he laid on the gift of the Holy Ghost as the central characteristic of
{39} Christianity. He was brought in contact with the twelve imperfect
disciples who had been baptized only with John the Baptist's baptism,
and had not so much as heard whether the Holy Ghost was given. St.
Paul baptized them anew with Christian baptism, and bestowed upon them
the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of his hands[41]. Then it
is recorded how he began his preaching as usual with the Jews in the
synagogue. The Jews of Asia Minor were regarded by the Jews of
Jerusalem as corrupted and Hellenized[42]. But at any rate they
exhibited the same antagonism to the preaching of Christianity as their
stricter brethren. Thus St. Paul, when he had given them their chance,
abandoned their synagogue and established himself in the lecture-room
of Tyrannus, where he taught for two years and more[43]. And this
became the centre of an evangelization which, even if St. Paul himself
did not visit other Asiatic towns, yet spread by the agency of his
companions over the whole of the Roman {40} province of Asia--to the
churches of the Lycus, Colossae, Laodicea, Hierapolis, and probably to
the rest of the 'seven churches' to which St. John wrote in his
Apocalypse.
Ephesus was full of superstitions of all sorts as would be expected,
and St. Paul's miracles were such as would not unnaturally have led the
magicians to regard him as a greater master in their own craft. So
among others the Jewish chief priest Sceva's seven sons began to use
the central name of Paul's preaching as a new and most efficient
formula for exorcism. 'We adjure thee by Jesus whom Paul preaches.'
But it is frequently noticeable that St. Paul refused to allow himself
to use superstition as a handmaid of religion. The providential
disaster which befell these exorcists gave St. Paul an opportunity of
striking an effective blow where it was most needed against exorcism
and magic. The Christian converts came and confessed their
participation in the black arts, and burnt their books of incantations,
in spite of their value. The whole transaction must have impressed
vividly in the minds of the Ephesians the contrast between Christianity
and superstition.
St. Paul had already encountered opposition as well as success at
Ephesus, for when, writing {41} from Ephesus, he speaks to the
Corinthians[44] of having 'fought with beasts' there, the reference is
probably to what had befallen him in the earlier part of his residence
through the plots of the Jews; that long Epistle to the Corinthians can
hardly have been written _after_ the famous tumult recorded in the
Acts. But that tumult, raised by the manufacturers of the silver
shrines of Artemis, was of course the most important persecution which
befell St. Paul at Ephesus. The narrative of it[45] is exceedingly
instructive. We notice the friendliness of the Asiarchs, i.e. the
presidents of the provincial 'union' and priests of the imperial
worship, and the opinion of the town clerk, that St. Paul must be
acquitted of any insults to the religious beliefs of the Ephesians[46].
Christianity had not, it appears, yet excited the antipathy of the
religious or civil authorities of the Empire, but it had begun to
threaten the pockets of those who were concerned in supplying the needs
of the worshippers who thronged to the great {42} temple at Ephesus.
We need not inquire exactly how the little silver shrines of Artemis
were used; but they were much sought after, and their production gave
occupation to an important trade. The trade was threatened by the
spread of Christianity. The philosophers despised indeed the
idolatrous rites, but they despised also the people who practised them,
and had no hope or idea of converting them[47]. St. Paul was the first
teacher at Ephesus who touched the fears of the idol makers by bringing
a pure religion to the hearts of the ordinary people. Hence the tumult
against the teachers of the new religion, raised not by the civil or
religious authorities of Ephesus, but simply by the trade interest.
As soon as it was over St. Paul left Ephesus not to return there again.
But on his way back to Jerusalem he came not to Ephesus but to Miletus,
and sending for the Ephesian presbyters thither, he made them a
farewell speech[48], which is in conspicuous harmony with the features
of his later Epistle to the Ephesians. Already the doctrines of a
divine purpose or {43} counsel now revealed, of the Church in general
as the object of the divine self-sacrifice and love, and of the Holy
Ghost as accomplishing her sanctification and developing her structure,
appear to be prominent in his mind, and to have become familiar topics
with the Ephesian Christians. 'I shrank not from declaring unto you
the whole counsel of God. Take heed unto yourselves and to all the
flock, in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the
church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.... And now I
commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to
build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all them that are
sanctified.' These words from St. Paul's speech to the Ephesian
presbyters are in remarkable affinity with the teaching of our epistle.
v.
We have been assuming that this epistle was addressed to Ephesus, but
there are reasons to believe that it was not addressed to Ephesus only,
but rather generally to the churches of the Roman province of Asia, of
which Ephesus was the chief. The reasons for thinking this are {44}
partly internal to the epistle. St. Paul's personal relations to
individual Ephesian Christians must have been many and close, and we
know his habit of introducing personal allusions and greetings into his
epistles; but the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians is destitute of
them altogether, contrasting in this respect even with the Epistle to
the Colossians, written at the same time to a church which St. Paul
himself never visited. This would be a most inexplicable fact if the
Epistle to the Ephesians were really a letter to this one particular
church. More than this, St. Paul speaks in several passages in a way
which implies that he and those he wrote to were dependent on what they
had heard for mutual knowledge--'having heard of the faith in the Lord
Jesus that is among you'--'if so be ye have heard of the dispensation
of the grace of God which was given me to youward.' Such language is
much more natural if he is writing to others besides the Ephesians.
And this evidence internal to the substance of the epistle coincides
with evidence of the manuscripts. Very early manuscripts, some of
those which remain to us and some which are reported to us by primitive
scholars, omit the words 'in Ephesus' from St. Paul's opening greeting
'To the saints {45} and faithful brethren which are [in Ephesus].'
This fact, coupled with the absence of personal reminiscences in the
epistle, has suggested the idea that it was in fact a circular letter
to the saints and faithful brethren at a number of churches of the
Roman province of Asia, and that where the words 'in Ephesus' stand in
our text, there was perhaps a blank left in the epistle as St. Paul
dictated it, which was intended to be filled up in each church where it
was read. This is a view which has to a certain extent a special
interest for us in Westminster because, if it was first suggested by
the Genevan commentator Beza, it was elaborated by Archbishop Ussher,
who is identified with our Abbey by residence and by the memorable
record of his entombment in our abbey church with Anglican rites by the
command of Cromwell. It follows naturally from such a view that when
St. Paul writes to the Colossians and bids them send their letter to
Laodicea, and read that which comes from Laodicea[49], the letter which
they should expect from Laodicea would be none other than the so-called
Epistle to the Ephesians which was to be read by them as well as the
other Asiatic Christians.
{46}
vi.
Enough perhaps has now been said to give a general idea of the
conditions under which this great epistle was written; and the topics
of the epistle have been already indicated. Its central theme is that
of the great catholic society, the renovated Israel, the Church of God.
In this catholic brotherhood St. Paul sees the realization of an
age-long purpose of God, the fulfilment of a long-secret counsel, now
at last disclosed to His chosen prophets. He sees nothing incongruous
in finding in the yet young and limited societies of Christian
disciples the consummation of the divine purpose for the world, for
these societies represent the breaking down of all barriers and the
bringing of all men to unity with one another through a recovered unity
with God, through Christ and in His Spirit. Therefore the work which
the Church is to accomplish is nothing less than a universal work, a
work not even limited to humanity; it is the bringing back of all
things visible or invisible into that unity which lies in God's
original purpose of creation. St. Paul long ago had spoken to the
Corinthians of a spiritual wisdom which they were not yet ready to
listen {47} to. But now St. Paul seems to feel--for reasons which we
have tried in part to interpret--that the time has come when all the
depth and richness of the divine secret may be spoken out. No wonder
that the subject stirs his imagination and gives to his whole tone an
uplifting and a glory without parallel in his other writings. And yet
it would be altogether false to attach to this epistle any associations
such as are commonly connected with flights of imagination or the
language of rhapsody. For the epistle has the most direct bearing on
matters of practical life. If St. Paul glorifies the Christian ideal
it is in order that all that weight of glory may be brought to bear
upon the Asiatic Christians to force them to see that their personal
and social conduct must have a purity, a liberality, a wisdom, a love,
a power, commensurate with the greatness of those motives which are
acting upon them in their new Christian state.
[1] The Committee of the Conference of Bishops at Lambeth, 1897, in a
report commended by the bishops as a body to the 'consideration of all
Christian people,' write: 'Your committee do not hold that a true view
of Holy Scripture forecloses any legitimate question about the literary
character or literal accuracy of different parts or statements of the
Old Testament.'
[2] Acts xxiv 14; xxvi. 6, 7, 22, 23; 2 Tim i. 3.
[3] Eph. ii. 12-19.
[4] 1 Thess. ii. 14-16.
[5] Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans.
[6] See app. note C, p. 257.
[7] Acts ix. 20; 1 Cor. viii. 6; Rom. ix. 5; 2 Cor. viii. 9; Gal. iv. 4.
[8] Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, Philemon.
[9] Col. ii. 18: 'by a voluntary humility (or 'taking delight in
humility') and worshipping of the angels.'
[10] See i. 13-20; ii. 2, 3, 9-23; iii. 11. Cf. i. 27-28.
[11] Hort, _Judaistic Christianity_ (Macmillan, 1894), p. 125.
[12] Cf. app. note C, p. 257.
[13] Cf. Hort, _Prolegomena to Romans and Ephesians_ (Macmillan, 1895),
p. 100.
[14] Col. iv. 2-4; Philemon 22; Phil. i. 12-14.
[15] Ramsay, _Paul the Traveller_ (Hodder and Stoughton, 1895), pp. 130
ff.
[16] Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 132.
[17] See Mommsen, _Provinces of Roman Empire_ (Eng. trans.), i. 344
ff.; Lightfoot, _Ign. and Polyc._ iii. pp. 404 ff.
[18] App. note A, p. 251.
[19] Tatian, _Ad Graecos_, 28, 32.
[20] Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 135.
[21] Rom. xiii. 1-7; cf. ii. Thess. ii. 6.
[22] 1 Tim. ii. 1, 2.
[23] Acts xxv. 12.
[24] Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 147.
[25] Lightfoot, _Galatians_, 'St. Paul and Seneca,' pp. 287 ff.
[26] See app. note B, p. 253.
[27] 'The zeal of its inhabitants for philosophy and general culture is
such that they have surpassed even Athens and Alexandria and all other
cities where schools of philosophy can be mentioned. And its
pre-eminence in this respect is so great because there the students are
all townspeople, and strangers do not readily settle there.' Strabo,
xiv. v. 13. I do not suppose that St. Paul received any formal
education in Greek schools at Tarsus. But I think we must assume that
at some period St. Paul had sufficient contact with Gentile educated
opinion, whether at Tarsus or elsewhere, to be acquainted with
widely-spread religious and philosophical tendencies.
[28] Cf. Hort, _Christian Ecclesia_, p. 143.
[29] Acts xix. 21.
[30] Rom. i. 15, 16.
[31] Acts xxiii. 11.
[32] Acts xxvii. 24.
[33] Acts xxviii. 15.
[34] Acts xx. 29, 30.
[35] Among other articles of commerce, tents made in Ephesus had a
special reputation, and St. Paul and Aquila had special opportunities
there for the exercise of their trade. Acts xx. 34.
[36] Strabo. xiv. 1, 25.
[37] Migne, _P. L._ xxvi. 441.
[38] Acts xvi. 6-10.
[39] Acts xviii. 19.
[40] Hort, _Prolegomena_, p. 83.
[41] Acts xix. 1-7.
[42] Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 143.
[43] 'From the fifth to the tenth hour' (11 a.m. to 4 p.m.), an early
addition to the text of the Acts tells us; i. e. after work hours, when
the school would naturally be vacant and St. Paul would have finished
his manual labour at tent-making. Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 276.
[44] 1 Cor. xv. 32.
[45] Acts xix. 23 ff.
[46] Prof. Ramsay asserts that instead of 'robbers of temples' (Acts
xix. 37), we should translate 'disloyal to the established government.'
_l.c._ p. 282. But the word is used in the former sense in special
connexion with Ephesus by Strabo, xiv. 1, 22, and Pseudo-Heracleitus,
_Ep._ 7, p. 64 (Bernays).
[47] See app. note B, p. 253, on the contemporary 'letters of
Heracleitus.'
[48] Acts xx. 17 ff.
[49] Col. iv. 16.
{48}
THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS
CHAPTER I. 1-2.
Salutation.
[Sidenote: _Salutation_]
St. Paul begins this, in common with his other epistles, with a brief
salutation to a particular church or group of churches, in which is
expressed in summary the authority he has for writing to them, the
light in which he regards them, and the central wish for them which he
has in his heart.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the saints
which are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you
and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Here, then, we have three compressed thoughts.
1. The particular person Paul writes this letter because he is not
only a believer in Christ but also an 'apostle of Christ Jesus through
the will of God.' The word apostle is a more or less general word for
a delegate, as when St. Paul {49} speaks of the 'apostles (or
messengers) of the churches[1];' but by an apostle in its highest
sense, 'an apostle of Jesus Christ,' St. Paul meant one of those,
originally twelve in number, who had received personally from the risen
Christ a particular commission to represent Him to the world. This
particular and personal commission he claimed to have received, in
common with the twelve, though later than they--at the time of his
conversion. 'Am I not an apostle?' he cries. 'Have I not seen Jesus
our Lord[2]?' 'He appeared to me also as unto one born out of due
time[3].' 'In nothing was I behind the very chiefest apostles[4].'
And as his claim to the apostolate was challenged by his Judaizing
opponents he had to insist upon it, to insist that it is not a
commission from or through Peter and the other apostles, or dependent
upon them for its exercise, but a direct commission, like theirs, from
the Head of the Church Himself. He is, he writes to the Galatians,
'Paul, an apostle, not from men, nor (like those subsequently ordained
by himself or the other apostles, like a Timothy, or a Titus, or like
the later clergy) through man,' but directly through, {50} as well as
from, the risen Jesus whom his eyes had seen, and His eternal Father[5].
It is surely a consolation to us of the Church of England, who belong
to a church subject to constant attack on the score of apostolic
character, to remember that St. Paul's apostolate was attacked with
some excuse, and that he had to spend a great deal of effort in
vindicating it, and was in no way ashamed of doing so, because he
perceived that a certain aspect of the life and truth of the Church was
bound up with its recognition.
2. And he writes to the Asiatic Christians as 'saints' and 'faithful
in Christ Jesus.' 'Saint' does not mean primarily what we understand
by it--one pre-eminent in moral excellence; but rather one consecrated
or dedicated to the service and use of God. The idea of consecration
was common in all religions, and frequently, as in the Asiatic worships
at Ephesus and elsewhere, carried with it associations quite the
opposite of those which we assign to holiness. But the special
characteristic of the Old Testament religion had been the righteous and
holy character which it ascribed to Jehovah. Consecration to Him,
therefore, is seen to require {51} personal holiness, and this
requirement is only deepened in meaning under the Gospel. But still
'the saints' means primarily the 'consecrated ones'; and all Christians
are therefore saints--'called as saints' rather than 'called to be
saints,' in virtue of their belonging to the consecrated body into
which they were baptized; saints who because of their consecration are
therefore bound to live holily[6]. 'The saints' in the Acts of the
Apostles[7] is simply a synonym for the Church. St. Paul then writes
to the Asiatic Christians as 'consecrated' and 'faithful in Christ
Jesus,' i. e. believing members incorporated by baptism; and he writes
to them for no other purpose than to make them understand what is
implied in their common consecration and common faith.
3. And his good wishes for them he sums up in the terms 'Grace and
peace in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' Grace is that free
and unmerited favour or good-will of God towards man which takes shape
in a continuous outflow of the very riches of God's {52} inmost being
and spirit into the life of man through Christ; and peace of heart,
Godward and manward, 'central peace subsisting at the heart of endless
agitation' is that by the possession and bestowal of which Christianity
best gives assurance of its divine origin.
We notice that these divine gifts are ascribed to 'God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ.' St. Paul does not generally call Christ by the
title God, partly, no doubt, from long engrained habit of language, but
partly also because nothing was more important than that no language
should be used in the first propagation of Christianity which could
give excuse for confusing the Christian belief in the threefold Name
with the worship of many gods. But, from the first, Christ, in St.
Paul's language, is exalted as Lord into a simply divine supremacy, and
associated most intimately with all the most exclusively divine
operations in the world without, and in the heart of man within.
Moreover, St. Paul refuses absolutely to tolerate any association of
other, however exalted, beings with Christ in lordship or mediatorship,
all created beings whatever being simply the work of His hands[8].
There remains, therefore, no room to {53} question that St. Paul
believed Christ to be strictly divine: to be Himself no creature, no
highest archangel, but one who, with the Holy Spirit alone, is truly
proper and essential to the divine being; and it affords us, therefore,
no manner of surprise that from time to time St. Paul actually calls
Christ God, as in the Epistle to the Romans 'who is over all, God
blessed for ever[9],' and probably in the Epistle to Titus 'our great
God and saviour Jesus Christ[10].'
[1] 2 Cor. viii. 23.
[2] 1 Cor. ix. 1.
[3] 1 Cor. xv. 8.
[4] 2 Cor. xii. 11.
[5] Gal. i. 1.
[6] Tertullian, _de An._ 39, rightly interprets 1 Cor. vii. 14, 'now
are they [the children of whose parents one was a Christian] holy,' as
meaning, now are they already consecrated and marked out for baptismal
sanctification by the prerogative of their birth.
[7] Acts ix. 13, 33.
[8] Cf. 1 Cor. viii. 6; Col. i. 16.
[9] Rom. ix. 5.
[10] Tit. ii. 13.
{54}
DIVISION I. CHAPTERS I. 3-IV. 17.
Sec. I. CHAPTER i. 3-14.
_St. Paul's leading thoughts._
[Sidenote: _St. Paul's leading thoughts_]
Before we read the opening paragraph of St. Paul's letter we had better
review the great thoughts which are prominent in his mind as he writes.
My ambition is to make my readers feel that ideas which, because they
have become Christian commonplaces or because they have been blackened
by controversy, have by this time a ring of unreality about them, or of
theological remoteness, or of controversial bitterness, are in fact, if
we will 'consider them anew,' ideas the most important, the most
practical, and the most closely adapted to the moral needs of the plain
man.
i.
St. Paul writes to the Christians as 'in Christ,' 'in the beloved,'
'blessed with all spiritual benediction in the heavenly places in
Christ,' 'adopted {55} as sons through Jesus Christ.' We are all of us
perfectly familiar with the idea of Christ as, so to speak, a personal
and individual redeemer, as the holy and righteous one, the beloved and
accepted Son, who is risen from the dead and exalted to supreme
sovereignty in heaven. But popular theology has not been quite so
familiar with the idea that Christ was and is all this in our manhood,
not simply because He was God as well as man (true as this is); but
because as man He was anointed with the Holy Spirit of God: that it was
in the power of that Spirit that He lived His life of holiness and
wrought His miracles of power: that it was in the power of that Spirit
that He taught and suffered and died and was glorified. Nor has
popular Christianity been familiar with the resulting truth: that by
that divine Spirit which possessed Him as man, the life of Christ is
extended beyond Himself to take in those who believe in Him, and make
them members of 'the church which is his body.' Yet, in fact, this
extension is implied even in the name Christ. The king Messiah, the
Christ of the Old Testament, is but the central figure of a whole
kingdom associated with Him, and all the characteristic phrases for
Christ in the New Testament {56} express the same idea. He is the
'first-born among many brethren[1]'; He is the 'first fruits[2]' of a
great harvest; He is the 'head of the body[3]'; He is the 'bridegroom'
inseparable from 'the bride[4]'; He is the second Adam, that is, head
of a new humanity[5]. Thus if the heavens closed around the ascending
Christ, and hid Him from view, they opened again around the descending
Spirit, descending into the heart of the Christian society to
perpetuate Christ's life and presence there. This historical ascent
and descent only embody in unmistakable facts the truth that the
life-giving Spirit, who made the manhood of Christ so satisfying to our
moral aspirations, is also and with the same reality, though not with
the same perfection or freedom, living and working in that great
society which He founded to represent Him on earth. Because this
society is possessed by the Spirit, therefore it lives in the same life
as Christ, it and all its individual members are 'in Christ.' In one
place, indeed, St. Paul includes the Church, the body, with its head
under the one name 'the Christ[6].'
[Sidenote: _Life in Christ_]
It is because the Church thus shares Christ's {57} life that it is
already spoken of as sharing His exaltation. We 'sit together in the
heavenly places with Christ' for no other reason than because, though
we are on earth, our life is bound up invisibly but in living reality
with the life of the glorified Christ, and we have in Him free access
into the courts of heaven. For this reason again, as the fulness of
the divine attributes dwells in the glorified Christ--all the fulness
of the Godhead bodily, so the same fulness is attributed, ideally at
least, to the Church too. It too is 'the fulness of him that filleth
all in all.' To St. Paul's mind there is one true human life in which
men are one with one another because they are at one with God. That
true human life is Christ's life, which He once lived on earth, and
which He is at present living in the glory of God, and which is
fulfilled with all the completeness of the divine life itself. But
that true human life is also shared by each and every member of His
Church, without exception, without reference to race or learning, or
wealth, or sex, or age.