through their trespasses and sins.' St. Paul means by death to
describe any state of intellectual and moral insensibility. He would
have the Christian 'dead' to the motives and voices of the worldly and
sensual world. So in the same way he reminds the Asiatic Christians
that to all that life of God in which they were now fruitfully living,
they had at one time been insensible or dead--that is, blind to those
things which now seemed most apparent, unterrified at what would now
seem most horrible, unmoved by what now seemed most fascinating. And
if this was their state viewed in itself, in their relation to God {96}
they were, like the Jews also, 'children of wrath.' This expression is
used in our catechism to describe 'original sin,' that is to say, that
moral disorder or weakness which belongs to our nature as we inherit
it, before we have had the opportunity of personal wrong doing. But
the application of the phrase by St. Paul is to describe rather the
state of _actual_ sin in which Jew and Gentile alike 'naturally' lived.
It implies not that God hated them, for in the whole context St. Paul
is emphasizing 'the great love wherewith he loved them'; but that there
was a necessary moral incompatibility between them as they then were,
and God as He essentially and permanently is. God is so necessarily
holy that His being is, and must be, intolerable to the unholy. It
must be the case that at the bare idea of the divine coming, 'sinners
in Zion' should be 'afraid,' and should say one to another, 'who among
us shall dwell with the devouring fire, who among us shall dwell with
everlasting burnings[4]?' God necessarily presents Himself as a terror
to the godless; and from the point of view of God that means that our
sinful nature is the subject of His necessary wrath. He resents the
{97} perversion, the spoiling, of His own handiwork in us. He cannot
tolerate uncleanness, rebellion, unbelief. This wrath of God, in the
case of those whose wills are set to 'hate the light,' is directed
against men's persons. But so far as sin is only in our natures, and
is something of which we are the unwilling subjects, it appeals only to
God's compassion to lead Him to apply effective remedies. His wrath is
so far against sin, not against sinners; and none could know better
than these Asiatic Christians what lengths of resourcefulness and
self-sacrifice the divine compassion had gone in order to redeem men
from its tyranny. Thus St. Paul continues:--
But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
even when we were dead through our trespasses, quickened us together
with Christ (by grace have ye been saved), and raised us up with him,
and made us to sit with him in the heavenly _places_, in Christ Jesus:
that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his
grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus: for by grace have ye been
saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: _it is_ the gift of
God: not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore
prepared that we should walk in them.
[Sidenote: _The method of redemption_]
Here is St. Paul's description of the method of God in dealing with men
when they were in {98} that state of sin, the conditions of which he
has just summarised. We take note of the chief points in the method.
(1) St. Paul has in mind here, as always, the divine predestination.
There was an eternal purpose in the divine mind to make St. Paul and
those to whom he wrote such as they were now on the way to become; it
was a purpose not merely general, but extending to details. It
belongs, in fact, to the divine perfection, that God does nothing, and
purposes nothing, in mere vague generality. The universal range and
scope of the divine activity as over all creatures whatsoever, hinders
not at all its perfect application to detail. Thus God had
'predestined,' or held in His eternal purpose, not merely the state of
Christians as a whole or even of the Asiatic Christians in particular,
but the details of conduct which He willed them individually to
exhibit. It is the particular 'good works' which God 'prepared
beforehand in order that they should walk in them[5].'
(2) What God predestined He accomplished first in summary 'in Christ
Jesus.' In Him all that God meant to do for man was exhibited {99} and
accomplished as God's own and perfect handiwork, as an effective and
final disclosure. Men are to look for everything, for every kind of
development and progress, in Christ, but for nothing outside or beyond
Him. All is there--'all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,' all
'the fulness of the Godhead,' all the perfections of mankind, the
reconciliation of all seeming opposites. All is brought to the highest
possible level of attainment, 'the heavenly place.'
(3) What had been summarily realized in Christ is progressively
realized in those who are 'in Him.' Undeterred by their condition of
moral and spiritual death, God, out of the heart of His rich mercy,
simply because of the great love He bore to men, has brought them, by
one act of regeneration, into the new life of His Son; has 'quickened
them together with Christ,' that is, has introduced them, at a definite
moment of initiation, into the life which has once for all triumphed
over death, and been glorified in the heavenly places; and has
introduced them into this life in order that, by the gradual
assimilation of its forces, future ages might witness in them all the
wealth of the goodness which had lain hid in the original act {100} of
incorporation. Meanwhile, while their growth is yet imperfect, God
sees those who are Christ's as 'in Christ': imputes His merits to them,
so we may legitimately say: that is, sees them and deals with them in
view of the fact that Christ's Spirit is at work in them; sees them and
deals with them 'not as they are, but as they are becoming.' _This_
doctrine of imputation, instead of being full of moral unreality, is in
accordance with all that is deepest in the philosophy of evolution.
For are we not continually being taught that in order to take a true
view of the value of any single thing, we must view it not as it is at
a particular moment, but in the light of its tendency? We must ask not
merely 'what,' but 'whence' and 'whither.'
(4) It is all pure grace--the free outpouring of unmerited love. The
Christians are 'God's workmanship,' His new creation. He, in Christ,
had wrought the work all by Himself. They, the subjects of it, had
contributed nothing. It remained for them only to welcome and to
correspond. This is the summing up of man's legitimate attitude
towards God. This is faith. It is at its first stage simply the
acceptance of a divine mercy in all its undeserved and unconditional
largeness; but it passes at once, as {101} soon as ever the nature of
the divine gift is realized, into a glad co-operation with the divine
purpose.
This then is, in outline, the method of the great salvation, of which
the Asiatic Christians had been and were the subjects.
[1] On the virtuous aspect of the contemporary empire, see Renan, _Les
Apotres_, pp. 306 ff.
[2] Rom. ii. 14.
[3] See app. note B, p. 255.
[4] Is. xxxiii. 14, 15.
[5] Cf. app. note C, p. 263, for a similar thought in a contemporary
Jewish book.
{102}
DIVISION I. Sec. 4. CHAPTER II. 11-22.
_Salvation in the church._
[Sidenote: _The salvation social_]
God's deliverance or 'salvation' of mankind is a deliverance of
individuals indeed, but of individuals in and through a society; not of
isolated individuals, but of members of a body.
It is and has been a popular religious idea that the primary aim of the
gospel is to produce saved individuals; and that it is a matter of
secondary importance that the saved individuals should afterwards
combine to form churches for their mutual spiritual profit, and for
promoting the work of preaching the gospel. But this way of conceiving
the matter is a reversal of the order of ideas in the Bible. 'The
salvation' in the Bible is supposed usually 'to reach the individual
through the community[1].' God's dealings with us in redemption thus
follow the lines of His dealings with us in our natural developement.
For man stands {103} out in history as a 'social animal.' His
individual developement, by a divine law of his constitution, is only
rendered possible because he is first of all a member of some society,
tribe, or nation, or state. Through membership in such a society
alone, and through the submissions and limitations on his personal
liberty which such membership involves, does he become capable of any
degree of free or high developement as an individual. This law, then,
of man's nature appears equally in the method of his redemption. Under
the old covenant it was to members of the 'commonwealth of Israel' that
the blessings of the covenant belonged. Under the new covenant St.
Paul still conceives of the same commonwealth as subsisting (as we
shall see directly), and as fulfilling no less than formerly the same
religious functions. True, it has been fundamentally reconstituted and
enlarged to include the believers of all nations, and not merely one
nation; but it is still the same commonwealth, or polity, or church;
and it is still through the church that God's 'covenant' dealings reach
the individual.
It is for this reason that St. Paul goes on to describe the state of
the Asiatic Christians, {104} before their conversion, as a state of
alienation from the 'commonwealth of Israel.' They were 'Gentiles in
the flesh,' that is by the physical fact that they were not Jews; and
were contemptuously described as the uncircumcised by those who, as
Jews, were circumcised by human hands. And he conceives this to be
only another way of describing alienation from God and His manifold
covenants of promise, and from the Messiah, the hope of Israel and of
mankind. They were without the Church of God, and therefore presumably
without God and without hope.
Wherefore remember, that aforetime ye, the Gentiles in the flesh, who
are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision, in the
flesh, made by hands; that ye were at that time separate from Christ,
alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the
covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the
blood of Christ.
This alienation of Gentiles from the divine covenant was represented in
the structure of the temple at Jerusalem by a beautifully-worked marble
balustrade, separating the outer from the inner court, upon which stood
columns at regular intervals, bearing inscriptions, some in Greek and
some in Latin characters, to warn {105} aliens not to enter the holy
place. One of the Greek inscriptions was discovered a few years ago,
and is now to be read in the Museum of Constantinople. It runs thus:
'No alien to pass within the balustrade round the temple and the
enclosure. Whosoever shall be caught so doing must blame himself for
the penalty of death which he will incur.'
This 'middle wall of partition' was vividly in St. Paul's memory. He
was in prison at Rome at the time of his writing this epistle, in part
at least because he was believed to have brought Trophimus, an
Ephesian, within the sacred enclosure at Jerusalem. 'He brought Greeks
also into the temple, and hath defiled the holy place.'
It was this 'middle wall of partition,' representing the exclusiveness
of Jewish ordinances, which St. Paul rejoiced to believe Christ had
abolished. He had made Jew and Gentile one by bringing both alike to
God in one body and on a new basis.
There were in fact two partitions in the Jewish temple of great
symbolical importance. There was the veil which hid the holy of
holies, and symbolized the alienation of man from God[2]; and there was
'the middle wall of partition' {106} already described, representing
the exclusion of the world from the privileges of the people of God.
The Pharisaic Jews ignored the spiritual lessons of the first
partition, and devoutly believed in the permanence of the second. But
Saul, while yet a Pharisee, had felt the reality of the first, and had
found in his own experience that the abolition of this first barrier by
Christ involved also the annihilation of the second.
[Sidenote: _The breaking down of partitions_]
It is in the Epistle to the Colossians that he lays stress upon the
abolition in Christ of the enmity between man and God. 'It was the
good pleasure of the Father ... through him to reconcile all things
unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.' 'You,
being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh
... did he quicken together with Christ, having forgiven us all our
trespasses; having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was
against us, which was contrary to us: and he hath taken it out of the
way, nailing it to the cross.' So with the help of various metaphors
does St. Paul strive to express the mighty truth that, by the shedding
of Christ's blood, that is to say by His sacrifice of perfected
obedience, the way had been opened for the forgiveness of our sins and
our {107} reconciliation to God in one life, one Spirit. But the
symbols and instruments of that former alienation from God which St.
Paul had experienced so bitterly, were to his mind the 'ordinances' of
the Jewish law. These, he had come to feel, had no other function than
to awaken and deepen the sense of sin which they were powerless to
overcome. They were nothing but 'a bond written against us'; a
continual record of condemnation. To trust in the observance of
ordinances was to remain an unreconciled sinner, alienated in mind and
unpurified in heart. On the other hand, to have faith in Jesus and
receive from Him the unmerited gift of the divine pardon and the Spirit
of sonship was, for a Jew, to cast away all that trust in the
observance of the ordinances of his nation which was so dear to his
heart. It was at once to place himself among the sinners of the
Gentiles. For in Jesus Christ all men were indeed brought near to God,
but not as meritorious Jews; rather as common men and common sinners,
needing and accepting all alike the undeserved mercy of a heavenly
Father. Thus it was that Christ, in breaking down one partition, had
broken down the other also. In opening the way to God by a simple
human trust in a {108} heavenly Father, and not by the complicated
arrangements of a special law, He had put all men on the same level of
need and of acceptance. He had not indeed abolished the covenant or
the covenant people, but He had enlarged its area and altered its
basis: there was still to be one visible body or people of the
covenant, but membership in it was to be open to all, Jew and Gentile
alike, who would feel their need of and put their trust in Jesus. This
is what St. Paul proceeds to express, and little more need be added to
explain his words. In the 'blood' or 'blood-shedding' of Jesus--that
is, His self-sacrifice for men, His obedience carried to the point of
the surrender of His life--a way had been opened to the Father that was
purely human, that belonged to the Gentiles who had been 'far off' as
well as to Jews who were already 'nigh' in the divine covenant. And in
being brought near to God by faith, and not by Jewish ordinances, Jew
and Gentile had been reconciled on a common basis--the two had been
made one in 'the flesh,' that is, the manhood of Christ, for no other
reason than because the 'law of commandments contained in (special
Jewish) ordinances,' which had hitherto been the basis of separation,
was now once for all {109} 'abolished.' Henceforth there was one new
man, or new manhood, in Christ, in which all men were, potentially at
least, reconciled to God and to one another by His self-sacrifice upon
the cross. And to the knowledge of this new manhood all men were being
gradually brought by the 'preaching of peace' or of the gospel, which
had its origin from Jesus crucified and risen, and which, even now that
Jesus was invisibly acting through His apostolic and other ministers,
St. Paul attributes directly to Him.
[Sidenote: _The admission of Gentiles_]
But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the
blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both one, and brake
down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in his flesh the
enmity, even the law of commandments _contained_ in ordinances; that he
might create in himself of the twain one new man, so making peace; and
might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross,
having slain the enmity thereby: and he came and preached peace to you
that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh: for through him we
both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father.
Now we can turn from the negative to the positive statement, and
observe what St. Paul says of the new privileges of the once heathen
converts. He pictures them under four metaphors, each describing a
social state.
{110}
(1) They are citizens in the holy state, the commonwealth of the people
consecrated to God--citizens with full rights, and no longer strangers
or unenfranchised residents (sojourners).
(2) More intimately still, they belong to the family or household of
God.
(3) They are being built all together into a sanctuary for God to dwell
in--a holy structure of which the foundation stones are the apostles,
and the Christian prophets who were their companions; and of which the
corner-stone, determining the lines of the building and compacting it
into one, is Jesus Christ, according to the word of God by Isaiah,
'Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation stone, a tried stone, a precious
corner stone of sure foundation.'
(4) But the metaphor of the building passes into the metaphor of the
growing plant. Christ is, as St. Peter says, 'a _living_ stone[3].'
He not only determines the lines of the spiritual structure, but He
pervades the whole of it as a presence and spirit, so that every other
human 'stone' is also alive and growing with His life.
So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are
fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the {111} household of God,
being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ
Jesus himself being the chief corner stone; in whom each several
building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the
Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in
the Spirit.
These are indeed metaphors expressive of glorious realities, which have
no doubt become dulled in meaning through a conventional Christianity,
which involves no sacrifice and therefore attains no sense of
blessedness, but which a little meditation may easily restore to
something of their original freshness.
(1) The idea of the chosen people all through the Old Testament is that
they are as a whole consecrated to God. Priests and kings appointed by
God to their several offices may indeed fulfil special functions in the
national life, yet the fundamental idea is never lost that the entire
nation is holy, 'a kingdom of priests.' It is because this is true
that the prophets can appeal as they do to the people in general, as
well as to priests and rulers, as sharing altogether the responsibility
of the national life. Now the whole of this idea is transferred, only
deepened and intensified, to the Christian Church. That too has its
divinely-ordained ministers, its differentiation of functions in the
one body, but the whole {112} body is priestly, and all are
citizens--not merely residents but citizens, that is, intelligent
participators in a common corporate life consecrated to God. How truly
realized this idea was in the early Christian communities, St. Paul's
letters are our best witnesses. They are really--except the pastoral
epistles--letters to the churches and not to the clergy. It is the
whole body which is at Thessalonica and Corinth to concern itself with
the exercise of moral discipline[4]--the whole body in the Galatian
churches and at Colossae who are to concern themselves with the
apprehension and protection of the full Christian truth. They are all
to be 'perfectly initiated' in Christ Jesus, full participators in the
affairs of the divine society[5]. Whatever needs to be said afterwards
about the special functions of special officers, this is the first
thing to be said and recognized; and it gives us a profound sense of
the distance we have fallen from our ideal. The laity, it is generally
understood among us, are to come to church and perhaps to communion,
are to accept the ministries of religion at marriages and funerals, and
are to subscribe a little money to religious objects; but they may
leave it to the clergy, as a matter of course, to carry on {113} the
business of religion--that is, worship and doctrine, for discipline has
been dropped out--and confine themselves to a certain amount of
irresponsible criticism of the sermons of the clergy and their
proceedings generally.
[Sidenote: _The catholic church_]
For this state of things--this very false sacerdotalism--the
responsibility is generally laid at the door of 'clerical arrogance.'
It is not necessary to consider how large a factor in the result
clerical arrogance has really been, for certainly what alone has given
the clergy the opportunity to put themselves in false isolation, and
what has been an immensely more powerful factor in the general result,
has been the spiritual apathy of the mass of church members, an apathy
which began as soon as the Christian profession began to cost men
little or nothing.
Are we to set to work to revive St. Paul's ideal of the life of a
Church? If so, what we need is not more Christians, but better
Christians. We want to make the moral meaning of church membership
understood and its conditions appreciated. We want to make men
understand that it costs something to be a Christian; that to be a
Christian, that is a Churchman, is to be an intelligent participator in
a corporate life consecrated to God, and to concern {114} oneself
therefore, as a matter of course, in all that touches the corporate
life--its external as well as its spiritual conditions. For the houses
people live in, their wages, their social and commercial relations to
one another, their amusements, the education they receive, the
literature they read, these, no less truly than religious forces
strictly so called, affect intimately the health and well-being of any
society of men. We Christians are fellow-citizens together in the
commonwealth that is consecrated to God, a commonwealth of mortal men
with bodies as well as souls.
(2) But St. Paul also describes the Church as the 'household of God.'
When our Lord was speaking to St. Peter about the ministry which was
being entrusted to the apostles, He said to him, 'Who then is the
faithful and wise steward whom his Lord shall set over his household to
give them their portion of food in due season[6]?' This description
opens to us part of the meaning of the divine household. A household
is a place where a family is provided for, where there is a regular and
orderly supply of ordinary needs. And the Church is the divine
household in which God has provided stewards to make {115} regular
spiritual provision for men, so that they shall feel and know
themselves members of a family, understood, sympathized with, helped,
encouraged, disciplined, fed. What in fact are the sacraments and
sacramental rites, what are baptism, confirmation and communion,
marriage and ordination, the administration of the word of God, the
dealings with the penitent, the sick, the dead, but the 'portions of
food in due season,' the orderly distribution of the bread of life in
the family or household of God?