Christ with the Church, that is to say, is not yet fully realized. The
Church is not yet glorified, not yet morally perfected nor {58} full
grown in the divine attributes. Its particular members may be living
deceitful and dishonourable lives. This is to say in other words that
God's work in 'redemption of his own possession,' His acquirement of a
people to Himself, is not yet complete. The purchase-money is paid,
but it has not yet taken full effect. But redemption is an
accomplished fact in the sense that all the conditions of the final
success are already there. The ideal may be freely realized in every
Christian because he has received the 'earnest' or pledge of the
Spirit, the pledge, that is, of all that is to be accomplished in him.
And this Spirit was received by each Christian at a particular and
assignable moment. We know what stress St. Paul laid at Ephesus on
proper Christian baptism and the laying on of hands which followed
it[7]. By baptism men were spoken of as incorporated into Christ.
With the laying on of hands was associated the bestowal of the Spirit.
Henceforth a Christian had no need to ask for the Spirit as if He were
not already bestowed upon him; he had only to bring into practical use
spiritual forces and powers which the divine bounty had already put at
his disposal.
{59}
If we compare this set of ideas with those that have been current in
our popular theology, we shall find that the main difference lies in
this, that here the stress is laid on the work of Christ _in_ man by
His Spirit, while the theology which has been popular among us has laid
the stress rather on the 'vicarious' work of Christ outside us and
_for_ us, by making a propitiation for our sins. Now in fact this
latter doctrine is an unmistakable part of St. Paul's teaching in this
epistle and elsewhere. And all the mistakes to which it has led are
due to its not having been kept in proper relation to the set of ideas
which I have just been endeavouring to expound. 'Christ for us,' the
sacrifice of propitiation has been separated from 'Christ in us,' our
new life; whereas really the sacrifice was but a necessary removal of
an obstacle, preliminary to the new life.
It was a necessary preliminary that Christ should put us on a fresh
basis, should enable us to break from our past and make a fresh start
in the divine acceptance. This He did by making atonement for our
sins, offering as a propitiatory sacrifice His life, even to the
shedding of His blood, that the Father might be enabled to forgive our
sins. This transaction is always {60} represented in the New Testament
as being the act of the Father as well as of the Son, for the divine
persons are not separable--neither an act by which the Son forces the
unwilling hand of the Father, nor an act in which the Father lays an
undeserved burden upon an unwilling Son--and the idea of propitiation
seems to St. Paul, as indeed it has seemed to men generally, a
thoroughly natural idea. Only in one place does he make any suggestion
as to why such a preliminary sacrifice of propitiation was necessary.
There[8] he seems to find the moral necessity for it in the fact that
through long ages God's 'forbearance' had left men to work through
their own resources and so to find out their need of Him. 'He suffered
all nations to walk in their own ways.' He 'winked at' or 'overlooked
times of ignorance.' He 'passed over sins[9].' This was part of His
educative process. One result of it, however, was a lowering of the
moral ideas entertained of the divine character. Thus God's
righteousness, which means holiness and compassion combined, needed to
be declared especially at that crisis of the divine dealings when God
was coming out towards {61} men, whom He had educated by His seeming
absence to feel their need of Him, with the offer of His love. The
free bounty of His mercy must not be misunderstood as if it were
indifference or laxity about moral wickedness. Thus the proclamation
of His compassion must be associated with something which would make
unmistakable the severity of His holiness and His moral claim. This
twofold end is what Christ accomplishes. Thus if He is the revealer of
the compassion of the Father, He also vindicates the divine character
by a great act of moral reparation, made in man's name and on man's
behalf, to the divine holiness which our sins have ignored and
outraged. This great act of reparation is consummated in the
bloodshedding of the Christ. The sacrifice of consummate obedience is
carried to its extreme point and accepted in its perfection. God in
Christ receives from man, and that publicly, a perfect reparation: an
acknowledgement without fault or drawback: a perfect sacrifice. Now
God can forgive the sins of men freely and without moral risk, if they
come to Him in the name of Christ. To come to God in the name of
Christ means, of course, to come in conscious moral identification of
one's self with Christ, with {62} His Spirit and His motives. The
faith which simply accepts the bounty of forgiveness through Christ's
sacrifice, must pass necessarily into the faith which corresponds
obediently with the divine love. Thus the purpose of the atonement is
never expressed as being that we should be let off punishment, or
simply that we should be forgiven, but rather that, being forgiven, we
should be united to Christ in His life[10]. The propitiation which
Christ offered is only the removal of a preliminary obstacle to our
fellowship with Him in the life of God. The work of Christ 'for us'
has no meaning or efficacy till it has begun to pass into the work of
Christ 'in us' by His assimilating Spirit. It was only as baptized
into Christ and sharing His Spirit that Christians could accept the
forgiveness of their sins through the shedding of Christ's blood. The
sacrament of new life is also the sacrament of absolution, and the
washing away of sins. Nothing in fact can be plainer in this Epistle
to the Ephesians than that 'the redemption through Christ's blood, even
the forgiveness of trespasses[11]' was only a preliminary removal of
{63} obstacles to that fellowship with God in Christ by His Spirit
which is the secret of the Church.
ii.
[Sidenote: _Predestination_]
St. Paul's mind is full of the idea of predestination. He delights to
contemplate the eternal purpose of God as lying behind what seems to us
the painfully slow method by which divine results are actually won.
What age-long processes have been necessary both among the Jews and
among the Gentiles before this young church, this divine society of man
with God has become possible! What slow working through 'times of
ignorance,' what infinite delay in the divine forbearance--as we should
now say, what age-long processes of developement! But St. Paul is
quite certain that the result is no afterthought, no accident of the
moment; but that from end to end of the universe there reaches a method
of the divine wisdom, and that here in the catholic church it has
arrived at an issue. 'God chose us in Christ before the foundation of
the world that we should be holy and without blemish (as spotless
victims) before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as
sons through Jesus Christ unto himself.' 'Fore-ordained {64} to be a
heritage according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after
the counsel of his will.' So he asseverates and repeats and insists.
There are, we may say, two ideas commonly associated with
predestination which St. Paul gives us no warrant for asserting. The
one is the predestination of individuals to eternal loss or
destruction. That God should create any single individual with the
intention of eternally destroying or punishing him is a horrible idea,
and, without prying into mysteries, we may say boldly that there is no
warrant for it in the Old or New Testaments. God is indeed represented
as predestinating men, like Jacob and Esau, to a higher or lower place
in the order of the world or the church. There are 'vessels' made by
the divine potter to purposes of 'honour,' and 'vessels' made to
purposes (comparatively) of 'dishonour[12]': there are more honourable
and less honourable limbs of the body[13]. But this does not prejudice
the eternal prospects of those who in this world hold the less
advantageous posts. With God is no respect of persons. Again God is
represented as predestinating men to moral hardness of heart where such
hardness is a judgement on previous wilfulness. Thus {65} men may be
predestined to temporary rejection of God, as in St. Paul's mind the
majority of the contemporary Jews were. That was their judgement, and
their punishment[14]. It was however not God's first intention for
them nor His last. Those chapters of St. Paul[15] which contain the
most terrible things about the present reprobation of the Jews contain
also the most emphatic repudiation of the idea that moral reprobation
was God's first idea for them, or His last. 'The gifts and calling of
God,' that is, His good gifts and calling, says St. Paul, speaking of
the now 'reprobate' Jews, are 'without repentance[16].' God's present
reprobation of them is only a process towards a fresh opportunity.
'God hath shut up all into disobedience that he might have mercy upon
all[17].' Men may baffle the original divine purpose, and that, so far
as their own blessedness is concerned, even finally: they may become
finally 'reprobate': but the divine purpose for them at its root
remains a purpose for good. 'God will have all men to be saved and to
come to the knowledge of the truth[18].'
{66}
And once again, the idea of a predestination for good, taking effect
necessarily and irrespective of men's co-operation, is an idea which
has been intruded unjustifiably into St. Paul's thought. It exalts his
whole being to consider that he is co-operating with God, and that the
conditions under which he lives represent a divine purpose with which
he is called to work. It is this which makes him feel it is worth
while working: it is this which nerves and sustains him in all
sufferings, and enlarges his horizon in all restraints: but he never
suggests that it does not lie within the mysterious power of his own
will to withdraw himself from co-operation with God. It is at least
conceivable to him that he should himself be rejected[19]. In that
famous list of external forces which he feels are unable to tear him
from the grasp of the divine love, his own will is not included[20],
nor could be included without gross inconsistency.
Beyond all question there is here one problem which remains for all
time unsolved and insoluble--the relation of divine fore-knowledge[21]
{67} to human freedom. If we men are free to choose, how can it be, or
can it really be the case at all, that God knows beforehand actually
how each individual will behave in each particular case? This is a
problem which we cannot fathom any more than we can fathom any of the
problems which require for their solution an experience of what an
absolute and eternal consciousness can mean. But the problem belongs
to metaphysics. It inheres in the idea of eternity and God. The Bible
neither creates it nor solves it. We may say it does not touch it.
Certainly when St. Paul dwells upon the thought of divine
predestination he dwells upon it in order to emphasize that, through
all the vicissitudes of the world's history, a divine purpose runs; and
especially that God works out His universal purposes through specially
selected agents 'his elect,' on whom His choice rests for special ends
in accordance with an eternal design and intention. And the sense of
co-operating with an eternal purpose of God inspires and strengthens
him. For God will not drop His work by the way. Whom He did foreknow
or mark out beforehand for His divine purposes, them He also
foreordained or predestinated to sonship, and in due time called into
the number {68} of His elect, and justified them, that is, pardoned
their sins and gave them a new standing-ground in Christ, and glorified
or will glorify them by the gradual operation of His grace[22]. The
steps or moments of the divine action recognized in the Epistle to the
Romans are practically the same as those alluded to in the Epistle to
the Ephesians. There also is the eternal choice, and the
predestination to sonship, and at a particular time the call into the
Church, and the justification or remission of sins through the blood of
Christ, and the gradual promotion through sanctification to glory. And
the moral fruit of contemplating God's eternal purpose for His elect,
and the stages of His work upon them, is to be cheerful confidence of a
right sort. God will not drop them by the way, nor the work which they
are 'called' to accomplish. 'God who hath begun a good work will
perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ[23].' Wherever St. Paul
recognizes a movement towards good in the single soul or in the world,
he knows that it is no accidental or passing phase: it has its roots in
the eternal will, and unless we resist it in wilful obstinacy, the
eternal will shall at last {69} carry it on to perfection. 'There
shall never be one lost good.'
It is not out of place to notice in this connexion how closely akin is
St. Paul's thought to the modern philosophy of evolution. Only to St.
Paul the slow process of cosmic or human evolution is in no kind of
opposition to the idea of divine design.
iii.
[Sidenote: _The elect_]
This predestinated body, the Church, is what in another word St. Paul
calls the 'elect' or 'chosen.' The idea of election has had a very
false turn given to it, partly through mistakes which have been already
alluded to, partly because the idea of election has been separated from
another idea with which in the Bible it is most closely associated, the
idea of a universal purpose to which the elect minister. No thought
can be more prominent in the Old Testament than the thought that some
men out of multitudes have been chosen by God to be in a special
relation of intimacy with Him. 'You only have I known, O Israel, of
all the families of the earth.' But this election to special knowledge
of God, and special spiritual opportunity, {70} carries with it a
corresponding responsibility. It is no piece of favouritism on God's
part. The greater our opportunity the more is required of us. 'You
only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore will I
visit upon you all your iniquities[24].' The fact is that the
principle of inequality in capacity and opportunity runs through the
whole world both in individuals and in societies. A great genius or a
great nation has special privileges and opportunities, but also, in the
sight of God who judges men according to their opportunities, special
responsibilities. But also (and this is by far the most important
point) the special vocation of every elect individual or body is for
the sake of others[25]. It is God's method to work through the few
upon the many. That is the law of ministry which binds all the world
of strong and weak, of rich and poor, of learned and ignorant, into
one. Thus Abraham had been chosen alone, but it was that, through his
seed, all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Israel was
exclusively the people of God, but it was in order that all nations
should learn from them at last the word of God. The apostles were {71}
the first 'elect' in Christ with a little Jewish company. 'We'--so St.
Paul speaks of the Jewish Christians--'we who had before hoped in
Christ.' But it was to show the way to all the Gentiles ('ye also, who
have heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation,') who
were also to constitute 'God's own possession' and His 'heritage.' The
purpose to be realized is a universal one: it is the re-union of man
with man, as such, by being all together reunited to God in one body.
And this idea is to have application even beyond the bounds of
humanity. Unity is the principle of all things as God created the
world. 'In Christ,' St. Paul writes to the Colossians, 'all things
consist' or 'hold together in one system[26].' It is only sin, whether
in man or in the dimly-known spiritual world which lies beyond, which
has spoiled this unity, and in separating the creatures from God has
separated them from one another. And the Church of the reconciliation
is God's elect body to represent a divine purpose of restoration far
wider than itself--extending in fact to all creation. It is the divine
purpose, with a view to 'a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to
sum up' or 'bring together again in unity' all things in {72} Christ;
the things in the heaven, the dim spiritual forces of which we have
only glimpses, and the things upon the earth which we know so much
better.
This great and rich idea of the election of the Church as a special
body to fulfil a universal purpose of recovery, cannot be expressed
better than in the very ancient prayer which forms part of the paschal
ceremonies of the Latin liturgy. 'O God of unchangeable power and
eternal light, look favourably on Thy whole Church, that wonderful and
sacred mystery, and by the tranquil operation of Thy perpetual
providence, carry out the work of man's salvation; and let the whole
world feel and see that things which were cast down are being raised
up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and all things
are returning to perfection through Him, from whom they took their
origin, even through our Lord Jesus Christ.'
iv.
[Sidenote: _The divine secret disclosed_]
This universal reconciliation through a catholic church was God's
eternal purpose, but it was kept secret from the ages and the
generations, only at last to be disclosed to His {73} apostles and
prophets. The word 'mystery' in the New Testament means mostly a
divine secret which has now been disclosed. Just as the secret of
Nebuchadnezzar's dream, i.e. the purpose of God in the then order of
the world, was imparted to Daniel, so now the great disclosure of the
divine mystery or secret has been made, primarily indeed to apostles
and prophets, but through them to the whole body of the faithful. The
faithful must of course begin by receiving that simplest spiritual
nourishment which is milk for babes. They are to welcome the divine
forgiveness of their sins in Christ, and the gift of new life through
Him in their baptism and the laying-on of hands. They are to be taught
the rudimentary truths and moral lessons which are the first principles
of the oracles of Christ. But they are not to stop with this. They
are, and they are all of them without exception[27], intended to grow
up to the full apprehension of the wisdom of the 'perfect' or perfectly
initiated. They are to dwell upon the divine secret, now revealed, of
God's purpose for the universe through the church till their whole
heart and intellect and imagination is enlightened and enriched by it.
{74}
v.
[Sidenote: _It is all of grace_]
And is the greatness of this exaltation and knowledge vouchsafed to the
Church to be a renewed occasion of pride--that spiritual pride, the
fatal results of which had already become apparent through the
rejection of the Jews? No: unless through a complete mistake, the very
opposite must be the result. The strength of human pride, as St. Paul
had seen long ago, lay in the idea that man could have merit of his
own, face to face with God: could have good works which were his own
and not God's, and which gave him a claim upon God. That Jewish
doctrine of merit[28] had been convicted of utter falsity in St. Paul's
own spiritual experience. He had found himself brought to acknowledge,
like any sinner of the Gentiles, his simple dependence upon the divine
compassion for forgiveness and acceptance. This spiritual experience
of St. Paul was only the realizing through one channel of what is, in
fact, an elementary truth about human nature. The idea of human
independence is demonstrably a false idea. As a matter of fact, man
draws his life, physical and spiritual, from {75} sources beyond
himself--from the one source, God. In constant dependence on God he
lives necessarily from moment to moment, whether to breathe, or think,
or will. The freedom of will which he has is not really originative or
creative power, but a capacity of voluntary correspondence with what is
given him from beyond himself. In that power of correspondence, or
refusal to correspond, man's liberty begins and ends. He creates
nothing. It is not that man does something and then God does the rest.
The truth is that when we track man's good action to its root in his
will, we find for certain that God has been beforehand with him. The
good he does is in correspondence with moral and physical laws and
forces of the universe, or, in other words, with divine powers and
purposes lent and suggested to him. To attempt independence of God, to
have schemes and plans absolutely one's own, is to work arbitrarily and
ignorantly, and ultimately to fail and to know that one has failed.
Thus men, when they realize the facts of their condition, must depend,
and rejoice to depend, wholly upon God as for forgiveness where they
have done wrong, so also for suggestion and power that they may do
anything aright. There is {76} then no room for human pride. It is a
mistake. We come back to recognize, what St. Paul realized in his own
deep spiritual experience and taught the Church at the beginning.
Whatever is good in the world is all of divine initiation and of divine
grace. It is all, not to our glory, but (as St. Paul three times
repeats in the opening paragraphs of our epistle) 'to the praise of his
glory,' or 'to the praise of the glory of his grace which he freely
bestows on us' out of His pure love and goodwill.
[Sidenote: _St. Paul's leading thoughts_]
These are the great leading thoughts which are in St. Paul's mind as he
begins to write to the Asiatic Christians. His heart, his imagination,
his intellect is full of the thought of the catholic society as it
exists in Christ, the extension of His life; of this society as the
outcome of an eternal and slow-working purpose of God; of this society,
as serving universal divine ends for humanity and for the universe; of
this society, as affording a sphere in which all men's faculties may be
enlightened and delighted with the depth and largeness of the divine
purpose; while his whole being is kept, safe from all the delusions of
pride, in continual and conscious dependence upon divine grace. {77}
With these thoughts reflected in our minds we shall find that we have
the main clue to the whole of the Epistle to the Ephesians, and more
particularly to all the words of the opening chapter, which St. Paul
begins with a great ascription of praise to God for the blessing of the
Church.
Blessed _be_ the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath
blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly _places_ in
Christ: even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having
foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto
himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of
the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved:
in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of
our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he made to
abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us
the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he
purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum
up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon
the earth; in him, _I say_, in whom also we were made a heritage,
having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh
all things after the counsel of his will; to the end that we should be
unto the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ: in
whom ye also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your
salvation,--in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy
Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance, unto the
redemption of _God's_ own possession, unto the praise of his glory.
[1] Rom. viii. 29.
[2] 1 Cor. xv. 23.
[3] Eph. iv. 15, 16.
[4] Eph. v. 32; Rev. xxi. 9.
[5] 1 Cor. xv. 45; Rom. v. 12-19.
[6] 1 Cor. xii. 12.
[7] Acts xix. 1-7.
[8] Rom. iii. 24-26. I have tried to develope St. Paul's hint.