23 the angels are described as "the festal gathering
and assembly of _the firstborn_ enrolled in heaven." We, the sons of
Adam, with our many tribes and kindreds, through Jesus Christ our Elder
Brother constitute a new family of God. God becomes our Name-father, and
permits us also to call ourselves His sons through faith. Thus the
Church of believers in the Son of God constitutes the "family on earth
named" from the same Father who gave His name to the holy angels, our
wise and strong and brilliant elder brothers. They and we are alike
God's offspring. Heaven and earth are kindred spheres.
This passage gives to God's Fatherhood the same extension that chapter
i. 21 has given to Christ's Lordship. Every order of creaturely
intelligence acknowledges God for the Author of its being, and bows to
Christ as its sovereign Lord. In God's name of Father the entire wealth
of love that streams forth from Him through endless ages and unmeasured
worlds is hidden; and in the name of sons of God there is contained the
blessedness of all creatures that can bear His image.
* * * * *
I. What, therefore, shall the universal Father be asked to give to His
needy children upon earth? They have newly learnt His name; they are
barely recovered from the malady of their sin, fearful of trial, weak to
meet temptation. _Strength_ is their first necessity: "I bow my knees to
the Father of heaven and earth, praying that He may grant you, according
to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened by the entering of the
Spirit into your inward man." The apostle asked them in verse 13, in
view of the greatness of his own calling, to be of good courage on his
account; now he entreats God so to reveal to them His glory and to pour
into their hearts His Spirit, that no weakness and fear may remain in
them. The _strengthening_ of which he speaks is the opposite of the
_faintness of heart_, the failure of courage deprecated in verse 13.
Using the same word, the apostle bids the Corinthians "Quit themselves
like men, _be strong_" (1 Ep. xvi. 13). He desires for the Asian
believers a manful heart, the strength that meets battle and danger
without quailing.
The source of this strength is not in ourselves. We are to be
"strengthened _with_ [or _by_] _power_,"--by "the power" of God "working
in us" (ver. 20), the very same "power, exceeding great," that raised
Jesus our Lord from the dead (i. 19). This superhuman might of God
operating in men is always referred to the Holy Spirit: "by power made
strong," he says, "_through the Spirit_." Nothing is more familiar in
Scripture than the conception of the indwelling Spirit of God as the
source of moral strength. The special power that belongs to the gospel
Christ ascribes altogether to this cause. "Ye shall receive power," He
said to His disciples, "after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you."
Hence is derived the vigour of a strong faith, the valour of the good
soldier of Christ Jesus, the courage of the martyrs, the cheerful and
indomitable patience of multitudes of obscure sufferers for
righteousness' sake. There is a great truth expressed when we describe a
brave and enterprising man as a _man of spirit_. All high and commanding
qualities of soul come from this invisible source. They are
inspirations. In the human will, with its _vis vivida_, its elasticity
and buoyancy, its steadfastness and resolved purpose, is the highest
type of force and the image of the almighty Will. When that will is
animated and filled with "the Spirit," the man so possessed is the
embodiment of an inconceivable power. Firm principle, hope and
constancy, self-mastery, superiority to pleasure and pain,--all the
elements of a noble courage are proper to the man of the Spirit. Such
power is not neutralized by our infirmities; it asserts itself under
their limiting conditions and makes them its contributories. "My grace
is sufficient for thee," said Christ to His disabled servant; "for
power is perfected in weakness." In privation and loneliness, in old age
and bodily decay, the strength of God in the human spirit shines with
its purest lustre. Never did St Paul rise to such a height of moral
ascendency as at the time when he was "smitten down" and all but
destroyed by persecution and affliction. "That the excellency of the
power," he says, "may be of God, and not from ourselves" (2 Cor. iv.
7-11).
The apostle points to "the inner man" as the seat of this invigoration,
thinking perhaps of its secrecy. While the world buffets and dismays the
Christian, new vigour and joy are infused into his soul. The surface
waters and summer brooks of comfort fail; but there opens in the heart a
spring fed by the river of life proceeding from the throne of God.
Beneath the toil-worn frame, the mean attire and friendless condition of
the prisoner Paul--a mark for the world's scorn--there lives a strength
of thought and will mightier than the empire of the Caesars, a power of
the Spirit that is to dominate the centuries to come. Of this omnipotent
power dwelling in the Church of God, the apostle prays that every one of
his readers may partake.
II. Parallel to the first petition, and in substance identical with it,
is the second: "that the Christ may make His dwelling through faith in
your hearts." Such, it seems to us, is the relation of verses 16 and 17.
Christ's residence in the heart is to be viewed neither as the result,
nor the antecedent of the strength given by the Spirit to the inward
man: the two are simultaneous; they are the same things seen in a
varying light.
We observe in this prayer the same vein of Trinitarian thought which
marks the doxology of chapter i., and other leading passages in this
epistle.[94] The Father, the Spirit, and the Christ are unitedly the
object of the apostle's devout supplication.
As in the previous clause, the verb of verse 17 bears emphasis and
conveys the point of St Paul's entreaty; he asks that "the Christ may
_take up His abode_,--may _settle_ in your hearts." The word signifies
to _set up one's house_ or _make one's home_ in a place, by way of
contrast with a temporary and uncertain sojourn (comp. ii. 19). The same
verb in Colossians ii. 9 asserts that in Christ "_dwells_ all the
fulness of the Godhead"; and in Colossians i. 19 it declares, used in
the same tense as here, how it was God's "pleasure that all the fulness
should _make its dwelling_ in Him" now raised from the dead, who had
emptied and humbled Himself to fulfil the purpose of the Father's love.
So it is desired that Christ should take His seat within us. He is never
again to stand at the door and knock, nor to have a doubtful and
disputed footing in the house. Let the Master come in, and claim His
own. Let Him become the heart's fixed tenant and full occupier. Let Him,
if He will thus condescend, make Himself at home within us and there
rest in His love. For He promised: "If any man love me, my Father will
love him; and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."
And "_the_ Christ," not Christ alone. Why does the apostle say this?
There is a reason for the definite article, as we have found
elsewhere.[95] The apostle is asking for his Asian brethren something
beyond that possession of Christ which belongs to every true
Christian,--more even than the permanence and certainty of this
indwelling indicated by the verb. "The Christ" is Christ in the
significance of His _name_. It is Christ not only possessed, but
understood,--Christ realized in the import of His work, in the light of
His relationship to the Father and the Spirit, and to men. It is the
Christ of the Church and the ages--known and accepted for all this--that
St Paul would fain have dwelling in the heart of each of his Gentile
disciples. He is endeavouring to raise them to an adequate comprehension
of the greatness of the Redeemer's person and offices; he longs to have
their minds possessed by his own views of Christ Jesus the Lord.
_The heart_, in the language of the Bible, never denotes the emotional
nature by itself. The antithesis of "heart and head," the divorce of
feeling and understanding in our modern speech is foreign to Scripture.
The heart is our interior, conscious self--thought, feeling, will in
their personal unity. It needs the whole Christ to fill and rule the
whole heart,--a Christ who is the Lord of the intellect, the Light of
the reason, no less than the Master of the feelings and desires.
The difference in significance between "Christ" or "Christ Jesus" and
"the Christ" in such a sentence as this, is not unlike the difference
between "Queen Victoria" and "the Queen." The latter phrase brings Her
Majesty before us in the grandeur and splendour of her Queenship. We
think of her vast dominion, of her line of royal and famous ancestry, of
her beneficent and memorable reign. So, to know the Christ is to
apprehend Him in the height of His Godhead, in the breadth of His
humanity, in the plenitude of His nature and His powers. And this is the
object to which the teaching and the prayers of St Paul for the Churches
at the present time are directed. Understanding in this larger sense the
indwelling of the Christ for which he prays, we see how naturally his
supplication expands into the "height and depth" of the ensuing verse.
But however large the mental conception of Christ that St Paul desires
to impart to us, it is to be grasped "through faith." All real
understanding and appropriation of Christ, the simplest and the most
advanced, come by this channel,--through the faith of the heart in which
knowledge, will and feeling blend in that one act of trustful
apprehension of the truth concerning Jesus Christ by which the soul
commits itself to Him.
How much is contained in this petition of the apostle that we need to
ask for ourselves, Christ Jesus dwells now as then in the hearts of all
who love Him. But how little do we know our heavenly Guest! how poor a
Christ is ours, compared to the Christ of Paul's experience! how slight
and empty a word is His name to multitudes of those who bear it! If men
have once attained a sense of His salvation, and are satisfied of their
interest in His atonement and their right to hope for eternal life
through Him, their minds are at rest. They have accepted Christ and
received what He has to give them; they turn their attention to other
things. They do not love Christ enough to study Him. They have other
mental interests,--scientific, literary, political or industrial; but
the knowledge of Christ has no intellectual attraction for them. With St
Paul's passionate ardour, the ceaseless craving of his mind to "know
Him," these complacent believers have no sympathy whatever. This, they
think, belongs only to a few, to men of metaphysical bias or of
religious genius like the great apostle. Theology is regarded as a
subject for specialists. The laity, with a lamentable and disastrous
neglect, leave the study of Christian doctrine to the ministry. The
Christ cannot take His due place in His people's heart, He will not
reveal to them the wealth of His glory, while they know so little and
care to know so little of Him. How many can be found, outside the ranks
of the ordained, that make a sacrifice of other favourite pursuits to
meditate on Christ? what prosperous merchant, what active man of affairs
is there who will spare an hour each day from his other gains "for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord"?--"If at the
present time the religious life of the Church is languid, and if in its
enterprises there is little of audacity and vehemence, a partial
explanation is to be found in that decline of intellectual interest in
the contents of the Christian Faith which has characterized the last
hundred or hundred and fifty years of our history."[96]
It is a knowledge that when pursued grows upon the mind without limit.
St Paul, who knew so much, for that reason felt that all he had attained
was but in the bud and beginning. "The Christ" is a subject infinite as
nature, large and wide as history. With our enlarged apprehension of
Him, the heart enlarges in capacity and moral power. Not unfrequently,
the study of Christ in Scripture and experience gives to unlettered men,
to men whose mind before their conversion was dull and uninformed, an
intellectual quality, a power of discernment and apprehension that
trained scholars might envy. By such thoughtful, constant fellowship
with Him the vigour of spirit and courage in affliction are sustained,
that the apostle first asked from God on behalf of his anxious Gentile
friends.
III. The prayers now offered might suffice, if St Paul were concerned
only for the individual needs of those to whom he writes and their
personal advancement in the new life. But it is otherwise. _The Church_
fills his mind. Its lofty claims at every turn he has pressed on our
attention. This is God's holy temple and the habitation of His Spirit;
it is the body in which Christ dwells, the bride that He has chosen. The
Church is the object that draws the eyes of heaven; through it the
angelic powers are learning undreamed-of lessons of God's wisdom. Round
this centre the apostle's intercession must needs revolve. When he asks
for his readers added strength of heart and a richer fellowship with
Christ, it is in order that they may be the better able to enter into
the Church's life and to apprehend God's great designs for mankind.
This object so much absorbs the writer's thoughts and has been so
constantly in view from the outset, that it does not occur to him, in
verse 18, to say precisely _what_ that is whose "breadth and length and
height and depth" the readers are to measure. The vast building stands
before us and needs not to be named; we have only not to look away from
it, not to forget what we have been reading all this time. It is _God's
plan for the world in Christ_; it is the purpose of the ages realized in
the building of His Church. This conception was so impressive to the
original readers and has held their attention so closely since the
apostle unfolded it in the course of the second chapter, that they would
have no difficulty in supplying the ellipsis which has given so much
trouble to the commentators since.
If we are asked to interpret the four several magnitudes that are
assigned to this building of God, we may say with Hofmann[97]: "It
stretches _wide_ over all the world of the nations, east and west. In
its _length_, it reaches through all time unto the end of things. In
_depth_, it penetrates to the region where the faithful sleep in death
[comp. iv. 9]. And it rises to heaven's _height_, where Christ lives."
In the like strain Bernardine à Piconio, most genial and spiritual of
Romanist interpreters: "_Wide_ as the furthest limits of the inhabited
world, _long_ as the ages of eternity through which God's love to His
people will endure, _deep_ as the abyss of misery and ruin from which He
has raised us, _high_ as the throne of Christ in the heavens where He
has placed us." Such is the commonwealth to which we belong, such the
dimensions of this city of God built on the foundation of the
apostles,--"that lieth four-square."
Do we not need to be _strong_--to "gain full strength," as the apostle
prays, in order to grasp in its substance and import this immense
revelation and to handle it with practical effect? Narrowness is
feebleness. The greatness of the Church, as God designed it, matches the
greatness of the Christ Himself. It needs a firm spiritual faith, a
far-seeing intelligence, and a charity broad as the love of Christ to
comprehend this mystery. From many believing eyes it is still hidden.
Alas for our cold hearts, our weak and partial judgements! alas for the
materialism that infects our Church theories, and that limits God's free
grace and the sovereign action of His Spirit to visible channels and
ministrations "wrought by hand." Those who call themselves Churchmen
and Catholics contradict the titles they boast when they bar out their
loyal Christian brethren from the covenant rights of faith, when they
deny churchly standing to communities with a love to Christ as warm and
fruitful in good works, a gospel as pure and saving, a discipline at
least as faithful as their own. Who are we that we dare to forbid those
who are doing mighty works in the name of Christ, because they follow
not with us? When we are fain to pull down every building of God that
does not square with our own ecclesiastical plans, we do not apprehend
"what is the breadth!"
We draw close about us the walls of Christ's wide house, as if to
confine Him in our single chamber. We call our particular communion "the
Church," and the rest "the sects"; and disfranchise, so far as our word
and judgement go, a multitude of Christ's freemen and God's elect, our
fellow-citizens in the New Jerusalem--saints, some of them, whose feet
we well might deem ourselves unworthy to wash. A Church theory that
leads to such results as these, that condemns Nonconformists to be
strangers in the House of God, is self-condemned. It will perish of its
own chillness and formalism. Happily, many of those who hold the
doctrine of exclusive Roman or Anglican, or Baptist or Presbyterian
legitimacy, are in feeling and practice more catholic than in their
creed.
"With _all_ the saints" the Asian Christians are called to enter into St
Paul's wider view of God's work in the world. For this is a collective
idea, to be shared by many minds and that should sway all Christian
hearts at once. It is the collective aim of Christianity that St Paul
wants his readers to understand, its mission to save humanity and to
reconstruct the world for a temple of God. This is a calling for _all
the saints_; but only for _saints_,--for men devoted to God and renewed
by His Spirit. It was "revealed to His _holy_ apostles and prophets"
(ver. 5); and it needs men of the same quality for its bearers and
interpreters.
But the first condition for this largeness of sympathy and aim is that
stated at the beginning of the verse, thrown forward there with an
emphasis that almost does violence to grammar: "in love being fast
rooted and grounded." Where Christ dwells abidingly in the heart, love
enters with Him and becomes the ground of our nature, the basis on which
our thought and action rest, the soil in which our purposes grow. _Love_
is the mark of the true Broad Churchman in all Churches, the man to whom
Christ is all things and in all, and who, wherever he sees a Christlike
man, loves him and counts him a brother.
When such love to Christ fills all our hearts and penetrates to their
depths, we shall have strength to shake off our prejudices, strength to
master our intellectual difficulties and limitations. We shall have the
courage to adopt Christ's simple rule of fellowship: "Whosoever shall
do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister,
and mother."
FOOTNOTES:
[94] See ch. i. 17, ii. 18, 22, and especially ch. iv. 4-6.
[95] See pp. 47, 83, 169.
[96] _Lectures on Ephesians_, pp. 235-8. No one who has read Dr. R. W.
Dale's noble Lectures on this epistle, can write upon the same subject
without being deeply in his debt.
[97] _Der Brief Pauli an die Epheser_, p. 138. Hofmann is one of those
writers from whom one constantly learns, although one must as often
differ from him as agree with him.
CHAPTER XV.
_KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE._
"[I pray] that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong
to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and
height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth
knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God."--EPH.
iii. 17-19.
We were compelled to pause before reaching the end of the apostle's
comprehensive prayer. But we must not let slip the thread of its
connexion. Verse 19 is the necessary sequel and counterpart of verse 18.
The catholic love which embraces "all the saints" and "comprehends" in
its wide dimensions the extent of the Redeemer's kingdom, admits us to a
deeper knowledge of Christ's own love. The breadth and length, the
height and depth of the work of Christ in men and the ages give us a
worthier conception of the love that inspired and sustains it. "In the
Church" at once "and in Christ Jesus" God's glory is revealed. Our
Church views react upon our views of Christ and our sense of His love.
Bigotry and exclusiveness towards His brethren chill the heart towards
Himself. Our sectarianism stints and narrows our apprehensions of the
Divine grace.
* * * * *
I. St Paul prays that we may "_know_ [not _comprehend_] the love of
Christ"; for it "passes knowledge." Amongst the Greek words denoting
mental activity, that here employed signifies knowledge in the
acquisition rather than possession--_getting to know_. Hence it is
rightly, and often used of things Divine that "we know in part," our
knowledge of which falls short of the reality while it is growing up to
it. Thus understood, the contradiction of the apostle's wish disappears.
We know the unknowable, just as we "clearly see the invisible things of
God" (Rom. i. 20). The idea is conveyed of an object that invites our
observation and pursuit, but which at every step outreaches
apprehension, each discovery revealing depths within it unperceived
before. Such was the knowledge of Christ to the soul of St Paul. To the
Philippians the aged apostle writes: "I do not reckon myself to have
apprehended Him. I am in pursuit! I forget the past; I press on eagerly
to the goal. I have but one object in view and sacrifice everything for
it,--that I may _win Christ_!"
In all the mystery of Christ, there is nothing more wonderful and past
finding out than His love. For nigh thirty years Paul has been living in
daily fellowship with the love of Christ, his heart full of it and all
the powers of his mind bent upon its comprehension: he cannot understand
it yet! At this moment it amazes him more than ever.
Great as the Christian community is, and large as the place and part
assigned to it by this epistle, that is still finite and a creation of
time. The apostle's doctrine of the Church is not beyond the
comprehension of a mind sufficiently loving and enlightened. But though
we had followed him so far and had well and truly apprehended the
mystery he has revealed to us, the love of Christ is still beyond us.
Our principles of judgement and standards of comparison fail us when
applied to this subject. Human love has in many instances displayed
heroic qualities; it can rise to a divine height of purity and
tenderness; but its noblest sacrifices will not bear to be put by the
side of the cross of Christ. No picture of that love but shows poor and
dull compared with the reality; no eloquence lavished upon it but lowers
the theme. Our logical framework of doctrine fails to enclose and hold
it; the love of Christ defies analysis and escapes from all our
definitions. Those who know the world best, who have ranged through
history and philosophy and the life of living men and have measured most
generously the possibilities of human nature, are filled with a
wondering reverence when they come to know the love of Christ. "Never
man spake like this man," said one; but verily never man loved like
Jesus Christ. He expects to be loved more than father or mother; for His
love surpasses theirs. We cannot describe His love, nor delineate its
features as Paul saw them when he wrote these lines. Go to the Gospels,
and behold it as it lived and wrought for men. Stand and watch at the
cross. Then if the eyes of your heart are open, you will see the great
sight--the love that passeth knowledge.
When, turning from Christ Himself in His own person and presence, before
whom praise is speechless, we contemplate the manifestations of His love
to mankind; when we consider that its fountain lies in the bosom of the
Eternal; when we trace its footsteps prepared from the world's
foundation, and perceive it choosing a people for its own and making its
promises and raising up its heralds and forerunners; when at last it can
hide and refrain itself no longer, but comes forth incarnate with lowly
heart to take our infirmities and carry our diseases--yea, to put away
our sin by the sacrifice of itself; when we behold that same Love which
the hands of men had slain, setting up its cross for the sign of its
covenant of peace with mankind, and enthroned in the majesty of heaven
waiting even as a bridegroom joyously for the time when its ransomed
shall be brought home, redeemed from iniquity and gathered unto itself
from all the kindreds of the earth; and when we see how this mystery of
love, in its sufferings and glories and its deep-laid plans for all the
creatures, engages the ardent study and sympathy of the heavenly
principalities,--in view of these things, who can but feel himself
unworthy to know the love of Christ or to speak one word on its behalf?
Are we not ready to say like Peter, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful
man, O Lord"?
This is a revelation that searches every man's soul who looks into it.
What is there so confounding to our reason and our human
self-complacency as the discovery: "He loved me; He gave Himself up for
me"--that He should do it, and should _need_ to do it! It was this that
went to Saul's heart, that gave the mortal blow to the Jewish pride in
him, strong as it was with the growth of centuries. The bearer of this
grace and the ambassador of Christ's love to the Gentiles, he feels
himself to be "less than the least of all the saints." We carry in our
hands to show to men a heavenly light, which throws our own unloveliness
into dark relief.
II. The _love of Christ_ connects together, in the apostle's thoughts,
_the greatness of the Church_ and _the fulness of God_. The two former
conceptions--Christ's love and the Church's greatness--go together in
our minds; knowing them, we are led onwards to the realization of the
last.
The "fulness [_pleroma_] of God," and the "filling" (or "completing") of
believers in Christ are ideas characteristic of this group of epistles.
The first of these expressions we have discussed already in its
connexion with Christ, in chapter i. 23; we shall meet with it again as
"the fulness of Christ" in chapter iv. 13. The phrase before us is, in
substance, identical with that of the latter text. Christ contains the
Divine plenitude; He embodies it in His person, and conveys it to the
world by His redemption. St Paul desires for the Asian Christians that
they may receive it; it is the ultimate mark of his prayer. He wishes
them to gain the total sum of all that God communicates to men. He would
have them "filled"--their nature made complete both in its individual
and social relations, their powers of mind and heart brought into full
exercise, their spiritual capacities developed and replenished--"filled
unto all the plenitude of God."
This is no humanistic or humanitarian ideal. The mark of Christian
completeness is on a different and higher plane than any that is set up
by culture. The ideal Christian is a greater man than the ideal citizen
or artist or philosopher: he may include within himself any or all of
these characters, but he transcends them. He may conform to none of
these types, and yet be a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Our race cannot
rest in any perfection that stops short of "the fulness of God." When we
have received all that God has to give in Christ, when the community of
men is once more a family of God and the Father's will is done on earth
as in heaven, then and not before will our life be complete. That is the
goal of humanity; and the civilization that does not lead to it is a
wandering from the way. "You are complete in Christ," says the apostle.
The progress of the ages since confirms the saying.
The apostle prays that his readers may know the love of Christ. This is
a part of the Divine plenitude; nor is there anything in it deeper. But
there is more to know. When he asks for "_all_ the fulness," he thinks
of other elements of revelation in which we are to participate. God's
_wisdom_, His _truth_, His _righteousness_, along with His _love_ in its
manifold forms,--all the qualities that, in one word, go to make up His
_holiness_, are communicable and belong to the image stamped by the Holy
Spirit on the nature of God's children. "Ye shall be holy, for I am
holy" is God's standing command to His sons. So Jesus bids His
disciples, "Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." St Paul's
prayer "is but another way of expressing the continuous aspiration and
effort after holiness which is enjoined in our Lord's precept"
(Lightfoot).
While the holiness of God gathers up into one stream of white radiance
the revelation of His character, "the fulness of God" spreads it abroad
in its many-coloured richness and variety. The term accords with the
affluence of thought that marks this supplication. The might of the
Spirit that strengthens weak human hearts, the greatness of the Christ
who is the guest of our faith, His wide-spreading kingdom and the vast
interests it embraces and His own love surpassing all,--these objects of
the soul's desire issue from the fulness of God; and they lead us in
pursuing them, like streams pouring into the ocean, back to the eternal
Godhead. The mediatorial kingdom has its end; Christ, when He has "put
down all rule and authority," will at last "yield it up to His God and
Father"; and "the Son Himself will be subjected to Him that put all
things under Him, that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. xv. 24-28). This
is the crown of the Redeemer's mission, the end which His love to the
Father seeks. But when that end is reached, and the soul with immediate
vision beholds the Father's glory, the Plenitude will be still new and
unexhausted; the soul will then begin its deepest lessons in the
knowledge of God which is life eternal.
* * * * *
St Paul is conscious of the extreme boldness of the prayer he has just
uttered. But he protests that, instead of going beyond God's purposes,
it falls short of them. This assurance rises, in verses 20 and 21, into
a rapture of praise. It is a cry of exultation, a true song of triumph,
that breaks from the apostle's lips:--
"Now unto Him that is able to do above all things,--
Yea, far exceedingly beyond what we ask or think,--
According to the power that worketh in us:
To Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus,
Unto all generations of the age of the ages.--Amen!"
(vv. 20, 21).
Praise soars higher than prayer. When St Paul has reached in
supplication the summit of his desires, he sees the plenitude of God's
gifts still by a whole heaven outreaching him. But it is only from these
mountain-tops hardly won in the exercise of prayer, in their still air
and tranquil light, that the boundless realms of promise are visible.
God's giving surpasses immeasurably our thought and asking; but there
must be the asking and the thinking for it to surpass. He puts always
more into our hand and better things than we expected--when the
expectant hand is reached out to Him.
Man's desires will never overtake God's bounty. Hearing the prayer just
offered, unbelief will say: "You have asked too much. It is preposterous
to expect that raw Gentile converts, scarcely raised above their heathen
debasement, should enter into these exalted notions of yours about
Christ and the Church and should be filled with the fulness of God!
Prayer must be rational and within the bounds of possibility, offered
'with the understanding' as well as 'with the spirit,' or it becomes
mere extravagance."--The apostle gives a twofold answer to this kind of
scepticism. He appeals to the Divine omnipotence. "With men," you say,
"this is impossible." Humanly speaking, St Paul's Gentile disciples were
incapable of any high spiritual culture; they were unpromising material,
with "not many wise or many noble" amongst them, some of them before
their conversion stained with infamous vices. Who is to make saints and
godlike men out of such human refuse as this! But "with God," as Jesus
said, "all things are possible." _Faex urbis, lux orbis_: "the scum of
the city is made the light of the world!" The force at work upon the
minds of these degraded pagans--slaves, thieves, prostitutes, as some of
them had been--is the love of Christ; it is the power of the Holy Ghost,
the might of the strength which raises the dead to life eternal.
Let us therefore praise Him "who is able to do beyond all
things"--beyond the best that His best servants have wished and striven
for. Had men ever asked or thought of such a gift to the world as Jesus
Christ? Had the prophets foreseen one tenth part of His greatness? In
their boldest dreams did the disciples anticipate the wonders of the
day of Pentecost and of the later miracles of grace accomplished by
their preaching? How far exceedingly had these things already surpassed
the utmost that the Church asked or thought.
St Paul's reliance is not upon the "ability" alone, upon the abstract
omnipotence of God. The force upon which he counts is lodged in the
Church, and is in visible and constant operation. "According to the
power _that worketh in us_" he expects these vast results to be
achieved. This power is the same as that he invoked in verse 16,--the
might of the Spirit of God in the inward man. It is the spring of
courage and joy, the source of religious intelligence (i. 17, 18) and
personal holiness, the very power that raised the dead body of Jesus to
life, as it will raise hereafter all the holy dead to share His
immortality (Rom. viii. 11). St Paul was conscious at this time in a
remarkable degree of the supernatural energy working within his own
mind. It is of this that he speaks to the Colossians, in language very
similar to that of our text, when he says: "I toil hard, striving
according to His energy that works in me in power." As he labours for
the Church in writing that epistle, he is sensible of another Power
acting within his spirit and distinguished from it by his consciousness,
which tasks his faculties to the utmost to follow its dictates and
express its meaning.
The presence of this mysterious power of the Spirit St Paul constantly
felt when engaged in prayer,--"The Spirit helpeth our infirmities"; He
"makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered" (Rom.
viii. 26, 27). On this point the experience of earnest Christian
believers in all ages confirms that of St Paul. The sublime prayer to
which he has just given utterance, is not his own. There is more in it
than the mere Paul, a weak man, would have dared to ask or think. He who
inspires the prayer will fulfil it. The Searcher of hearts knows better
than the man who conceived it, infinitely better than we who are trying
for our own help to interpret it, all that this intercession means. God
will hear the pleading of His Spirit. The Power that prompts our
prayers, and the Power that grants their answer are the same. The former
is limited in its action by human infirmity; the latter knows no limit.
Its only measure is the fulness of God. To Him who works in us all good
desires, and works far beyond us to bring our good desires to good
effect, be the glory of all for ever!
In such measure, then, shall glory be to God "in the Church and in
Christ Jesus." We see how the Church takes up the foreground of Paul's
horizon. This epistle has taught us that God desires far more than our
individual salvation, however complete that might be. Christ came not to
save men only, but mankind. It is "in the Church" that God's consummate
glory will be seen. No man in his fragmentary self-hood, no number of
men in their separate capacity can conceivably attain "unto the fulness
of God." It will need all humanity for that,--to reflect the full-orbed
splendour of Divine revelation. Isolated and divided from each other, we
render to God a dimmed and partial glory. "With one accord, with one
mouth" we are called to "glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ." Wherefore the apostle bids us "receive one another, as Christ
also received us, to the glory of God" (Rom. xv. 6, 7).
The Church, being the creation of God's love in Christ and the
receptacle of His communicative fulness, is the vessel formed for His
praise. Her worship is a daily tribute to the Divine majesty and bounty.
The life of her people in the world, her witness for Christ and warfare
against sin, her ceaseless ministries to human sorrow and need proclaim
the Divine goodness, righteousness and truth. From the heavenly places
where she dwells with Christ, she reflects the light of God's glory and
makes it shine into the depths of evil at her feet. It was the Church's
voice that St John heard in heaven as "the voice of a great multitude,
and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders,
saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigneth!" Each
soul new-born into the fellowship of faith adds another note to make up
the multitudinous harmony of the Church's praise to God.
Nor does the Church by herself alone render this praise and honour unto
God. The display of God's manifold wisdom in His dealings with mankind
is drawing admiration, as St Paul believed, from the celestial spheres
(ver. 10). The story of earth's redemption is the theme of endless songs
in heaven. All creation joins in concert with the redeemed from the
earth, and swells the chorus of their triumph. "I heard," says John in
another place, "a voice of many angels round about the throne, and the
living creatures, and the elders, saying with a great voice, Worthy is
the Lamb that hath been slain! And every created thing which is in the
heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all
things that are in them, heard I saying:
Unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb,
Be blessing and honour and glory and dominion--
For ever and ever."
But the Church is the centre of this tribute of the universe to God and
to His Christ.
_The Church and Christ Jesus_ are wedded in this doxology, even as they
were in the foregoing supplication (vv. 18, 19). In the Bride and the
Bridegroom, in the Redeemed and the Redeemer, in the many brethren and
in the Firstborn is this perfect glory to be paid to God. "In the midst
of the congregation" Christ the Son of man sings evermore the Father's
praise (Heb. ii. 12). No glory is paid to God by men which is not due to
Him; nor does He render to the Father any tribute in which His people
are without a share. "The glory which thou hast given me I have given
them," said Jesus to the Father praying for His Church, "that they may
be one, even as we are one" (John xvii. 22). Our union with each other
in Christ is perfected by our union with Him in realizing the Father's
glory, in receiving and manifesting the fulness of God.
The duration of the glory to be paid to God by Christ and His Church is
expressed by a cumulative phrase in keeping with the tenor of the
passage to which it belongs: "unto all generations of the age of the
ages." It reminds us of "the ages to come" through which the apostle in
chapter ii. 7 foresaw that God's mercy to his own age would be
celebrated. It carries our thoughts along the vista of the future, till
time melts into eternity. When the apostle desires that God's praise may
resound in the Church "unto _all generations_," he no longer supposes
that the mystery of God may be finished speedily as men count years. The
history of mankind stretches before his gaze into its dim futurity. The
successive "generations" gather themselves into that one consummate
"age" of the kingdom of God, the grand cycle in which all "the ages" are
contained. With its completion time itself is no more. Its swelling
current, laden with the tribute of all the worlds and all their
histories, reaches the eternal ocean.
The end comes: God is all in all. At this furthest horizon of thought,
Christ and His own are seen together rendering to God unceasing glory.
_THE EXHORTATION._
CHAPTER iv. 1--vi. 20.
_ON CHURCH LIFE._
CHAPTER iv. 1-16.
"It is good we return unto the ancient bond of unity in the Church
of God, which was _one faith_, _one baptism_, and not _one
hierarchy_, _one discipline_; and that we observe the league of
Christians, as it was penned by our Saviour Christ, which is in
substance of doctrine this: _He that is not with us is against us_;
and in things indifferent and but of circumstance this: _He that is
not against us is with us_."--LORD BACON: _Certain Considerations
touching the better Pacification and Edification of the Church of
England_, addressed to King James I.
CHAPTER XVI.
_THE FUNDAMENTAL UNITIES._
"I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily
of the calling wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness and
meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; giving
diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
"There is one body, and one Spirit,
Even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling;
One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
One God and Father of all,
Who is over all, and through all, and in all."
EPH. iv. 1-6.
This Encyclical of St Paul to the Churches of Asia is the most formal
and deliberate of his writings since the great epistle to the Romans. In
entering upon its hortatory and practical part we are reminded of the
transition from doctrine to exhortation in that epistle. Here as in
Romans xi., xii. the apostle's theological teaching, brought with
measured steps to its conclusion, has been followed by an act of worship
expressing the profound and holy joy which fills his spirit as he views
the purposes of God thus displayed in the gospel and the Church. In this
exalted mood, as one sitting in heavenly places with Christ Jesus, St
Paul surveys the condition of his readers and addresses himself to their
duties and necessities. His homily, like his argument, is inwoven with
the golden thread of devotion; and the smooth flow of the epistle
breaks ever and again into the music of thanksgiving.
The apostle resumes the words of self-description dropped in chapter
iii. 1. He appeals to his readers with pathetic dignity: "I the prisoner
in the Lord"; and the expression gathers new solemnity from that which
he has told us in the last chapter of the mystery and grandeur of his
office. He is "_the_ prisoner"--the one whose bonds were known through
all the Churches and manifest even in the imperial palace (Phil. i.
12-14). It was "in the Lord" that he wore this heavy chain, brought upon
him in Christ's service and borne joyfully for His people's sake. He is
now a martyr apostle. If his confinement detained him from his Gentile
flock, at least it should add sacred force to the message he was able to
convey. The tone of the apostle's letters at this time shows that he was
sensible of the increased consideration which the afflictions of the
last few years had given to him in the eyes of the Church. He is
thankful for this influence, and makes good use of it.
His first and main appeal to the Asian brethren, as we should expect
from the previous tenor of the letter, is an exhortation to _unity_. It
is an obvious conclusion from the doctrine of the Church that he has
taught them. The "oneness of the Spirit" which they must "earnestly
endeavour to preserve," is the unity which their possession of the Holy
Spirit of itself implies. "Having access in one Spirit to the Father,"
the antipathetic Jewish and Gentile factors of the Church are
reconciled; "in the Spirit" they "are builded together for a habitation
of God" (ii. 18-22). This unity when St Paul wrote was an actual and
visible fact, despite the violent efforts of the Judaizers to destroy
it. The "right hands of fellowship" exchanged between himself and
James, Peter, and John at the conference of Jerusalem were a witness
thereto (Gal. ii. 7-10). But it was a union that needed for its
maintenance the efforts of right-thinking men and sons of peace
everywhere. St Paul bids all who read his letter help to keep Christ's
peace in the Churches.
The conditions for such pursuing and preserving of peace in the fold of
Christ are briefly indicated in verses 1 and 2. There must be--
(1) _A due sense of the dignity of our Christian calling_: "Walk
worthily," he says, "of the calling where with you were called." This
exhortation, of course, includes much besides in its scope; it is the
preface to all the exhortations of the three following chapters, the
basis, in fact, of every worthy appeal to Christian men; but it bears in
the first instance, and pointedly, upon Church unity. Levity of temper,
low and poor conceptions of religion militate against the catholic
spirit; they create an atmosphere rife with causes of contention.
"Whereas there is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal and
walk as men?"
(2) Next to low-mindedness amongst the foes of unity comes _ambition_:
"Walk with all lowliness of mind and meekness," he continues. Between
the low-minded and the lowly-minded there is a total difference. The man
_of lowly mind_ habitually feels his dependence as a creature and his
unworthiness as a sinner before God. This spirit nourishes in him a
wholesome self-distrust, and watchfulness over his temper and
motives.--The _meek_ man thinks as little of his personal claims, as the
humble man of his personal merits. He is willing to give place to others
where higher interests will not suffer, content to take the lowest room
and to be in men's eyes of no account. How many seeds of strife and
roots of bitterness would be destroyed, if this mind were in us all.
Self-importance, the love of office and power and the craving for
applause must be put away, if we are to recover and keep the unity of
the Spirit in the bond of peace.
(3) When St Paul adds "with longsuffering, forbearing one another in
love," he is opposing a cause of division quite different from the
last,--to wit, _impatience and resentfulness_. A high Christian ideal
and a strict self-judgement will render us more sensitive to wrong-doing
in the world around us. Unless tempered with abundant charity, they may
lead to harsh and one-sided censure. Gentle natures, reluctant to
condemn, are sometimes slow and difficult in forgiveness. Humbleness and
meekness are choice graces of the Spirit. But they are self-regarding
virtues at the best, and may be found in a cold nature that has little
of the patience which bears with men's infirmities, of the sympathetic
insight that discovers the good often lying close to their faults.
"Above all things"--above kindness, meekness, longsuffering,
forgivingness--"put on love, which is the bond of perfectness" (Col.
iii. 14). Love is the last word of St Paul's definition of the Christian
temper in verse 2; it is the sum and essence of all that makes for
Christian unity. In it lies a charm which can overcome both the lighter
provocations and the grave offences of human intercourse,--offences that
must needs arise in the purest society composed of infirm and sinful
men. "Bind thyself to thy brother. Those who are bound together in love,
bear all burdens lightly. Bind thyself to him, and him to thee. Both are
in thy power; for whomsoever I will, I may easily make my friend"
(Chrysostom).
Verses 1-3 exhibit the temper in which the unity of the Church is to be
maintained. Verses 4-6 set forth the basis upon which it rests. This
passage is a brief summary of Christian doctrine. It defines the
"foundation of the apostles and prophets" asserted in chapter ii.
20,--the groundwork of "every building" in God's holy temple, the
foundation upon which Paul's Gentile readers, along with the Jewish
saints, were growing into one holy temple in the Lord. Seven elements of
unity St Paul enumerates: one _body_, _Spirit_, _hope_; one _Lord_,
_faith_ and _baptism_; one _God and Father of all_. They form a chain
stretching from the Church on earth to the throne and being of the
universal Father in heaven.
Closely considered, we find that the seven unities resolve themselves
into three, centring in the names of the Divine Trinity--the Spirit, the
Lord, and the Father. The Spirit and the Lord are each accompanied by
two kindred uniting elements; while the one God and Father, placed
alone, in Himself forms a threefold bond to His creatures--by His
sovereign power, pervasive action, and immanent presence: "Who is over
all, and through all, and in all" (comp. i. 23).
The rhythm of expression in these verses suggests that they belonged to
some apostolic Christian song. Other passages in Paul's later epistles
betray the same character;[98] and we know from chapter v. 19 and
Colossians iii. 16 that the Pauline Church was already rich in psalmody.
This epistle shows that St Paul was touched with the poetic as well as
the prophetical afflatus. He expected his people to sing; and we see no
reason why he should not, like Luther and the Wesleys afterwards, have
taught them to do so by giving voice to the joy of the new-found faith
in "hymns and spiritual songs." These lines, we could fancy, belonged to
some chant sung in the Christian assemblies; they form a brief metrical
creed, the confession of the Church then and in all ages.
I. _One body_ there is, _and one Spirit_.
The former was a patent fact. Believers in Jesus Christ formed a single
body, the same in all essentials of religion, sharply distinguished from
their Jewish and their Pagan neighbours. Although the distinctions now
existing amongst Christians are vastly greater and more numerous, and
the boundaries between the Church and the world at many points are much
less visible, yet there is a true unity that binds together those "who
profess and call themselves Christians" throughout the world. As against
the multitudes of heathen and idolaters; as against Jewish and
Mohammedan rejecters of our Christ; as against atheists and agnostics
and all deniers of the Lord, we are "one body," and should feel and act
as one.
In missionary fields, confronting the overwhelming forces and horrible
evils of Paganism, the servants of Christ intensely realize their unity;
they see how trifling in comparison are the things that separate the
Churches, and how precious and deep are the things that Christians hold
in common. It may need the pressure of some threatening outward force,
the sense of a great peril hanging over Christendom to silence our
contentions and compel the soldiers of Christ to fall into line and
present to the enemy a united front. If the unity of believers in
Christ--their oneness of worship and creed, of moral ideal and
discipline--is hard to discern through the variety of human forms and
systems and the confusion of tongues that prevails, yet the unity is
there to be discerned; and it grows clearer to us as we look for it. It
is visible in the universal acceptance of Scripture and the primitive
creeds, in the large measure of correspondence between the different
Church standards of the Protestant communions, in our common Christian
literature, in the numerous alliances and combinations, local and
general, that exist for philanthropic and missionary objects, in the
increasing and auspicious comity of the Churches. The nearer we get to
the essentials of truth and to the experience of living Christian men,
the more we realize the existence of one body in the scattered limbs and
innumerable sects of Christendom.
There is "one body and one Spirit": one body because, and so far as
there is one Spirit. What is it constitutes the unity of our physical
frame? Outward attachment, mechanical juxtaposition go for nothing. What
I grasp in my hand or put between my lips is no part of _me_, any more
than if it were in another planet. The clothes I wear take the body's
shape; they partake of its warmth and movement; they give its outward
presentment. They are not of the body for all this. But the fingers that
clasp, the lips that touch, the limbs that move and glow beneath the
raiment,--these are the body itself; and everything belongs to it,
however slight in substance, or uncomely or unserviceable, nay, however
diseased and burdensome, that is vitally connected with it. The life
that thrills through nerve and artery, _the spirit_ that animates with
one will and being the whole framework and governs its ten thousand
delicate springs and interlacing cords,--it is this that makes _one
body_ of an otherwise inert and decaying heap of matter. Let the spirit
depart, it is a body no more, but a corpse. So with the body of Christ,
and its members in particular. Am I a living, integral part of the
Church, quickened by its Spirit? or do I belong only to the raiment and
the furniture that are about it? "If any man have not the Spirit of
Christ, he is none of His."
He who has the Spirit of Christ, will find a place within His body. The
Spirit of Jesus Christ is a communicative, sociable spirit. The child of
God seeks out his brethren; like is drawn to like, bone to bone and
sinew to its sinew in the building up of the risen body. By an instinct
of its life, the new-born soul forms bonds of attachment for itself to
the Christian souls nearest to it, to those amongst whom it is placed in
God's dispensation of grace. The ministry, the community through which
it received spiritual life and that travailed for its birth claim it by
a parental right that may not be disowned, nor at any time renounced
without loss and peril.
Where the Spirit of Christ dwells as a vitalizing, formative principle,
it finds or makes for itself a body. Let no man say: I have the spirit
of religion; I can dispense with forms. I need no fellowship with men; I
prefer to walk with God.--God will not walk with men who do not care to
walk with His people. He "loved the world"; and we must love it, or we
displease Him. "This commandment have we from Him, that he who loves God
love his brother also."
The oneness of communion amongst the people of Christ is governed by a
unity of aim: "Even as also you were called in _one hope_ of your
calling." Our fellowship has an object to realize, our calling a prize
to win. All Christian organization is directed to a practical end. The
old Pagan world fell to pieces because it was "without hope"; its
golden age was in the past. No society can endure that lives upon its
memories, or that contents itself with cherishing its privileges.
Nothing holds men together like work and hope. This gives energy,
purpose, progress to the fellowship of Christian believers. In this
imperfect and unsatisfying world, with the majority of our race still in
bondage to evil, it is idle for us to combine for any purpose that does
not bear on human improvement and salvation. The Church of Christ is a
society for the abolition of sin and death. That this will be
accomplished, that God's will shall be done on earth as in heaven, is
_the hope of our calling_. To this hope we "were called" by the first
summons of the gospel. "Repent," it cried, "for the kingdom of heaven is
at hand!"
For ourselves, in our personal quality, Christianity holds out a
splendid crown of life. It promises our complete restoration to the
image of God, the redemption of the body with the spirit from death, and
our entrance upon an eternal fellowship with Christ in heaven. This
hope, shared by us in common and affecting all the interests and
relationships of daily life, is the ground of our communion. The
Christian hope supplies to men, more truly and constantly than Nature in
her most exalted forms,
"The anchor of their purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of their heart, and soul
Of all their moral being."
Happy are the wife and husband, happy the master and servants, happy the
circle of friends who live and work together as "joint-heirs of the
grace of life." Well says Calvin here: "If this thought were fixed in
our minds, this law laid upon us, that the sons of God may no more
quarrel than the kingdom of heaven can be divided, how much more careful
we should be in cultivating brotherly goodwill! What a dread we should
have of dissensions, if we considered, as we ought to do, that those who
separate from their brethren, exile themselves from the kingdom of God."
But the hope of our calling is a hope for mankind,--nay, for the entire
universe. We labour for the regeneration of humanity. "We look for a new
heavens and earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness;" for the actual
gathering into one in Christ of all things in all worlds, as they are
already gathered in God's eternal plan. Now if it were merely a personal
salvation that we had to seek, Christian communion might appear to be an
optional thing, and the Church no more than a society for mutual
spiritual benefit. But seen in this larger light, Church membership is
of the essence of our calling. As children of the household of faith, we
are heirs to its duties with its possessions. We cannot escape the
obligations of our spiritual any more than of our natural birth. One
Spirit dwelling in each, one sublime ideal inspiring us and guiding all
our efforts, how shall we not be one body in the fellowship of Christ?
This hope of our calling it is our calling to breathe into the dead
world. Its virtue alone can dispel the gloom and discord of the age.
From the fountain of God's love in Christ springing up in the heart of
the Church, there shall pour forth
"One common wave of thought and joy,
Lifting mankind again!"
II. The first group of unities leads us to the second. If one Spirit
dwells within us, it is _one Lord_ who reigns over us. We have one hope
to work for; it is because we have _one faith_ to live by. A common
fellowship implies a common creed.
Thus Christ Jesus the Lord takes His place fourth in this list of
unities, between hope and faith, between the Spirit and the Father. He
is the centre of centres, the Lamb in the midst of the throne, the
Christ in the midst of the ages. United with Christ, we are at unity
with God and with our fellow-men. We find in Him the fulcrum of the
forces that are raising the world, the corner-stone of the temple of
humanity.
But let us mark that it is the one _Lord_ in whom we find our unity. To
think of Him as Saviour only is to treat Him as a means to an end. It is
to make ourselves the centre, not Christ. This is the secret of much of
the isolation and sectarianism of modern Churches. Individualism is the
negation of Church life. Men value Christ for what they can get from Him
for themselves. They do not follow Him and yield themselves up to Him,
for the sake of what He is. "Come unto me, all ye that are burdened, and
I will give you rest": they listen willingly so far. But when He goes on
to say "Take my yoke upon you," their ears are deaf. There is a subtle
self-seeking and self-pleasing even in the way of salvation.
From this springs the disloyalty, the want of affection for the Church,
the indifference to all Christian interests beyond the personal and
local, which is worse than strife; for it is death to the body of
Christ. The name of the "one Lord" silences party clamours and rebukes
the voices that cry, "I am of Apollos, I of Cephas." It recalls
loiterers and stragglers to the ranks. It bids each of us, in his own
station of life and his own place in the Church, serve the common cause
without sloth and without ambition.
Christ's Lordship over us for life and death is signified by our
_baptism_ in His name. We have received, most of us in infancy through
our parents' reverent care, the token of allegiance to the Lord Christ.
The baptismal water that He bade all nations receive from His apostles,
has been sprinkled upon you. Shall this be in vain? Or do you now, by
the faith of your heart in Christ Jesus the Lord, endorse the faith of
your parents and the Church exercised on your behalf? If so, your faith
saves you. Your obedience is at once accepted by the Lord to whom it is
tendered; and the sign of God's redemption of the race which greeted you
at your entrance into life, assumes for you all its significance and
worth. It is the seal upon your brow, now stamped upon your heart, of
your eternal covenant with Christ.
But it is the seal of a _corporate_ life in Him. Christian baptism is no
private transaction; it attests no mere secret vow passing between the
soul and its Saviour. "For in one Spirit we were all baptized _into one
body_, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made
to drink of one Spirit" (1 Cor. xii. 13). Our baptism is the sign of a
common faith and hope, and binds us at once to Christ and to His Church.
_One_ baptism there has been through all the ages since the ascending
Lord said to His disciples: "Go, make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit." The ordinance has been administered in different ways and
under varying regulations; but with few exceptions, it has been observed
from the beginning by every Christian community in fulfilment of the
word of Christ, and in acknowledgement of His dominion. Those who
insist on the sole validity of this or that mode or channel of
administration, recognize at least the intention of Churches baptizing
otherwise than themselves to honour the one Lord in thus confessing His
name; and so far admit that there is in truth "one baptism." Wherever
Christ's sacraments are observed with a true faith, they serve as
visible tokens of His rule.
In this rule lies the ultimate ground of union for men, and for all
creatures. Our fellowship in the faith of Christ is deep as the nature
of God; its blessedness rich as His love; its bonds strong and eternal
as His power.
III. The last and greatest of the unities still remains. Add to our
fellowship in the one Spirit and confession of the one Lord, our
adoption by the _one God and Father of all_.
To the Gentile converts of the Asian cities this was a new and
marvellous thought. "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians," they had been
used to shout; or haply, "Great is Aphrodité of the Pergamenes," or
"Bacchus of the Philadelphians." Great they knew was "Jupiter Best and
Greatest" of conquering Rome; and great the _numen_ of the Caesar, to
which everywhere in this rich and servile province shrines were rising.
Each city and tribe, each grove or fountain or sheltering hill had its
local _genius_ or _daimon_, requiring worship and sacrificial honours.
Every office and occupation, every function in life--navigation,
midwifery, even thieving--was under the patronage of its special deity.
These petty godships by their number and rivalries distracted the pious
heathen with continual fear lest one or other of them might not have
received due observance.
With what a grand simplicity the Christian conception of "the one God
and Father" rose above this vulgar pantheon, this swarm of motley
deities--some gay and wanton, some dark and cruel, some of supposed
beneficence, all infected with human passion and baseness--which filled
the imagination of the Graeco-Asiatic pagans. What rest there was for the
mind, what peace and freedom for the spirit in turning from such deities
to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Here is no jealous Monarch regarding men as tribute-payers, and needing
to be served by human hands. He is the Father of men, pitying us as His
children and giving us all things richly to enjoy. Our God is no local
divinity, to be honoured here but not there, tied to His temple and
images and priestly mediators; but the "one God and Father of all, who
is above all, and through all, and in all." This was the very God whom
the logic of Greek thought and the practical instincts of Roman law and
empire blindly sought. Through ages He had revealed Himself to the
people of Israel, who were now dispersed amongst the nations to bear His
light. At last He declared His full name and purpose to the world in
Jesus Christ. So the gods many and lords many have had their day. By His
manifestation the idols are utterly abolished. The proclamation of one
God and Father signifies the gathering of men into one family of God.
The one religion supplies the basis for one life in all the world.
God is _over all_, gathering all worlds and beings under the shadow of
His beneficent dominion. He is _through all_, and _in all_: an
Omnipresence of love, righteousness and wisdom, actuating the powers of
nature and of grace, inhabiting the Church and the heart of men. You
need not go far to seek Him; if you believe in Him, you are yourself His
temple.
FOOTNOTES:
[98] See ch. v. 14; 1 Tim. i. 17, ii. 5, 6, vi. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii.
11-13.
CHAPTER XVII.
_THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST._