!.;^-;';;';:|ii!\:.'"d[:!LJitfeiL' "I give theft JBaoks -fer tte/ai^mdng «/ a. CnUege in-i'/fej Colony" 1 Gift of Yale Divinity School l9Xr EPHESIAN STUDIES EPHESIAN STUDIES EXPOSITORY READINGS ON THE EPISTLE OF SAINT PAUL TO THE EPHESIANS BY THE REV. HANDLEY C. G. MOULE, D.D. NORRISIAN PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY FELLOW OF ST CATHARINE'S COLLEGE, AND FORMERLY OF TRINITY COLLEGE AND LATE PRINCIPAL OF RIDLEY HALL, CAMBRIDGE HONORARY CHAPLAIN TO THE QUEEN NEW YORK A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 51 EAST TENTH STREET 1900 \^ "i X^? ¥"9 iT-' Printed hy HimU, Watson, &" Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury, Eiiflnnd. TO MY DEAR BROTHER ARTHUR EVANS MOULE, B.D., ARCHDEACON, THIRTY-TWO YEARS MISSIONARY OT THE GOSPEL IN CHINA, NOW RECTOR OF COMPTON VALENCE, IN DORSET, THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED WITH GRATITUDE AND LOTE "This Epistle is full to the brim of thoughts and doctrines sublime and momentous. For the things which scarcely anywhere else he utters, these he here makes manifest." Chrysostom, Preamble to the Homilies. PREFACE I ^HE present Volume completes a series of expository " Studies " upon the Episdes of St Paul known as the Epistles of the First Roman Imprisonment. As in dealing with the Epistles to Philippi, Colossse, and Philemon, so with this to Ephesus, or more properly (as we shall see) to Asia, the author has sought, as his one aim, to exhibit something of the treasures of " edification, exhortation, and com fort," lodged for us by the Inspiring Master in the wonderful work of the inspired Servant. To this everything else has been subsidiary, alike the brief historical and critical introduc tion and the occasional grammatical discussions. The highest ambition of the interpreter has viii PREFACE been to bring the reader into closer contact with the "Celestial Letter" itself, and with the mind and message of God in it. May His mercy be pleased to make some use of the work for His ends in His Church, Cambridge, Lent, 1900. CONTENTS CHAPTER Ij PAGE INTRODUCTORY 3 CHAPTER II GREETING, AND PRAISE FOR DIVINE SALVATION . . 23 (eph. i. I- 14.) CHAPTER III THE apostle's PRAYER THAT THEY MAY REALIZE WHAT THEY possess ........ 43 (EPH. i. 15-23.) CHAPTER IV THE SALVATION OF THE EPHESIANS ; AN INSTANCE OF THE WORK OF REDEEMING GRACE .... 65 (EPH. ii. i-io.) CONTENTS CHAPTER V PAGE THE EPHESIANS, ONCE " REMOTE," NOW " MADE NIGH," WITH ETERNAL GLORY IN PROSPECT .... 85 (EPH. ii. 11-22.) CHAPTER VI A DIGRESSION : THE GOSPEL, AND ITS WORLD-WIDE SCOPE 1 05 (eph. iii. 1-13.) CHAPTER VII THE MAIN THEME RESUMED: PRAYER FOR THE IN DWELLING AND THE FULNESS : DOXOLOGY . . 1 25 (EPH. iii, 14-21.) CHAPTER VIII A RETROSPECT AND REVIEW . 147 CHAPTER IX HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : LOVE, HARMONY .... (KPH. iv. 1-7.) HUMILITY, 169 CHAPTER X HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : DIVERSITY AND HARMONY OF GIFTS AND SERVICE (EPH. iv. 7-16.) 189 CONTENTS CHAPTER XI HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW ....... 209 PAGE (EPH. iv. 17-24.) CHAPTER XII HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : TOTAL ABSTI NENCE FROM SINNING IN THE FORGIVEN LIFE . .229 (EPH. iv. 2S-V. 2.) CHAPTER XIII HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : THE WORKS OF DARKNESS AND THE FRUIT OF LIGHT . . 247 (EPH. V. 3-14.) CHAPTER XIV HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : THE CHRISTIAN'S WATCHFULNESS, TEMPERANCE, AND SONG . . . 265 (eph. v. 15-21.) CHAPTER XV HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : THE CHRISTIAN home; HUSBAND AND WIFE 28 1 (EPH. V. 22.) CHAPTER XVI HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : THE CHRISTIAN HOME : PARENT AND CHILD, MASTER AND SERVANT . 299 (EPH. vi. 1-9.) CONTENTS CHAPTER XVII PAGE THE CHRISTIAN HOME ; CONCLUSION : THE SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 317 (EPH. vi. 10-20.) CHAPTER XVIII SALUTATION : BENEDICTION . . ... 335 (KPH. vi. 21-24.) INTRODUCTORY " Farewell Pembroke Hall, of late myne owne CoUedge, my cure and my charge. In thy Orchard (the wals, buts, and trees, if they could speake, would beare me witnes) I learned without booke almost all Paules epistles, yea, and I weene all the Canonicall epistles, saue only the Apocalyps. Of which study, although in time a great part did depart from me, yet the sweete smell thereof I trust I shall cary with me into heauen : for the profile thereof I thinke I haue felt in all my lyfe tyme euer after. ' Nicholas Ridley, Bishop and Martyr, 1555. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY ON a spring day of mingled shower and sunshine, March 5th, 1897, I stepped for the first time on the shore of Asia. Landing at Smyrna, we travelled by rail, a large company, from the port through a fine and fertUe country, to a roadside station bearing the name Aya Salouk. At this place we left the train, and for some hours traversed the neighbouring hills and fields, making our way from fragment to fragment ofa vast scene of ruins. Here was a Byzantine church, there a track, scarcely to be called a road, bordered with Greek sarcophagi. On the western side of a commanding hill in the midst of the region was the grass-grown hollow of a Greek theatre, the steps of the seats still traceable under the vegetation, the structures of the stage a confused mass of ruin. Sitting there a little whUe alone, I looked over the landscape at my feet as it stretched towards the Gulf of Smyrna EPHESIAN STUDIES and the westering sun. A small river shone with its broken silver reaches along the middle of the scene, and noble hills bounded the broad vista, right and left ; those on the right, north ward, lying at a considerable distance. Not very far off upon the plain in that direction was visible, as I moved a little from the nook where I sat, a wide hollow in the general level, a sort of small sunken field, overgrown with thorn-bushes, and heaped with the confused of wreckage walls, columns, and steps. A few birds were singing near me; "the breezy whispers of the hUl" were heard in tune with them ; now and then a fellow-traveller's voice at a little distance was audible ; otherwise the scene was one of beautiful but pathetic silence and repose, the quiet of a vast cemetery of the ancient days. It was all that remains of Ephesus. Aya Salouk is Hagios Theologos, the Holy Divine, St John. The place where I sat was once the Theatre where for two long hours that dense throng stood shouting, " Great is Artemis of the Ephesians." And yonder hollow field, with its thorns and its stones, what is it .? It is the site, determined at last, of the great Temple of Artemis herself, " the Ephesian Miracle," the world's wonder, where stood the adored image, EPHESUS AS IT IS grotesque and barbaric, of the prolific Nature- Power, and along with it the Diopetes, " the Thing fallen from Zeus," from Jupiter; whatever it was, meteoric stone or not. There " all Asia and the world " were wont to worship. Many and heart-moving were the memories which arose during that walk, during that quiet session in the cavea of the Theatre. But the one commanding and inspiring memory was St Paul. Here was his well-known Ephesus. Here for the space of three complete years- — a unique length of stationary work for him — he had lived and laboured, not as the apostolic missionary only but as the apostolic pastor. Here he had taken that critical and momentous step, the "separation" of the disciples from the Synagogue to a distinct place of teaching and no doubt of worship, " the school of one Tyrannus," the lecture-hall, we may suppose, of a friendly professor in what we may call the Ephesian University, Here he had laboured, watched, and wept, for both the community and individuals. Here he had met and influenced visitors from every part of the Asian Province, till his power for Christ was felt in every district, yes, even in the remote valley of the river Lycus, from which Laodicean, Hieropolitan, and Colossian citizens, finding their EPHESIAN STUDIES way to the capital, had been found by Paul's Lord and won to Him. Here he had buUt up the Church till its presbyters were a large group, men of the Holy Spirit, and devotedly attached to himself as father and leader (Acts xx.). Yonder, where the sea shines under the declining sun, he had, on a memorable occasion, summoned them to meet him at Miletus, and they had obeyed, travelling probably down the great ship- canal which then connected the spacious inland haven of the city with the distant coast. And in later years it was to this Ephesus that the Missionary addressed, from Rome, the wonderful Letter which we are about to study. There I sat in 1897, with the Epistle to the Ephesians in my hand. That Epistle was written not improbably in 63, eighteen hundred and thirty- four years before. Yet it was new that day ; a " fallen leaf that kept its green," its immortal green ; aye, and not fallen either ; for its true Author is not dead, though His servant who wrote the Letter for Him sleepeth. He, and therefore His Word, " liveth and abideth for ever." Solemn and inspiring is the contrast, in a case like that of Ephesus, between the total decay of the place and the everlasting youth and newness "STUDIES" ? ofthe Scripture. It has an indescribable pathos, and a heart-searching warning, from one point of view ; but it is full from another of " everlasting comfort, and good hope through grace." So we approach the Epistle to the Ephesians, for a series of spiritual " Studies." The word "Studies" I half deprecate while I use it; it may so easUy seem to mean something quite other than what is offered here. It may suggest original research, critical discussion, minute en quiry. As a fact I pretend only to provide the reader with a careful paraphrase or running ren dering of the Epistle, accompanied with a simple development of its main spiritual and practical lessons. But after all I will not apologize for the word " Studies " in such a connexion. The purely spiritual use of the Holy Scriptures, if it is what it should be, calls as truly as any critical handling does for care, for reverent atten tion, for the watchful while devout use of reason ; we may use the word "Study" for an attempt to read the Bible thus. As we take up this wonderful writing, let us pause for a few moments to reflect upon the fact that it is an Episde, a Letter. Has the reader ever appreciated the significance, the value, of the EPHESIAN STUDIES fact that so large a mass of the New Testament is in Letter form ? I cannot forbear quoting on this subject. Its importance is well presented in that masterly book, Canon T. D. Bernard's Bampton Lectures, The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament ; a full extract will prove none too long. The passage is introduced by an enquiry into the place and function of the apostolic Epistles (" the Apostle," as the Fathers often call them collectively) in the plan of Reve lation. Attention is drawn to the evidence given by our Lord's words, and by the nature of the case, to the divine intention that the Apostles should develope and complete the personal teaching of their Master ; were it otherwise we should (provably) have to face the riddle of a delivery of doctrine by Christ which assumed, which promised, a sequel and completion, but never received it. Accordingly we are right to read the Epistles with the same reverent confidence which we bring to the Gospels and their Discourses ; they are equally, and with a profound purpose, the message of the King. Canon Bernard now proceeds ^ : " The Lord recognized this necessity. He met it by the living voice of His Apostles ; and » Lect. vi„ p. 135, ed. 1873, REVELATION BY EPISTLES their Epistles remain as the permanent record of this part of their work. They are the voice of the Spirit, speaking within the Church to those who are themselves within it, certifying to them the true interpretations and applications of the principles of thought and life which as believers in Jesus they have received, , . . The form in which this teaching is given to us is very significant. ' The epistolary form,' says Bengel, ' is a pre-eminence of the Scriptures of the New Testament as compared with those of the Old.' It is a suggestive remark, reminding us of that open communication and equal participation of revealed truth which is the prerogative of the later above the former dispensation ; indicating too that the teacher and the taught are placed on one common level in the fellowship of truth. The Prophets delivered oracles to the people, but the Apostles wrote letters to the brethren, letters characterised by all that fulness of unreserved explanation, and that play of various feeling, which are proper to that form of intercourse. It is in its nature a more familiar communication between those who are, or should be, equals. That character may less obviously force upon us the sense, that the light which is thrown on all subjects is that of a divine inspiration; but lo EPHESIAN STUDIES this is only the natural effect of the greater fulness of that light ; for so the moonbeams fix the eye upon themselves, as they burst through the rifts of rolling clouds, catching the edges of objects, and falling on patches of the landscape ; while under the settled brightness of the genial and universal day, it is not so much the light that we think of as the varied scene which it shews. " But the fact that the teaching of the Apostles is represented by their letters, is a peculiarity, not only in comparison with the teaching of the Prophets, but with ancient teaching in general, which is perpetuated either in regular treatises or conversations preserved in writing. The form adopted in the New Testament combines the advantages of the treatise and the conversation. The letter may treat important subjects with accuracy and fulness, but it will do so in imme diate connection with actual life. It is written to meet an occasion. It is addressed to par ticular states of mind. It breathes the heart of the writer. In these respects it suits well with a period of instruction in which the Word of God is to be given to men, not so much in the way of information as in the way of education ; or in other words, in which the truth is to be REVELATION BY EtlSTLES il delivered, not abstractedly, but with a close re lation to the condition of mind of its recipients. " Thus it is delivered in the Epistles. Christ has been received ; Christian life has been commenced ; Christian communities have been formed ; and men's minds have been at work on the great principles which they have em braced. Some of these principles in one place, and others of them in another, have been im perfectly grasped, or positively perverted, or practically misapplied, so as to call for explana tion or correction ; or else they have been both apprehended and applied so worthily, that the teacher . . , feels able to open out the mysteries of God. . , . These conditions of mind were not individual accidents, Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, supplied examples of different tenden cies of the human mind in connection with the principles of the Gospel — tendencies which would ever recur, and on which it was requisite for the future guidance of the Church that the Word of God should pronounce. It did pronounce in the most effectual way, by those letters which are addressed by the commissioners of Christ, not to possible but to actual cases, with that largeness of view which belongs to spectators at a certain distance from the scene, and with that closeness 12 EPHESIAN STUDIES of application which personal acquaintance dictates and personal affection inspires." A little below. Canon Bernard speaks of the method of apostolic teaching, as in perfect har mony with this its form. "It is a method of companionship rather than of dictation. The writer does not announce a series of revelations, or arrest the enquiries which he encounters in men's hearts by the unanswerable formula, ' Thus saith the Lord.' He . . . utters his own con victions, he pours forth his own experience, he appeals to others to 'judge what he says,' and commends his words ' to their conscience in the sight of God.' He confutes by argument rather than by authority. . . . Such a method necessarily creates a multitude of occasions for hesitation or objection ; and it has been proposed to meet these difficulties by the principle that we are bound to accept the conclusions as matters of revelation, but not to assent to the validity of the arguments or the applicability of the quota tions. The more we enter into the spirit of the particular passages which have been thought to require that qualification, the more we feel that it can only have seemed necessary, from a want of real and deep harmony with the mind of Scripture," THE EPISTLE IS GENUINE 13 The extract is long ; my temptation was to make it longer, so valuable is the whole context. What has been quoted will be felt, I think, to be altogether to the point as we address our selves to the study not only of an Epistle but of this Epistle ; so rich in revelations of the very arcana of the Gospel, yet conveying them in a form so entirely fuU of the personality and sympathies of the writer, and with such close and tender application to the realities of human life. But let us actually take up the Epistle. It is not my business here to conduct the reader at length through the question of its genuineness and authenticity. It will be enough to remind ourselves of a few outstanding facts in this connexion. We note that the early external evidence to the Pauline authorship is abundant and absolutely unanimous. Irenseus, the learned and careful theologian of the second century, expressly and repeatedly cites the Episde, and as St Paul's. In the patristic literature as a whole, perhaps no book of the New Testament is more largely quoted. If the external evidence is inadequate, then we certainly have no adequate evidence that Virgil wrote the Georgics, or Horace the 14 EPHESIAN STUDIES Odes, or Augustine the Confessions. And to this let us confidently add the internal evidence, " Ephesians," says the late Dr Hort, a severely critical student of such a problem, "bears the impress of St Paul's wonderful mind." " No one but St Paul could have been the writer," says the late Dean Howson, a man who, if any man of our time, had made himself personally acquainted with St Paul, His words will bear inspection, bold as they are. For what is the problem to be solved, supposing St Paul not to be author ? It is, how to find room within the required limits for another personality strong and illuminated enough to produce the Epistle, and at the same time low enough in moral per ception to be willing to pass it off" as St Paul's, It was written, it was reverenced as Scripture, long before Irenaeus wrote ; this leaves no broad margin for the supposed date of the " great Unknown," And it sounds the depths and climbs without an effort the heights of Christian idea ; the " Unknown " was " great " indeed, great in thought, great in spiritual insight. And it not only bears the name Paul in its first sentence ; it elaborately interweaves his life and his affections with its whole texture ; it means, beyond a doubt, to pass for his. The human GREATNESS OF THE EPISTLE 15 heart protests against the theory that fabrication, personation, in such a context, is credible for a moment. Renan may presume to call the Epistle une Spitre banale, a third-rate composition.^ The criticism, read in the light first of the Epistle itself, then of the verdict of all Christendom, can only convict the subtle literary critic of a spiritual paralysis which fatally affects even literary insight where the theme is spiritual. A greater than Renan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, subtlest of critics, and at the same time both philosopher and Christian, in a single brief sen tence pronounces the Epistle to be "one of the divinest compositions of man."^ A true testi mony, yet after aU how inadequate! "A divine composition of man " is a phrase perfectly justi fiable in theory, as used of a book of Scripture. Yet it rings somewhat out of tune ; for the words might be used to describe a work of sanctified genius which yet made no pretence to be an oracle of God ; and if there is a writing which implicidy claims to be that or nothing, it is the Epistle to the Ephesians, But Coleridge meant the phrase soundly, and we may take it ' Saint Paul, p. xviii. .5 Table Talk, p. 82, ed. 1852. 1 6 EPHESIAN STUDIES SO, as one witness among many to that supreme quality in the Epistle which is an evidence to its origin weightier than even all the quotations of the Fathers. We have in it the ipsissima verba of the Chosen Vessel. We receive it, delivered at our doors, as a Letter about Christ's glory from the man whom He expressly moulded, conquered and commissioned, to tell us of Himself and His salvation. Another question, altogether lower in its im portance, but of peculiar interest, attaches to the Epistle. Is it, after all, an Epistle to the Ephesians ? The reader of only the Authorized Version wiU be surprised by the question. Is not the Epistle entitled. To the Ephesians ? Does not the first sentence direct it to the saints which are at Ephesus ? It is so ; but the margin of the Revised Version informs us that in that first sentence " some very ancient authorities omit at Ephesus!' The "authorities" referred to are, among manuscripts, three im portant copies, the Vatican, the Sinaitic, and another.^ But these " authorities," considerable as they are, take us up no further, at furthest, than early in the fourth century, and their weight could not possibly of itself counteract ' The " cursive " copy known a§ " 67 of §t Paul," WAS IT "TO THE EPHESIANS"? 17 that of the whole catalogue of other ancient transcripts. What gives it an importance not its own is that certain of the Fathers, and among them TertuUian, whose activity began in the second century, give clear indications that they were aware of a problem attaching to these words. It is certain that Origen in the third century, and Basil in the fourth, and Epiphanius and Jerome in the fourth and fifth, knew of many copies of the Epistle, (Basil calls them " the older copies,") in which the first verse ran, " to the saints which are, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus," Origen, characteristically, sees a mystery in the phrase, and thinks that the Apostle is intimating the vital connexion of believers with the I am ; joined to Him, they become " those that are," Archbishop Ussher in the seventeenth century, and Bishop Lightfoot in our own, have offered a solution of this phenomenon which appears to combine all the facts, or almost all. Ussher ^ suggested that the Epistle was indeed " to the Ephesians," but that it was not intended for them alone. " In some ancient copies," he writes, " this Epistle was addressed in general terms, , . . ' To the saints who are , . , and ' Annates N. Testamenti, under the year ofthe world 4068. 2 1 8 EPHESIAN STUDIES to the faithful in Christ Jesus.' As if the letter had been sent first to Ephesus, as the chief metropolis of Asia ; to be transmitted thence to the other Churches of the same province, the name of each being inserted in its instance."^ Lightfoot ^ adopts this conjecture of Ussher's, only emphasizing the probability that many copies would carry in their address the words "at Ephesus,"^ and that in copies made from specimens where a blank was left after the word " are," that blank would easily disappear. If I may quote words of my own,* in which a summing up of the case has been attempted : " Something more than I find in Bishop Light- foot's remarks seems to be needed to account for the practically universal tradition of the Ephesian destination of the Epistle, May not this be somewhat as foUows ? St Paul did indeed mean the Epistle for Asia ultimately. But the very close connexion ^ between Ephesus and the • I may be permitted to refer to my edition of Ephesians {Cambridge Bible), and to my Grace and Truth, pp. 26-33. * See his Biblical Essays, % x. ' May we not think it very likely that the original document itself, dictated by St Paul, would do so ? We may add that copies for the public use of the Church would be more likely to be taken from the metropolitan specimens than from others. * Grace and Truth, p. 32. ' It was as a fact singularly close TO EPHESUS FOR ASIA 19 Province led him to address it in the first instance to Ephesus. But it was to Ephesus not as the mission station but as the provincial capital ; the trustee for the outlying missions. For them transcripts would of course be made, at Ephesus ; and in many of these, if not all, the iv 'E(j)€(ra> would be omitted, perhaps without any substitute ; the blank might be supplied at each place tacitly." It is obvious to remark, in support of Ussher's theory, that the Epistle is singularly devoid of allusions to persons and circumstances in the place to which it is addressed ; and this although Ephesus had been, as we have already remem bered, the scene of a work, more perhaps than any other in St Paul's life, pastoral and particular. If we may return for a moment to our point of view on the ruined steps of the Ephesian Theatre, and open the Epistle there once more, we must not only scan the Ephesian plain to call up memories of the first readers of the Epistle ; we must climb behind the cavea to the top of Mount Prion, and survey the vast horizon, even to the snowy top of the Phrygian Olympus, and think of the copies which were sped by faithful EPHESIAN STUDIES hands to Smyrna, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, to Pergamus, to Thyatira, and, not least, to Laodicea, the queen of the valley of the Lycus, thence to be sent on to Hierapolis and to old Colossae in its glen.'' But now, it comes even unto us. That blank space shall be filled in by us with the name nearest to ourselves ; the land, the church, the town, the home, which to us makes life to be what it is. And the message sent, from the Roman prison immediately, from the heaven of heavens ultimately, shall be read as by those who know that what it says of Christ, of the Church, of grace, of holiness, of glory, is ad dressed to us by Paul, and countersigned to us by our Lord Jesus Christ. ' See Col. iv. i6. It is more than probable that "the letter from Laodicea" means, the copy of "Ephesians" sent there, to be passed on to the minor stations of the district. GREETING, AND PRAISE FOR DIVINE SALVATION 21 "Dark with excess of bright Thy skirts appear. Yet dazzle heaven, that brightest Seraphim Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes.'' Milton. CHAPTER II greeting, and praise for divine salvation Ephesians i. 1-14 THE Epistle has been completed in the lodging of St Paul at Rome ; it has been carried safely over sea and land, till it has travelled up from the yEgaean shore, by the long ship-canal, and found its way to Ephesian hands. We recollect that it has travelled not alone. Two other apostolic messages go by the same bearers ; a letter to the outlying mission-church of Colossae, on some special dangers just now present there and at Laodicea, and a shorter missive, a note rather than a letter, for an indi vidual Colossian, Philemon ; it commends to him his slave Onesimus, once a runaway and perhaps a thief besides, now " begotten " to the new life 23 24 EPHESIAN STUDIES in the miracle of a true conversion, and returning at aU costs to duty. Our reasons for the assertion that these three memorable Letters were carried by the same hands and at the same time are as simple as interesting. The Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians are near akin in respect of subject- matter; the most rapid inspection shews this. Closer examination tells us that the connexion extends to phraseology as well, in a degree which makes it quite certain moraUy that they not only passed through the same mind but passed through it and from it at about the same time. Let the reader take the two Epistles, and compare (as a few examples out of many) the following passages : Eph. i. 22 with Col, i. 18; Eph, iv. 16 with Col. ii. 19; Eph. ii, i with Col. ii. 13; Eph. i. 7 with Col, i. 14; Eph. iv. 22-24 with Col. iii. 9, 10 ; Eph. v. 16 with Col. iv. 5 ; Eph. v. 19 with Col. iii. 16. On a more extended scale, let him compare the domestic paragraphs of the two Epistles, Eph. V. 22 to vi. 9 with Col. in. 18 to iv. i. Then let him note that the one friend or follower named by St Paul in Ephesians is Tychicus (vi. 21), and that this name appears also in Colossians (iv. 7), in a sentence of close verbal "EPHESIANS" AND "COLOSSIANS" 25 simUarity. Taking both Episdes as the genuine utterances of St Paul, we may say with absolute confidence" that they belong to the same moment of his ministry, and were meant for recipients intimately connected with one another. Then we turn to the letter to Philemon, and we find abundant evidence for a close relation between it and the letter to the Colossians. PhUemon indeed is not called a Colossian, nor does his name occur in the Colossian Epistle. But Onesimus (the name of his slave) is "one of the Colossians" (iv. 9). And Archippus, who in the private letter is named in close connexion with Philemon (ver. 2), receives in Colossians (for who can doubt the identity of the person, looking at the whole context ?) a solemn charge (iv. 17). And when St Paul enumerates the other friends around him as he dictates, and sends their greetings, we find the same names in both Epistles ; Epaphras, Aristarchus, Marcus, Lucas, Demas ; only one such name, " Jesus, who is caUed Justus" (Col. iv. 11), fails to occur in the two documents alike. We are left without a reasonable doubt; the letters to Philemon and to the Colossians were sent together, and together accompanied that which we know as the Episde to the Ephesians, 26 EPHESIAN STUDIES " To the Ephesians," we may be tolerably sure, it was in the first instance delivered, what ever its after-destination may have been.^ To them first it would be read aloud ; see Col. iv. i6 for such a "reading in the church," in the assembly of the disciples. Perhaps in the " school of Tyrannus," perhaps in some large private room furnished by a leading disciple, the reader gave to the listening throng of saints, sentence by sentence, uttered for that first time in ears representing universal Christendom, this glorious oracle of God through His chosen Vessel. Can we not almost see the scene, and catch the accent and the cadence, and watch the audience — perhaps the very large audience— with their eager faces, and many a look and perhaps many an exclamation of wonder and worship, as that scroll is slowly opened and, column by column, poured into their ears and hearts ? Let us take our seat beside them, for we are of the same family, and let us listen too, as those who have never heard before. Ver. I. Paul, apostle of Christ Jesus,^ envoy of Him who ' See above, p. 17. ' This is the best attested order here, not " Jesus Christ." It is peculiar to St Paul. THE SALUTATION. 27 is first the Hope of Israel and then of the world, through God's will, commissioned by nothing less than His fiat, to the holy ones who live at Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus ; the men and women separated from sin to God (wyioK) and living the life of saving reliance (Trtorot?) in their union with (iv) His Son ; persons thus wonderfully enabled for that twofold life which is lived " in Ephesus," Ver. 2. externally, " in Christ Jesus," spiritually. Grace to you arid peace, free and benignant divine favour, and its fair resultants of reconciliation with the Holy One and inward rest through His presence in the heart, from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. For such is Jesus Christ, that though He was known, amply within living memory, as dwelling with men in Palestinian villages and towns, spending human life and dying human death in uttermost literal experience, yet, as truly as the Eternal Father, He, " this same Jesus," is the Giver of spiritual gifts to every recipient soul of man. Such is the Salutation ; and perhaps the Reader pauses for a moment in the assembly. Now for the message : Ver. 3. Blessed, praised with worshipping love, be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ; He '' who inhabiteth eternity," " dwelling in the light unapproach able," unknown and unknowable in His "perfection," but knowable, and known, and near, and dear, in this respect, that our risen Lord called Him, in human 28 EPHESIAN STUDIES hearing (John xx. 17), "My Father and your Father, My God and your God " ' ; He who blessed us (for the Blessed loves to bless, with an act of blessing " which divinely effects the good it speaks ") in, with a purpose expressed in, all spiritual benediction; spiritual, as shed from Him who " is Spirit " (John iv. 2) upon the inmost spirit of His creatures, for their spiritual birth, and life, and glory ; in the celestial regions, in Christ. Yes, He blessed us as He sate there, upon the throne of love, viewing us sinners as also there, above all earthly place, before all human time ; for we were represented there already " in " our blessed Head, in foreseen union with Him. Wonderful benediction ! but it is only in correspondence and harmony with its occasion, which itself was an act of immeasurable and uncaused love. Ver. 4. For it took place according as He chose us out, from fallen humanity, in Him, in Christ ; chose us, selected us, His followers, His company who believe and love ; chose us " not according to our works " ; for reasons infinitely good, but hidden wholly in Himself; hefore the world's foundation, aye, before this universe in its most aboriginal beginning began to be. So sovereign, so sublime, so immeasurably antecedent to ourselves, was that decree for our salvation ; so ante- mundane in date, so supra-mundane in sphere and scope. And what was to be its issue ? That we should be holy and blameless before His face in love; given, ' Note that this infinitely precious designation of Him occurs also verbatim 2 Cor. i. 3, i Pet. i. 3. PREDESTINATION 29 by His love, a perfect " standing " in His presence, welcomed there in faultless title as His very own.^ This "choosing out" is to be described, from another side, as a destination beforehand ; a definite divine intention of privilege and blessing antecedent to the very being of its objects. For He chose us out, Ver. s. marking us out beforehand (TrpooptW?), writing down as it were our names for that happy future,^ to an adoption, an instatement into the position of sons (vlodea-ia), through Jesus Christ, unto Himself; for it is " through " the Son that we reach sonship, and so come to be related " unto " the Father in that wonderful ' I venture, though not without hesitation, to recommend this interpretation of the words «vat . . . iv dydTrj. It is obviously possible to explain them not of the position but rather of the condition of the saints, as that condition will be finally perfected by grace. But the context seems to plead rather for the other reference ; the emphasis of the context is upon our welcome to all the love of the Father just because of our most mercifully given union with the Son. See further, note here in the Cambridge Bible. ' The Latin versions of the New Testament give the words frcedestinare, ^rcedestinatio, for irpoopiCdv, Trpoopiais. By an accident of language, " destiny " (destinatio) has come to be connected in thought with blind, impersonal, mechanical Jate. And nothing can be further than that idea from the npoopicris of infinite love and wisdom (quite as much as of infinite power). Hence, for ordinary purposes, the word predestination is to be used sparingly, and with explanation ; " foreordain," " mark out beforehand," are better phrases for practical use. But this is not to sweep away the mystery of the thing ; it is only to remind us that the mystery, " dark with excess of bright," a sovereign "choosing," "ordaining," and "blessing," of us unworthy sinners, in Christ, is in the hands of personal and infinitely trustworthy Love. 30 EPHESIAN STUDIES position ; His very own, to belong to Him, to know Him, to serve Him, " to glorify Him, and to enjoy Him fully for ever." And how came all this to be? What are we that thus, in an eternity above all time, we were seen, and loved, and blessed, after this celestial sort ? " Even so. Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight." It was according to, conditioned and caused by, the good pleasure, the royal and benignant resolve, of His will — that ultimate mystery and glory, that secret of good behind all good, the Will of God. And so its issue was and is to be good indeed, with a good unattainable Ver. 6. by any lower cause ; unto the praise of the glory of His grace; so that He may receive from His adoring creatures the " praise " due to His " glory," His own manifested CHARACTER, manifested in this form of entrancing beauty, His "grace." It is that grace in regard to which ^ He accepted us in His (t^) Beloved One^; making us one with Him, as limb is one with head, as bride with bridegroom, and so giving us real part and lot in Christ's own welcome to the Father's heart. Thrice blessed by us be the EiXoy'nro'}, the " Blessed," who thus loved, and chose, and welcomed. Thrice ' 'Hs stands by " attraction" for iji/. See again below, ver. 8. * Read, tjs e'xapiVaxrfi' fjpas, k.t.X. I venture to retain the A.V. rendering for exaplrcoa-fv. It is indeed rather a paraphrase than a rendering, but the context seems to justify it. " Made us recipients of grace " would properly render exaph-acrev fj/xas. But the context tends to suggest the " grace " specially of acceptance ; God's love expressing itself specially in a paternal welcome. REDEMPTION THROUGH HIS BLOOD 31 blessed be the ' HyaTrrj/iivo^ the "Beloved," who gave Himself in that deep eternity to be not only the Deliverer of us sinners, but our Head, articulating us into Himself, identifying Himself with us for ever. And now we are not to forget that by the Blessed Father and the Beloved Son this boundless gift given to us was not wrought by a mere edict, however omnipotent. It was a matter not of power only, nor even only of love, but of law too ; it must harmonize the holiness of Him who " is consuming fire " with the tenderness of the same God, who "is love." So now the majestic sentences, like Him of whom they speak, "come down from heaven," and take us from the Throne to the mortal Cross. There was no other way, no easier way, to make actual the eternal blessing, uttered "before the world's foundation." Were we to be justified, and sanctified, and glorified? Then must the Father, constrained by His own holiness, " not spare His own Son, but deliver Him over for us all " (Rom. viii. 32). And the Son, under the same con straint, infinitely free of all other compulsion, but compelled by the fact that love, to be divine, must be holy, must not spare Himself — " becoming obedient, even to the length of death " (Phil. ii. 8). So, in Him Ver. 7. we have our {ti]v) redemption ; we possess (^exofiev) in happy certainty our position as His rescued ones, rescued by His ransom paid for us ; through His blood, for that was the price ; " without blood-shedding, no remission " (Heb. ix. 22) ; without inflicted death, no peace with broken law. " Remission " it was indeed ; 32 EPHESIAN STUDIES the remission, the forgiveness, the wonderful amnesty, of our trespasses ; according to, in the plan and on the immense scale of, the wealth of His grace, " not grudg ingly," but with a " cheerful giving " correspondent to the boundless resource of His free favour. Did the Father so purpose and so provide? He also took merciful care in due time to reveal. This Ver. 8. grace, this loving favour He made overflow (eTreplcyaevcrev) to us, from the deep well of His love, in all wisdom and intelligence; that is. He let it shew itself "in" our being by Him enabled to under stand His purpose, to feel His heart of mercy, to approve and to concur with His redeeming plan, as men " made wise unto salvation." He " made His Ver. 9. grace overflow " thus, when He made known {yvwpUra'i) to us, in His Son, and in the Gospel of His Son, the secret (fivaTripiov) of His will ; that bright secret, meant not for the darkness but the light, the hidden treasure which is in fact Jesus Christ ; according to, true to the plan of. His good pleasure, His gracious resolve, which He proposed to Himself in Him (eV avrcS), that is to say, in His Son. For the Son was its place and sphere ; it moved and worked " in " the Son ; it was to take effect wholly through Him, and to do so by bringing us into union with Him. Aye, and the whole process has regard to a consummation which will indeed take effect "in" Him. It looks forward, Ver. 10. with a view to the stewardship of the fulness of the seasons. The Son is the great "Steward" of the Father's house ; the keys of all its life and history THE ALL AND THE HEAD 33 are in His hands. And His "management" will at length conduct the whole operation to a goal, placed and dated by God's own prescient wisdom. Then all the "seasons" of the story of redemption will attain their " fulness," will be fulfilled, accomplished, so that the actual result shall correspond to the divine ideal. What is that ideal ? It is the glorification of Christ as the Head of all things; Centre, Ruler, Life, of whatsoever He has blessed. It is, to sum up all things in Christ as Head (avaKecf>aXaia>aaadai . . ek XpicjTov), the things in' the heavens and the things on the earth; the angelic host above, (which also, as well as we, has in some unknown way felt His gracious power,) and us mortals here below, "redeemed from the earth"; chosen angels and chosen men ; glorious concentric Ver. II. circles around Him the vital Sun.^ In whom we were as a fact («at) taken into the inheritance, so as to become "the Lord's portion" (Deut. xxxii. 9), not only in purpose but in act ; foreordained as we were, to this happy position, according to the purpose of Him who is working everything ' in us according to the counsel ' Perhaps read to. im tois ovpavois, lit. " on the heavens " ; the heavens regarded as a country "on" which walk the glorified. Cp. the adjective iirovpdvws. ' It will be seen that I so far limit the to jraira as to refer the words not to existence in its universality but to the "things" which the context suggests. In that light, the reference is not, surely, to the universe at large. Meanwhile Col. i. gives a notable intimation of the fact that the Son of God is the " Head " also of the whole created Cosmos. • Ta irdvTa ivepyovvTos : to. navra is the jravra in question, the 34 EPHESIAN STUDIES of His wiU ; the " counsel " which is directed full upon Ver. 12. that wonderful object — upon our being to the praise of His glory, our being so saved and so transfigured as to win adoring admiration for His Character seen in our redemption ; us, who had hoped, who had trusted, beforehand in His (tw) Christ. The "beforehand" has regard to His Second Coming, when we "shall appear with Him in glory." Then, finally and fully, we shall be the occasion for " the praise of His glory." And we shall be what then we shall be, as having "relied in advance," by faith, not sight, upon His promises, as yet unfulfilled in their ultimate splendour. Now the message comes closer to the imme diate listeners, the saints of Ephesus. Hitherto the Apostle has spoken generally of the re deemed. " We," "us," " our," have been as inclusive as possible. Now the whole facts of grace and glory are applied to the particular instance : Ver. 13. In whom, in Christ the Head, " in " Him by covenant inclusion and by vital cohesion, you also are,* all-things of salvation. 'Evepye'iv suggests by its form the render ing given above, the "inward" working of God in the soul and in the Church. But usage forbids us to press this without reserve. ' 'Ev (p Kol iiifis : the above rendering is grammatically safe, and simplifies an otherwise complex construction. Still, in view of St Paul's often complicated style (complicated by a boundless fulness of matter) it may be well to explain the Greek as if he THE EARNEST 35 having found entrance into Him on hearing (SucovaavTe^) the message of the truth, the Good News of your salvation ; in whom also, on believing, you were sealed with the Spirit of the Promise, the Holy One ; the gifts and power of the Paraclete were made yours at once on your union with the Christ of God,* and their presence and their fruit " sealed " you as genuine subjects of salvation, and also as the actually purchased property of your Lord. Ver. 14. Thanks be to God for that sealing Gift ; for it (o) is an eamest, an arrh&bdn^ a part-payment given as promise of the whole, a pledge, of our inheritance, our coming " weight of glory," pending (et?) the redemption, the final emancipation from the last relics of evil, of the Acquisition, the purchased Property of God, even us His saved ones ; to the praise of His glory. We may well pause here for a little while. The golden passage forms so closely linked a chain that I knew not how to break its continuity by closing our "study" earlier. But this gold had intended to write, simply, " In whom you too, believing, were sealed"; but had then conceived the thought expressed in the clauses aKovcyavm . . . ciarc]p'\.ai vp.aiv, and woven this in as he went. The general import, however, is but little affected by the doubt. ' Those gracious gifts may indeed need the believer's con stantly advancing use, and his growing discovery of what they are. But in covenant provision they are his at once " in Christ." ' To this day in Palestine the word arraboon is used of such payments, e.g. in the hire of a conveyance. 36 EPHESIAN STUDIES from the celestial mines weighs heavy, with the weight of mercies, graces, glories unspeakable. Reverently let us lay it down here, and gaze upon it as it lies, and give thanks in worshipping wonder. A few links in that chain, radiant even above the rest, we will as it were touch and handle for a moment. i. We note the splendid title of the recipients of the letter. They are, " the saints," the saints who live in Ephesus. The word " saint " shines starry bright with associations of heaven ; habit ually, for ages, it has been used in the Church to denote the glorified. But the usage of Scripture tends rather to attach it to the pilgrims of the Lord, not yet at home. They already, if His indeed, are " the holy ones," ol ayioi, His votaries. His devotees, for so we may fairly explain the word. True, they may too often live below what, in Christ, they are. But let not this pull down the glorious word, as if it were a mere pale synonym for "member ofa community called Christian." Let it rather lift up the bearer of the title, to recollect its glory, and, in Christ, to live it. ii. Let us recollect with humblest reverence the wonderful words of the Epistle, that is to SOVEREIGN GRACE 37 say, ofthe Heavenly Spirit, about the sovereignty of grace. " Blessed in the celestial regions in Christ" ; "chosen out in Him before the universe was founded " ; " foreordained to adoption " ; such are some of the phrases in which the believer is reminded that behind all his believing, and all his receiving, lies this glowing mystery, the "everlasting love." It is the infinite Free- Will of God, (even more sacred than the free-will of man ;) a purpose and a plan older than the oceans and the skies. Who does not know the awful- ness of the shadows that lie close to this glory — the dread questionings of the mind over the election of God? But these shadows are cast, as shadows always are, by light. And the purpose of the light is, not to cast shadows but to guide our steps. Do we indeed believe on the Son of God ? Have we indeed been " sealed with the Spirit of the Promise " ? Then let us leave absolutely to the Lord the unknown of the matter; we shall not be disappointed when He lets us know more about it, another day. But let us boldly grasp for our strength and joy the known of the matter ; the sovereign grace that lies behind the sinner's repentance, faith, hope, and love ; the covenant, the purpose, the counsel, the WILL. 38 EPHESIAN STUDIES iii. Lastly, let us adore and rejoice, as we contemplate the Trinity of Eternal Love coming forth here "for us men and for our salvation" in the threefold action of grace. Behold the Father, "God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." He is no half-adverse Power, needing the persuasions of a more benignant Son to draw Him over to the side of mercy. He is the Fountain of the whole redeeming work ; blessing, choosing, accepting, working all things in the line of His own benignant will. Behold the Son, the Beloved One. He gives Himself in the past Eternity to be already our all-sufficient Representative, so that we were dealt with even there and then "in Him." He gives Himself, " on earth abased," to death, to sanguinary death, to shed the streaming blood of sacrifice, that we might have a redemption as secure as it is merciful, a "forgiveness of sins" quite as holy as it is divinely generous. He lives to be the "Head" of His people; their Source of life, their Secret of power, their unifying Centre ; and the day is coming when that Headship will be seen as the centre of a whole Universe of holy life. Look again, and behold the Spirit! " Behold Him dwell in all the saints. And seal the heirs of heaven." THE TRINITY OF LOVE 39 He comes, the Promise of the Father. Contact, in humblest faith, with Christ implies reception of the Spirit, the Lord, the Life-giver, the Sanctifier. And He is the Pledge of a " glory to be revealed in us," before whose brightness not only "the sufferings of this present time" but its experiences of grace will so fade in the comparison that it will be as if they had scarcely been at all. " The purchased possession " of our God will be so emancipated then into the eternal freedom that it will be as if its "redemption" had but just been achieved. Great and wonderful are the promises. It is undertaken for believing sinners that here they shall be, in the Beloved One, the very "sons of God," walking and pleasing Him. It is undertaken for them that hereafter, when their Lord's time shall come, they shall " appear with Him in glory," such a glory that "it doth not yet appear what they shall be." " How can these things be ? " The effect is great ; but the Cause is greater. " Of Father, Son, and Spirit we Extol the threefold care. Whose love, whose merit, and whose power, Unite to lift us there." "Tout vient de Dieu, et rhojnme n'en a pas moins quelque chose a faire. C'est au nom de ceux qui croient que I'Apotre rend graces. C'est ceux qui croient qui sont predestines, qui sont 6\ns, qui sont b^nis, qui sont re^us en grace, qui sont faits h^ritiers, qui sont scelles du Saint- Esprit, qui sont reserves pour la redemption finale. Lecteur, avez-vous cru ? En 6tes-vous bien sur ? " Adolphe Monod. 40 THE APOSTLE'S PRAYER THAT THEY MAY REALIZE WHAT THEY POSSESS " Dieu est bon et Dieu est puissant, il veut et il pent : deux petits articles, qui renferment tout ce qui pent consoler une ame. Heureux qui les croit reellement." Adolphe Monod. 42 CHAPTER III THE apostle's PRAYER THAT THEY MAY REALIZE WHAT THEY POSSESS Ephesians i. 15-23 ST PAUL has led us up to the heavens for the facts of eternal redemption. He has led us down again to Asia for the certainty of the possession of its blessings by the converts there. But even so his thought cannot rest. Nothing can satisfy him short of the assurance that those converts are fully " possessing their possessions " (Obad, 18). His soul goes up for them in warm thanksgiving, but also in prayer, strong and importunate, that they may know, with a super natural insight, where they are and what they have. It must be so, the Gospel being what it is. The life eternal is "to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent " 43 44 EPHESIAN STUDIES (John xvii. 3). They who have it are indeed to " rest and be thankful," in respect of the Rock beneath their feet ; they are to taste, and to evidence, the deep repose born of the discovery of the Summum Bonum itself But they are to be thankful and never to rest in respect of the realization of what they have discovered, "He who says Enough,'' writes Augustine somewhere, " is already a lost man." If the Christian man is indeed one who has caught a genuine glimpse of " the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ " (2 Cor. iv. 6), how can he not be sure that he has still before him indefinitely greater discoveries there, " from glory to, glory " ? His root is settled, and for ever ; he will never find a sub stitute for the Cross. But his branches will extend themselves, and for ever, in that place of root and rest, to receive more and more the living powers of the light and air around, and to bring forth more fruit and yet more for the heavenly Planter. Ver. 15. On this account, because so great and won derful is your redemption, so heavenly in its origin, so divine in its possibilities, so full, so present, I also, I as well as others who love you and pray for you, on heariag, as I have done, (it was no doubt through Epaphras of Colossae,) of the faith, the reliance, prevalent ST PAUL'S THANKSGIVING 45 among you {tcad" v/j,d<;), in the Lord Jesus, resting in Him as anchor rests in ground,^ and of the love ^ which you shew towards aU the saints, all your fellow-believers, that love which is the sweet fruit of faith the Hving Ver. 16. root ; am incessantly giving thanks on your behalf, making mention of you^ on occasion of (eVi t&v, at the times of) my prayers, naming you before the throne of grace, individually or collectively ; asking that you may know more, because you have much, and have already learnt to use your wealth so well. In another moment, he will be telling them what are the terms and special directions of his petition. Let us prepare ourselves to listen the better by recollecting how beautifully charac teristic of him is this line of address. In seven of his Epistles besides this he speaks to the ' For the construction cp. Mark i. 15, TriorciJeTe h ra ciayyeXi^, and Jer. xii. 6 (Septuagint), /ifi ma-TfiaTj! iv avrols. ' Some very important MSS. (A B N*) omit the words rfiv aydirrjv, and thus refer ttIcttw to " the saints " as well as to the Lord. But the external evidence for retention is strong. All the chief ancient versions give the words, and so do the uncial MSS. Dj Gj, and the immense majority of " cursive " mss. And it is surely very unlikely that St Paul, who writes, to the Colossians (i. 4), rr\v ¦nicTTOi vp,S)V iv Xp. 'l7;(roC Koi rfjV aydirriv tjjv els irdvras tovs ayiovs, should in this Epistle, perhaps on the same day, have varied that natural phrase for one so difficult (giving two senses of ma-ns in one clause) as this. An early mistake of transcription is the probable cause of the various reading here. " The word v^Sv is probably to be omitted, but we must supply it mentally. 46 EPHESIAN STUDIES recipients first about his glad thanksgivings, and then about the prayers which, as it were, spring out of them. Writing to Rome (i. 8), he " thanks his God through Jesus Christ for them all, that their faith is spoken of throughout the whole world," and " makes mention of them without ceasing in his prayers." To the Corinthians (i Cor. i. 4) he writes how he "thanks God always on their behalf for the grace of God which is given them in Christ Jesus," and then prays that they may grow in the grace of holy unity of spirit. He "thanks God upon every remem brance of" the Philippians (i. 3), " always in every prayer for them all making request with joy." For the Colossians (i. 3) he " gives thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for them, that they may be filled with the knowledge of His will." To the Thessalonians, earliest recipients of his Epistles, he writes repeatedly of his thanksgivings: "We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers" (i Thess. i. 3); " We thank God for you without ceasing " (i Thess. ii. 13); "We are bound to thank God always for you, because your faith groweth ex ceedingly, and the love of you all towards each other aboundeth ; wherefore also we pray always ST PAUL'S OTHER THANKSGIVINGS 47 for you . . . that the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you and you in Him" (2 Thess. i. 3, 11, 12) ; "We are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren beloved ofthe Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth" (2 Thess. ii. 13), For Philemon (4, 6) he "thanks God, making mention of him always in his prayers . . . that the communication of his faith may become effectual " as a witness for his Redeemer. To his beloved Timothy, writing under the shadow ofthe end, he blends thanks and yearning into one pathetic thought (2 Tim. i. 3) : "I thank God . . , that without ceasing I have remem brance of thee in my prayers night and day, greatly desiring to see thee." Everywhere we find the deep sympathy which rejoices and is grateful over the attained and present blessing. Everywhere also appears that holy insight which cannot rest without the spiritual progress and full consistency of those who call out the thanksgivings. The Prayers of St Paul have been made the subject of extended spiritual treatises. The study of them can never be com plete without the study also of their connexion with his Thanksgivings. 48 EPHESIAN STUDIES But now, how does his soul go up in prayer for the richly-blest recipients of this Letter ? He prays that they may have supernatural light shed upon the gold of their supernatural wealth : Ver. 17. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, His God, inasmuch as He, the Son, took the created Nature to Him, and became Son of Man,^ the Father of the glory, Origin of all that is meant by heavenly and holy glory, all divine holiness, might, majesty, beauty ; above all, the Father of HIM who is the true Shechinah, " the Lord of Glory," crucified and risen ; may give you, as His promised Gift, the Spirit ^ of wisdom and unveiling, the Holy One who imparts new insight and lifts the veil higher and higher from the fair face of the eternal Love, in fuU knowledge (eV eiri^vchaeL) of Him, of this ever-blessed Father, " whom to know is to live." ^ For philosophy comes to man with the message. Know ' So that He not only cried " Eli, Eli," upon the Cross, but on one memorable occasion, at Sychar (John iv. 22), called Himself a worshipper : "We know what we worship.^' Yet He receives worship addressed to Himself with all the calm majesty of the supreme King (John xx. 29). ' Lit. "a spirit," tcvivpa, not to TrvEv/ia : and so the Revised Version. But I venture to retain the Authorized Version. In the case of great and well-known words, such as e«df, Kupior, the article is often omitted as unneeded for definition. So, if I read aright, it often is with ¦t^vivp.a. ^ Quern nosse vivere; the ancient original (in a prayer of cent. V.) of the beautiful phrase in the Morning Collect of the English Church, "in knowledge of whom standeth (consisteth) our eternal life." THE CALL OF GRACE 49 thyself; the Gospel meets him also with the far more glorious and fruitful watchword. Know thy God} Yes, Ver. 18. may He grant you this, granting you illumi nation of the eyes of your heart,^ that is of all your inner powers, alike of affection, thought and will, so that on the whole "inner man" shall shine the smile of " the Father of Glory " ; with a view to your knowing, with a deep and developed insight and experience, what is the hope of His calling, the eternal prospect opened up when He effectually calls man to union with Himself in Christ ' ; and what is the wealth of the glory of His ' I quote from Adolphe Monod, in his excellent Commentary on the Epistle. He says (referring to Pascal in a note), " La philosophie, prennant n^cessairement I'homme pour centre, lui a dit : Connais-toi ; mais la Parole inspir6e, pouvant seule partir de Dieu, a seule aussi pu dire : Connais Dieu ; et cette con- naissance renferme, avec I'unique connaissance salutaire de nous-mfimes et de notre misere, celle de I'unique remade capable de la r^parer." ^ UecptoTicrpievovs tovs dcj)6a\no{is : lit. "the eyes illuminated." — Read KapSLas certainly. — "Heart" in Scripture "includes intel ligence without excluding affections." ' KX^o-ir : the word in the Epistles probably refers not only to the general benignant invitation of the Gospel but to the voice of grace as it mercifully — not forces but — decides the will for God. See particularly i Cor. i. 24, where the Apostle draws a marked distinction between the rejecting and hostile hearers of the Gospel and the kXtjtoi, who find Christ to be all in all. Archbishop Leighton, on i Pet. ii. 9, writes of the inner call : "It is an operative word, that effects what it bids. God calls man ; He works with him indeed as a reasonable creature ; but sure He likewise works as Himself, as an almighty Creator. His call . . . doth, in a way known to Himself, twine and wind the heart which way He pleaseth." So, " whom He called, them He justified, and . . . glorified" (Rom. viii. 28). so EPHESIAN STUDIES inheritance in the saints, the rich, boundless life destined, in the final state, for those whom " He hath chosen for His own inheritance" (Ps. xxxiii. 12), His " purchased possession," His " acquisition " (above, ver. 14) ; so that His property is, as it were, lodged " in " them ; and Ver. 19. what is the surpassing greatness of His power, in the whole process of salvation, both in sanctification now and beatification in eternity, that power which is put forth towards us, the believing ones, and so the recipients of a strength not our own. And what is the scale, the measure, of " the greatness of that power " ? It is according to, to be calculated by, the working of the strength of His might, (for only such accumulations Ver. 20. of phrase can indicate its energy,) which working He put forth in His (t Kvrov is emphatic by position; 52 EPHESIAN STUDIES will ; that Church \\'hich is the Fulness, the Fulfilment, the Realization of the grace, power, and glory of Him, this blessed Christ, who is richly filling ' all things in all ; the Replenisher of all the capacities for blessing of all His members. "What shall we say then to these things?" Perhaps the first and best response is the Amen of holy silence. May I even suggest to the reader (and to myself) that after the perusal of such a passage we should on purpose be quiescent for a time, not from thought altogether, but as much as may be from discursive thought ? Let us " sit before the Lord," and be still and passive. These sentences were written first and supremely to be believed, received, and — in a worshipping and serving life — lived out. Let us hear them, in a hush of the soul, without haste, and without talk. But in due time it is our part to examine and to remark, " What shall we say then to these things ? " i. First, assuredly, let us note and admire this great phenomenon, the glory of the Christ of God, who was dead, and is upon the throne. Think of the paradox. The Apostle is speaking ' IiKripovp.evov : the middle voice enriches and deepens the idea. THE SACRED PARADOX 53 of a Personage of history, of recent, of almost contemporary, history. He had once, at Jeru salem, met and conversed with a Galilean religious teacher, " James, the Lord's brother" (Gal. i. 19). That man was a member ofthe same family circle, in a small town of Northern Palestine, with " Jesus, which is called Christ." In the same sense in which James was brother of Jesus, Jesus was brother of James. It was notorious that Jesus had been an inhabitant for several years of such a district and such a town, and that He was related to such and such people, men and women, by ties of blood and ties of law. He had worked with His hands. He had walked from place to place like other men, and many could no doubt accurately describe His look and manner when He talked. At last He had died, under circumstances profoundly impressive indeed, but still such as were also matter of human procedure ; circumstances which had called in the prosaic authority of a Roman magistrate and the physical force of Roman soldiers. Well, but to the writer of this letter, while all these aspects of " Jesus, the brother of James," are present to his mind, what is this same Jesus on the other hand ? With quite the same certainty, as a matter of quite equal fact, He is now "seated at the right hand of" 54 EPHESIAN STUDIES Almighty God, on His very throne, " in the heavenly regions," "aloft above" all the ranks and orders of the powers of heaven. He is the ruling and life-giving "Head" ofa vast multitude of human beings who absolutely belong to Him, and absolutely live by Him. They are His Body ; they exist, collectively, to be His limbs and implements. They are " His Fulness," the Pleroma in which this sublime Person actualizes His will. He is their "Ful-filler"; all that is receptive of spiritual life and power in them, it is He who makes it and keeps it full. He is such that He is the Source of all grace, and the Hope of all glory, for fallen man. Yet He was also " the brother of James." Paul knows all about Him in both characters. God, the Son of God ; Man, the Son of Man ! It is the old truth of the Creed, old and eternal. But, that we may grasp it the more firmly and comprehensively, let us recollect it thus once more in its light as a fact of history. Look at it as it was to St Paul and to those first disciples. And, as you read the Apostle's words about Christ glorified, words glowing indeed, but abso lutely sane and practical in manner, reflect upon the self-evidencing tone of the whole utterance. Here is either the very wildest delusion ever THE KING AND HIS HOSTS 55 generated by a disturbed brain, or — the Incarna tion ofthe Eternal Word. And it is not usual in history to find wild delusions, by their originators, or first victims, stated in terms of majestic tran quillity, and at the same time applied to the very highest and the most practically beneficial ends in human life. "God manifest in Flesh" is fact. ii. Then, " feeling the rock beneath our feet," assured yet again that we are not " following cleverly devised myths" (2 Pet. i. 16), we look up into heaven, where this wonderful " brother of James " is seated. The " region," to use that noble old word, is seen full of hosts and ranks of light around Him. " Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers," behold them there.^ It is indeed a scene of power; "His Angels, that excel in strength " ; we trace their irresistible ' Surely the Apostle is here affirming, though passingly, the real existence of dp\a[, i^ova-iai, Swd/icis, KvpioTTjrfs, and not merely taking up the terms of an unauthorized angelology to brush those terms away. In a passage like this, the glory ofthe Saviour maybe said to demand the reality ofthe existences over which He is said to be supreme. The majestic line of Milton quoted above has learning in it as well as poetry. It is based on the " Celestial Hierarchy," written under the name of " Dionysius the Areopagite," cent. v. or vi. " Dionysius" ranked the Orders, down from the highest, in three Trines; Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; Dominations, Virtues, Powers ; Principalities, Archangels, Angels. S6 EPHESIAN STUDIES steps in many a scene ofthe story of Redemption. But they are " all His servants." " Angels and authorities and powers are made subject unto Him" ; with a subjection in which they find their eternal law of liberty and joy. What then is He, so "far aloft above them"? Is He not to us, poor things on earth, "throned inaccessible"? Wonderful thought, it is so far from being thus that we are here called in to make the crown and climax of His prerogatives and glories. For what has the Apostle to tell us about Him as His last and highest function "at the Right Hand"? It is that He is given to be Head above all things — to the Church, to the Assembly, the Community oi men, men once " dead in trespasses and sins," and still exposed to all the temptations and all the sorrows of time, and still compelled to cry, " Enter not into judgment with Thy servants, O Lord." Yes, this is here given as the final glory of the infinitely exalted Christ. Angels and archangels are subject unto Him. But believing men are joined to Him, with a union such that He and they, by this same messenger of His, are called elsewhere (i Cor. xii. 12) one " Christ!' " What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? " (Ps. viii. 3). In himself, he is the mere creature THE CHURCH 57 of the sovereign will. Of himself, as he has ruined himself, he is a sinful wreck. But in the Christ of God, man is a being raised to the heavenly regions, living by the life of his Head, crowned with glory and honour. " And it doth not yet appear what he shall be." iii. Lastly, in this passage we have men, these greatly favoured men, presented to us not in dividually but in community. The Christ is "given as Head to the Church!' His "Body" is the Church. The Church is His Pleroma, His Plenitude, the sphere in which His blessed attributes are to be realized and displayed through the graces of His people. It is a momentous word. Church, Ecclesia. Around it many a great controversy has been fought. Claims have been advanced in its name, as by the Roman power, but not by it only, which would make it as it were an almost substitute for the Lord. It has been presented as a vast organized republic, or oligarchy, or monarchy, worked and managed through an elaborate machinery of human ofiicers. So given, the word Church has too often been the motto for repression and persecution. The individual conscience has been too often overawed and browbeaten because of it. Individual spiritual 58 EPHESIAN STUDIES history, individual access to God, individual work and witness for Him, has again and again been discredited and hindered under the maxims of " corporate life," " Church life," and supposed necessary principles of Unity. It has come in many quarters to be assumed or asserted that a unity of order is a more important thing than a close adherence to scriptural conclusions about the individual's acceptance before God in Christ and spiritual conformity in life to Him. By an inevitable reaction the word Church has become to many Christians an unwelcome and distasteful word, hard and narrow, beclouded with ideas of officialism, I had almost said of bureaucratic tyranny. In view of both the distortion and the reaction against it the Church doctrine of this Epistle is inestimably precious. The word Church occurs frequently. We have it here, in a connexion high as the heavens, and full of the very deepest spiritual suggestions. We have it below, iii. lo, where " the Church " is beheld as the scene in which, even now, " the governments and the authorities in the celestial regions " get informed of " the variegated wisdom of God, according to His purpose ofthe ages." We have it again iii. 21, where "glory" is given to the THE CHURCH 59 Eternal Father, " in the Church, in Christ Jesus," throughout eternity. And in the fifth chapter (23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 32) we have it set fully before us as the Bride and Spouse of the Lord Himself He is the Church's Head, the Saviour of the Body; it is subject to Him, with wifely reverence; He loved it. He gave Himself for it, to hallow it, to cleanse it "by the bathing of the water at tended by an utterance," to present it to Himself glorified, spotless, holy. He nourishes it and cherishes it. He and His Spouse are one. Here is on the one hand an Ecclesia which is lifted for our view far above mere terrestrial and visible limitations. The one allusion to the external is the reference to " the water," but even this is at once connected so with the " utterance " (prjixa) of the everlasting Covenant as to point us straight through the ordinance to the heavenly blessing which it seals. The whole conception soars in the high air of direct spiritual relations between the Lord and a redeemed Company whose units are all joined in an inefiable reality of faith and love to Him, and so member to member. We may call it the Ideal Church. We may call it the Invisible, in the sense of invisibility which points to an Organism seen in its true limits and relations by God alone. But EPHESIAN STUDIES however, it is a something which refuses to be really identified with any one organization, or aggregate of organizations, officered and tabulated by human ministers. It is related more nearly, may we not say ? to heaven than to earth. It is, in its essence, with Christ where He is. It is the wonder of angels. It is the sphere within which glory is given to God as much in eternity (iii. 21) as in time. It (not parts of it, but it) is to be presented to its Lord at last in the heavenly light. Let us beware of lowering the radiant sublimity of the conception by definitions of the Church essentially conditioned by time. Meantime, we have a correction here to any mere individualism in Christian life on earth. The individual's spiritual blessings are here shewn to us as profoundly connected, for their true development, with his recollection that he is not an isolated entity but the limb of a Body, of a Bride. He is intended as truly to live not unto himself but unto others as he is intended to live unto the Lord. And as regards a true place, in our thought about the Church, for temperate ideas of visible cohesion and order, we have a deep suggestion here. It lies in the words which describe the Church as the Body and the Plenitude of Christ. For those words suggest THE BODY 6 1 that the Church exists not only to enjoy mystic union with Him but to be of practical service to Him. And that thought, though it can never justify narrow definitions of the Church, must assuredly always bear towards all possible prac tical cohesion, with a view to co-operation, among its members. To adjust with perfect logic the ideal of the Ecclesia, that is to say its ultimate truth, with a right understanding of the possible in organized and united Christian life, is, I hold, beyond our power. But the Church doctrine of our Epistle will be a safe and holy guide to us in the direction of adjustment. " Hail, glorious Head of all Thine own. Our equal Source of peace and power; Thou for our sins didst once atone. Thou art our Life of Life this hour. " Then, Lord, in strong communion still, O bind us faster, to be free. Thou worliing out by us Thy will. We working out Thy will by Thee." 6? THE SALVATION OF THE EPHESIANS ; AN INSTANCE OF THE WORK OF REDEEMING GRACE 63 " La connaissance de Dieu sans celle de notre misfere fait I'orgueil. La connaissance de notre misdre sans celle de Jesus-Christ fait le ddsespoir. Mais la connaissance de Jesus-Christ nous exempte et de I'orgueil et du dfcespoir, parce que nous y trouvons Dieu, notre misere, et la voie unique de la r^parer." Pascal, 64 CHAPTER IV THE SALVATION OF THE EPHESIANS ; AN INSTANCE OF THE WORK OF REDEEMING GRACE Ephesians ii. i-io OUR last Study was much occupied "con cerning Christ and the Church." First the glory of the Lord, the Head, then the transcendent privileges of His true Body, "the blessed Company of all faithful people" — these were our lines of contemplation. We sought to follow the Apostle along them, not only to learn, but also to worship and to pray. For we found him addressing the Ephesians not as the lecturer or expositor, but as the evangelist whose soul burned with thanksgiving for the victories of grace among them, and who also, who therefore, prayed with intense supplication that they might realize yet more what they possessed in being joined in that Body to that Head, 65 5 66 EPHESIAN STUDIES He has by no means exhausted the theme. There is a great deal yet to be said about salvation in general, and the Ephesians' salvation in particular. Among other things, he has to dilate upon the miracle of mercy in the matter ; the converts are to be reminded what they have been delivered from, as well as what they have been lifted into. The must be led to look down again into the pit, into the grave, from which grace called them out and set them free. So shall they be both the happier and the more secure, because the more humble, on the astonish ing height to which that grace has borne them up, " seating them in the heavenly regions," where their Lord is set. Thus we come to one of the great evangelic passages of the whole New Testament, deeply characteristic of the primeval Gospel in its essence. For never for a moment does the Gospel, in its eagle-flights into the sky of grace and glory, forget the wonder, the miracle, the mercy, of our having access to that sky at all. "Other Gospels, which are not other," may and often do ignore that side of things, till we hear little about the horror, guilt, and doom of man's sin, and the absolute gratuitousness of the grant of a rescue from it. We might almost think of REDEMPTION AS MERCY 67 man, of " humanity," as they present him, rather as of an unfortunate traveller upon some bye- road ofthe universe, fallen among thieves, "more sinned against than sinning," cruelly robbed and maimed, with nothing to blame but his enemies and his circumstances ; so that the supreme King stands in some sense obliged to redress him, and to recover him, and to comfort him after his long calamities. Is not this, too often, not the language to be sure but the spirit of what passes current as Christian teaching ? But it is not the Gospel ofthe Lord and His Apostles. True, while they ply no high-flown rhetoric about " the enthusiasm of humanity," they do unfold in radiant colours " the philanthropy of God our Saviour " (Tit. iii. 4); the love of God for "the world" (John iii. 16); the movement of the eternal Heart towards the human Nature made in the divine Image. But all this goes close along with the unceasing recollection that that nature has itself fallen by its own iniquity, and lies not only wounded but guilty on the wayside. Man is not merely a sufferer ; he is a runaway, a criminal, a rebel, a conspirator. Eternal Love regards him. But eternal Law, lodged in the same Will with eternal Love lays its arrest upon him, and 68 EPHESIAN STUDIES shews the death-warrant. And meanwhile, as part of the phenomenon of man's mysterious self- ruin, he lies there not only guilty and arrested, but alienated and resisting still. His destruction of himself expresses itself above all in this — that, in the Fall, he does not love God, he does not choose God. He "forsakes his own mercy." He lays the blame anywhere but on his own head. He loves himself best. Of himself, he is not contrite, penitent, submissive, believing. He is dead to his true life, which is to know God in His redeeming Son. Let us ask for an entire sympathy with God's law against ourselves as guilty, and for just such a sight of ourselves, as self-alienated from love of the eternal Love, as shall make us feel the mercy of salvation. Only so, I dare to think, shall we ever fully respond to the real message ofthe New Testament. It is written (Acts v. 31) of our glorified Saviour that He is " exalted, to give repentance and remission of sins," not one gift only, but the two. And repentance means little if it does not mean the complete renuncia tion of the dream of self- wrought claims, and the recognition of salvation as wonderful mercy, from first to last, I linger upon this side of truth, not as if I REDEMPTION AS MERCY 69 could forget the glorious other side ; what would life be without it ? But I am sure that this side is what the Christian world is forgetting far and wide, while salvation is either taken all too indolently, (a very different thing from taking it simply,) or is practically put aside as what "humanity" can do; without. In the course of my ministry I have known impressive examples to the point ; one such is present to me at this hour. I have seen hearts actually resist and reject the most benignant offers made by Jesus Christ, in His character of Mediator and Ad vocate, because God ought not to need an Advocate for His unfortunate " children " ; He ought to keep them safe, and bring them home. So it thought, that heart, a little while ago. But now, drawn by a grace divine indeed, it has come to see itself in the light of an infinite Holiness ; and lo, the perplexities and the re sistance have fallen like leaves from the autumnal trees, and the " anxious enquirer " has asked that very old-fashioned question. What must I do to be saved? And the glory of Christ has shone upon the whole being, and repentance has kindled into joy unspeakable and full of glory. Let us be sure of it, that species of joy is inseparably connected with "the broken and 70 EPHESIAN STUDIES contrite heart." Let the Church come to be strange to the experience of conviction of sin ; it will come to be equally strange to that of "joy. in God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Let the Gospel of " the enthusiasm of humanity" take the place of that of our ruin in sin, our redemption by Christ Jesus, and our regeneration by the Holy Ghost, and the " enthusiasm " will have very little in it of the victory which over comes the world, and in which we go forth to bless the world by commending to it "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." " Never was there a heresy, but it had some thing to do with an insufficient estimate of sin." And an insufficient estimate of the " thing which God hateth " is not only the parent of speculative error ; it is the secret death of true spiritual joy. So the Apostle is bent upon reminding the Ephesians of their past, and of the absolute mercy which had lifted them out of it into such a present, and for such a future. " He teaches all the mercy, for he shews them all the sin." Ver. I. And you He brought to life^ (from His view point, it was when Christ rose again ; from yours, it was ' The verb is supplied, as in A.V. and R.V., from ver. 5 below, where the wording is repeated nearly verbatim : ivras f/fias vexpoiis . . . (Tvvf^aoiroiTja-f r^ XpurTu. THE DARK PAST OF THE SAINTS 71 when you believed on Him), being, as you then were, dead men, devoid of life spiritual and eternal, and wholly unable to generate it from within, in respect of your (to4?) trespasses and your sins (read v/ji&v), your manifold forms of discord vvith the will of God, things which were at once the conditions and the results of that " death " ; Ver. 2. in which sins once on a time you walked,^ as on a path, as in a region, moving from thing to thing in the course of life, determined by (/cam) the course^ of this world, this present order of human things,' aye, and by a dark personal power behind it and working through it, even by the ruler of the authority of the air,* or, in other words, of the spirit now at ' UepuiraTTicraTf : the aorist gathers up the whole experience into a point of thought. ' Aifflj', "age" : the word is rendered "course" in A.V. and R.V., and it would be difficult to suggest a better English. We sometimes use "period" in nearly the same derived sense — a time and its influences. ' Such seems to be the meaning of koo-hos here. It certainly is not (as in e.g. John xi. 9, ro cjiZs toS k. tovtov) the physical universe ; nor again merely mankind, but mankind as con ditioned by sin, or rather this present sinful order of human life. So very often in N.T., notably in St John's First Epistle. * "The great personal Evil Spirit, Satan; whose existence, sparingly indicated in the O.T., is largely dwelt upon in the N.T. . . . For St Paul's recognition of [his existence], cp. Acts xiii. 10, xxvi. 18; Rom. xvi. 20; i Cor. v. 5, vii. 5; 2 Cor. ii. 11, xi. 14; I Thess. ii. 18 ; 2 Thess. ii. 9; i Tim. i. 20, iii. 6, 7, v. 15 ; 2 Tim. ii. 26, and below [in Eph.] iv. 27, vi. 11."— " The authority of the air " appears to mean the organized power of the world of unholy spirits, here indicated as having their abode not precisely on earth but about it. " We must seek a meaning of ' air ' literal and local, rather than otherwise, looking at St Paul's usage elsewhere (e.g. i Thess. iv. 17). ... On the whole we gather. 72 EPHESIAN STUDIES work,^ as once it was at work in you, in the sons of disobedience, the human beings characterized by moral alienation from the will of God, and whose attitude therefore gives foothold and opportunity for the subtle " working " of His enemies and theirs.^ As they are, so you were, nay, so we were ; I the Jew, you the Greeks, were all alike in this, till grace found us out. As we look upon the pagans around us, we must say, with Ver. 3. contrite memory, Among whom we too all lived our life,^ once on a time, in the desires of our flesh, the bias and preferences of the self-life, whatever form they took, gross or subtle,* doing the wiUings of the flesh as the revelation of this passage, that as earth is the abode of embodied spirits, mankind, so the airy envelope of earth is the abode, for the purposes of action on man, of the spirits of evil, which, if not bodiless, have not ' animal ' bodies. . . . Observe our Lord's use of ' the birds of the sky ' (Luke viii. 5) as the figure for the Tempter in the parable of the Sower." (Notes in the Cam-bridge Bible.) ' ToC itvevp-aros, k.t.X. : this genitive puts the jrveviia in gram matical apposition not with "the ruler" (apxovra) but with the "authority" (J^ovcrias). It is a startling phrase, perhaps best explained by taking it here to be a collective singular; the TTVfviia is in fact the irvevpaTa gathered into one idea, or regarded in the oneness of their malign influence. ' "Sons of disobedience" : a familiar Hebraism; cp. 2 Pet. ii. 14, where the literal rendering is, " children of a curse" ; and just below, ver. 3, rcKva opycjs. "Disobedience" renders iireldeia better than "unbelief"; though the two ideas are, in spiritual experience, closely connected. ' 'AveiTTpdcjirjfifv : again an aorist, gathering a long experience into one idea. * In St Paul, a-dp^ " means human nature as conditioned by the Fall, or, to word it otherwise, either the state of the un- regenerate being, in which state the sinful principle dominates, or the state of that element of the regenerate being in which the "CHILDREN OF WRATH" 73 and of the thoughts, the volitions of the fallen self, whether coming out in concrete action or lurking in unholy imaginations ; and were by nature, not by circumstance only, not by exterior accident and dis advantage, because of bad example or invitation only, but by the inward wrongness of our own condition, antecedent to the grace of God, children of wrath; naturally, normally, exposed, as are also the rest of men, to the moral displeasure of the eternal Holy One.' Such was our position, as mysterious as possible, but as much as possible a matter of fact. Beings profoundly personal, conscious in our depths of moral differences, able to say / will, able to know / ought ; — our will was in its depths at discord with our duty ; we preferred darkness to light, we followed self-will rather than the will of God. The manifestations of the mischief were infinitely various. One person plunged into bodily profligacy, another followed principle, dislodged, as it were, from the centre, still lingers and is felt ; not dominant in the being, but present." (Note in the Cambridge Bible.) ' " It has been suggested that ' children of wrath ' may mean no more than ' beings prone to violent anger,' or even to ' un- governed impulse ' generally. But the word ' wrath ' is frequent with St Paul, and in 13 out of the 20 places it unmistakably means the divine wrath. . . . Add to this that this passage deals with the deepest and most general facts, and thus it is unlikely that any one special phase of sin would be instanced." (Note in the Cambridge Bible.) 74 EPHESIAN STUDIES the^star of knowledge, a third worshipped sen suous rather than sensual pleasure, a fourth set himself aflame with religious zealotry. But the root of the mischief was ultimately the same in all. We chose ourselves rather than our God; our will was sweeter to us than His law. And this was " by nature." The disease was indeed of the person, of the individual ; but somehow it lay deeper, it was in the state of his nature. Here were no isolated accidents, under which very many human wills were wrong with God. There was a dark "law" in the phenomenon; it was a universal case ; all human wills were wrong with Him. And so (how could it be otherwise?) His holiness was displeased with us all ; we were " children of His wrath." No tyrannic heat and violence lay in that awful " wrath " ; no blind jealousies and unregulated inflictions surged out of that dark but immaculate depth. It was the sinless aversion of Holiness from sin. Yet none the less it was displeasure, personal and incalculably formidable. And be neath its celestial frown we lay.' ' On the great mystery and great fact summed up in the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, there are some pregnant re marks in the late Prof. J. B. Mozley's Lectures and Theological Papers (§ ix., pp. 136, etc.). " Original sin is, fundamentally, simply universal sin. . . . Nobody supposes that anything takes THE MIRACLE OF LOVE 75 What was to be done ? Was the fate of man, his nature's self-inflicted fate, sealed and hopeless? No — because of God. "Thou hast destroyed thyself; but Ver. 4. in Me is thy help" (Hos. xiii. 9). But our (o) God, being as He is, in His blessed state " by nature," wealthy in mercy, moved by nothing but Himself, because of His much love with which' He loved us. His Church to be, albeit our condition was repulsive to His holiness Ver. 5. in a degree to us inconceivable, aye {jcai) when we were — as just now I said you were, but it was the same with me, with all — dead men in respect of our (rot?) trespasses, brought us to life along with His (too) Christ, when the Head lived again for us, and then when we, believing, were made the Members of the Head ; (yes, along with Christ, wholly because of His Sacrifice, His Victory, His Covenant ; for never forget that not because of any claim on God but by grace, by a pure, free bounty of His goodness, you have been saved (a-ecTcocT/Mevoi), brought into an actual rescue and safe- place universally by chance ; ... we know there must be some law working in the case. . . . What we call the law is a secondary question." I may refer further to my small manual, Outlines of Christian Doctrine (pp. 173, etc.); and to Prof. Shedd's Sermons to the Natural Man, especially Nos. V. and XIV. Browning's lines are worthy of note : " I still, to suppose it" [the Christian faith] "true, for my part. See reasons and reasons ; this, to begin, 'Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart At the head of a lie— taught Original Sin, The Corruption of Man's Heart." Gold Hair, a Story of Pomic (1864). ' "Hv : the accusative takes the place of the dative, by "at traction " to dydwcp). 76 EPHESIAN STUDIES Ver. 6. keeping by union with your Lord ' ;) and raised you from the grave along with Christ, bringing the new life out into manifestation, as when the Hving One stepped forth into the morning air in Joseph's Garden ; and seated us along with our Head ^ in the heavenly regions in Christ Jesus. For this glorious " in " must be recorded, to explain the wonderful " with " ; we are beside Him there upon His seat of victory and dominion, because we are embodied in Him, by the Spirit's power and in the bond of faith. So astonishing is the revolution of our condition ; from wrath to a wealth of mercy ; from death in sin to resurrection-life ; from a walk among the sons of disobedience to a session with and in the Lord upon His heavenly throne, looking down from thence on our old miseries and on our terrible but now impotent adversaries. And why was it all done ? Assuredly, as we have seen, for pure love to us, but also so as to secure God's own glorification in His creatures' view for ever ; for ' "Have been saved" : so just below, ver. 8. Much more com monly our salvation is represented as a. process going on, a-a^tcrSe, (r; olKohop.rf\ demand the rendering of the R.V. as against that of the A.V. ? We incline to the reply that it does not. The law of the definite article ... is undoubtedly somewhat less exact in the Greek of the Scriptures than in that of the classics. And this leaves us free to use (with caution) the context to decide problems which in the classics would be decided by pure grammar. Such a case we take this to be ; and the question to ask is, Does the context favour the imagery of detail or that of total} Surely the latter. The idea points to one great- building, getting completed within itself, rising to its ideal." (Note in the Cambridge Bible.) ' Nads, more limited and more sacred than Upov. At Jerusalem the whole precinct of the Temple-buildings was the Upov, the Holy House itself was the vaos. ' 'Ei/ jTvfvpMTi : both A.V. and R.V. render this, " in (through, A.V.) the Spirit"; surely rightly, in view of the prominence through the whole Epistle of the work of the Holy Ghost. 94 EPHESIAN STUDIES clause springing out of clause, thought out of thought, in such extended succession. My para phrase has here and there attempted to relieve attention by making a pause where the Greek barely indicates an occasion for it ; but even so the reader will have followed the thread with a sense of its close continuity throughout. The comment now shall take a very simple line. Let us first reflect a little upon the splendid close of the paragraph, and then note some of the steps which have led up to it. This order of thought will have its message for us in the end. i. What a climax is reached in ver. 22 ! Here is the eternal destiny of the true Church of God. It is not only that it is to be " saved in Christ for ever," ineffable as is the wonder of that fact. It is not only that it is " to enjoy God fully for ever," though that amazing prospect is so amply and definitely revealed. It is — to be a " holy Sanctuary," a Shrine, a divine Presence-Chamber ; "a permanent Habitation of God." In measure, the wonderful fact has already begun to be ; already He " dwells in " His people, " and walks in them" (see 2 Cor. vi. 16); already, as we shall see later in this Epistle (iii. 17), the eternal Son resides in the very heart of the true member of the Church, by faith. But all this is as when PROCESS AND ISSUE 95 some building, planned already by the master in its final glory, is slowly rising, and beginning to shew, amidst fragments and dust, and the noise of the workmen, some hints and outlines of what it is to be ; the owner, the intending dweller in it, walks in and out amidst the vast beginnings, and perhaps rests and shelters himself under the un finished walls and roofs. It will be otherwise when the last stone is in place, and the last splendid equipment of the chambers is completed, and he receives his admiring friends in the banquet- chamber, and shines out amidst the shining of his palace, himself the central splendour of it in all his dignity of wealth and welcome. So it is with the saints, and with their common life as the Church of God. Wonderful are the begin nings. Amidst all the apparent confusions of the field where the building is in progress, its form and scale begin to shew themselves, across the perspective of centuries and continents. And when the stones already in place are scrutinized, it is found that each of them is a miniature of the whole ; a shrine, a home of the presence of the Lord, by faith. But a day of inauguration is drawing on when "we shall see greater things than these." Then the divine indwelling in each " living stone " will be complete and ideal, " for 96 EPHESIAN STUDIES sinners there are saints indeed." And as for the community, it will cohere and be one thing with a unity and symmetry unimaginable now. "There all the millions of His saints Shall in one song unite. And each the bliss of all shall view With infinite delight." And the everlasting Father will perfectly reveal Himself, to all the watchers of all the regions of the eternal world, not anyhow but thus — in His glorified Church, in the Race, the Nature, once wrecked and ruined, but rebuilt into this splendour by His grace. In the Church of the Firstborn, in the Bride, the Lamb's Wife, the blessed Universe shall see for ever God present, God resident. A transfigured Creation shall be His temple-courts ; a beatified human Church shall be His sanctuary. That sanctuary shall reflect without a flaw its Indweller's glory ; our union and communion with Him shall be, in other words, perfect, absolute, ideal. And the crowning thought, for the soul which loves God, is this, that we shall be His Abode ; He shall somehow find His home, His shrine. His throne, in our happy congregated being. "It doth not yet appear," no, not yet. It is coming. Every evangelization, every conversion, "ANSWERING HIS GREAT IDEA" every spiritual union and combination now, is a contribution to that result. It is coming. But what will it be when it is come ? Then at length the desire of God will be fulfilled, and His eternal joy will be felt through all the once " groaning and travailing creation." Then, and therefore, will be at length fulfilled the innermost desire of every one of His true children ; they shall all consciously contribute to the existence of what He has planned and, in the mystery of His ways, has waited for — a perfect " sanctuary," a perfect "habitation," for Him the blessed King. " Built on the Son, in the Spirit, for the Father," and finished to the last stone with the skill of infinite love, that will be indeed a Sanctuary, for manifestation, for oracles, for worship, to the endless ages. ii. Now let us recall what the paragraph presents to us as some of the steps of truth leading up to this climax of blessing. First, we reverently remark the uncompro mising remembrance, over again, of the mercy of salvation. The Apostle cannot let the Ephesians forget the past, lest they mistake the blissful present. He is indeed in the act of reminding them that they have been brought not only into a place of mercy but into all the wealth of 7 98 EPHESIAN STUDIES covenanted privilege. They are incorporated, out and out, into the true Israel of all the promises ; no mere resident aliens, lodged in the suburbs of the holy Zion, but full citizens of the place, aye, members of the royal family of its King. They are one body with patriarchs, and prophets, and high-priests, and psalmists, and with the apostles of the Lamb ; they cannot be nearer to God, for they are in His Christ. But then, all this is emphatically, and in their case even eminently, a gift of mere original mercy. They were outsiders once. They had not the slightest claim upon salvation. Not only as they were men, fallen and sinful, but also as they were " Gentiles," they stood upon ground where redemption found them outcast and out lawed. Sovereign mercy (it was such, of course,) had given Israel long ago a standing in a place of light, hope, and promise ; but they were not there. And who should dare to say that the Eternal would have been unrighteous had He left them where they were, " dead " as they were "in trespasses and sins," at "enmity" with infinite Holiness ? It was mercy from first to last ; they must remember this, step by step, as they ascend, in their new life, from strength to strength, from grace to glory. It must be MERCY THROUGH THE CROSS 99 reiterated to them, now in this form of thought, now in that, "lest they forget"; lest their Christian life fatally degenerate by an oblivion of what went before. iii. Then, the great paragraph is full, in its central utterances, of the glory of the Atoning Work. Mercy has come to them, and lifted them up indeed to God. But it has not come anyhow ; its channel is the blessed Cross. Here only in the Epistle is the Cross explicitly men tioned. "By means of the Cross" did the Lord " reconcile the two parties, in one body." "In the blood of Christ" did "the remote" become " the nigh." " In His flesh," here with a manifest reference to " the body of His flesh, in death," He " annulled the law of command ments," delivering us from its condemning power; " buying us out from its curse, becoming for us a curse" (Gal. iii. 13). Not by the mere and solitary glory of His Incarnation, no, but by "His meritorious Cross and Passion," the wonderful change of our position was effected. That, and nothing less, lies at the root of our peace, and so at the root of all the blessings which issue from our peace ; among them, our spiritual cohesion with our fellow-believers, our growth into a deeper union with them, and so into EPHESIAN STUDIES a, larger fitness to become " the habitation of God." Let this not be forgotten. It comes to us with a peculiar impressiveness, this glorification of the Lord's dying work, in the Epistle to the Ephesians. No part ofthe New Testament deals more than this Epistle does with the inmost, the most spiritual, the most transcendent views of our salvation. We might have imagined a priori that it would soar away altogether, or nearly so, from the blood of Golgotha, and the grave at its foot, and deal rather with the serene glories of the Person of the enthroned Redeemer. But it is far otherwise. The Epistle will not let us forget that in order to our salvation the primal need was a righteous dealing with the broken law, a reconciliation of us to God,^ a proclamation of "peace." And the sine qud non to that immove able requisite was the Lord's Cross, the Lord's Blood, the atonement of His Death. That is the rock on which is set the ladder of our ascent to heaven. iv. Next, let us notice the prominence in this ' And in the phraseology of Scripture (see above on ver. 16) "to reconcile to God" means, to provide a way by which God can justly pardon man, and so by which man, coming in repent ance to plead that way, can receive salvation. UNION WITH CHRIST passage of the deep and living truth of our Union with the Lord Jesus Christ. For us He died, vicariously, in expiation, standing in our place. But that truth can never be rightly taken, never be fully seen in its tender glory, if it is held alone, if it is taught without a perpetual reference to the truth of our living incorporation with Him. "In Christ Jesus, ye became nigh"; "the two were constituted one new man in Him " ; " ih the Lord, the whole building is growing to be a holy sanctuary." The work done for us, once for all, was done with a view to our being spiritually united to the Worker. And it is only as we are, in that spiritual Union, "very- members incorporate in His mystical body," "joined unto the Lord, one Spirit," that the finished Work actually avails for our present and eternal safety. V. Then, let us not forget but prize as a chief treasure of the paragraph, its doctrine of the Blessed Spirit. " In the Spirit," surrounded and penetrated by Him, the Lord, the Giver of the eternal life, the Maker to us of the reality and presence of Christ, " we have our intro duction to the Father." The Saviour leads us in ; but He leads us in as those who have in them the Spirit who glorifies Him to us, and 102 EPHESIAN STUDIES makes us one with Him. And so "in the Spirit" the saints are "being built together" for the final Sanctuary of God. That structure and cohesion may have for its scaffolding the sacred order of the Church in her visible aspect. But the cement is not of these things ; it is wholly divine ; it is the Spirit, possessing each saint for God, and binding them all together by articulating them all to their Head. In these days, when longings for the outward unification of Christendom are much in the air around us, it will be well to hold this Ephesian passage in thoughtful remembrance. May we never be found in opposition to the idea of external unity, to the utmost degree in which it may be lawfully possible, without sacrifice of revealed truth, without compromise with the un renewed world. The idea is sacred, and should be a continual guide, among other guiding lines, for our purposes and action. But let us not for get that the true growth of " the holy sanctuary " is only " in the Lord " ; the " habitation of God " arrives at its perfection, stone by stone, only "in the Spirit." A DIGRESSION: THE GOSPEL, AND ITS WORLD-WIDE SCOPE 103 "All, all as one we praise Thee, Great Giver of salvation I Whose equal grace nor time, nor place, Nor language knows, nor nation. We praise, and wait imploring Thy hour of final favour ; Call in Thine own, reveal Thy throne. And o'er us reign for ever." 104 CHAPTER VI A DIGRESSION : THE GOSPEL, AND ITS WORLD-WIDE SCOPE Ephesians iii. 1-13 IN the paragraph just closed, we have seen the vision of the spiritual Temple of God. The saints ofthe Asian Churches have appeared in that vision as stones built one by one into the wonderful structure. Rising upon their foun dation in Christ, and compacted in Him their Corner Stone, they are destined at length to form, for ever, the complete and faultless Sanctuary to be inhabited by the eternal Presence, the Shrine for the manifestation of God to the universe in the endless ages. Toward that " far-ofif divine event" moves all the work of the Gospel. The labours of the evangelist and the pastor are indeed inesti mably precious as they affect the salvation and 105 io6 EPHESIAN STUDIES development of the redeemed individual. As suredly, did there exist only one human being, a unique specimen, race and individual at once, made in the image of God, and fallen from Him, the Gospel which should bring to bear on that one soul the saving powers of the world to come would do a work worthy of God. But as the case is, the Gospel has innumerable souls to deal with. And it has to deal with them not only as the individual multiplied, but as the saved, vivified, sanctified, glorified Community. Its result is to be not only a vast collection of chiselled marbles, but those marbles, each fault less in itself, constructed into a Temple, with its courts, and towers, and Holy Place. If the metaphor may be changed for a moment, the saints are not to be strewn as scattered pearls or rubies upon the floor of heaven ; they are to be "made up" (Mai. iii. 17) by the great Artificer into one glorious brilliant, in which jewel shall shine upon jewel, and each set off the whole. Great and splendid then is the aim which is to animate the Christian evangelist. He is working amidst dust and turmoil, but it is for no less a result than the completed Temple of the heavenly Solomon. When that temple is TEMPLE AND TEMPLES 107 inaugurated at last, he shall be permitted to look upon its symmetry and grandeur, and to think, I too was used in the production of the Habitation of God. Such surely is the thought of the Apostle at this point in the writing of his Letter. If I read correctly the opening of the third chapter, he was just about to follow up here the theme of the Habitation. But then he turns aside on a sudden to the theme of the Gospel, and of his own part in its enterprise for the world. He was about to say something like this : "You are being built together into the eternal Shrine, the Holy Place, for the residence of God for ever. Therefore, because of such a future, my prayers are going up for you that you may have a corresponding blessing in the present. You are being collected and erected into one Temple, for the abode (KaroLKrjT'qpLov) of God. I pray therefore that your individual hearts may even now, each one of them, be nothing short of an abode (/carotKrjcrai, iii. 1 7) of Christ, as the way to your full fruition of every spiritual gift and power. I pray that you may be individually sanctified by the Indwelling now, in order to your being collectively glorified by the Indwelling hereafter." This seems to be the io8 EPHESIAN STUDIES ultimate connexion between the close of the second chapter, with its KaToiKqTTjpiov, (followed by the tovtov x'^P'-v of iii. i,) and the close of the third chapter, with its toutov x'^-P''^ (ver. 14) and its KaToiKrja-aL But here comes in this great and memorable digression. He touches now the thought of his apostolic commission, his call to gather in " the Nations " to be built up into the spiritual shrine. And that touch irresistibly impels him to further utterances about that commission, and the gran deur of his message, and the wonder in his own eyes that he, unworthy, should be called to carry it to the world. So we have to wait awhile for the precious sentences about the residence of Christ in the heart by faith, and the love which surpasses knowledge, and the fulness of God. But while we wait we listen to an inter lude full of spiritual music. St Paul has to tell us of " the unsearchable wealth of Christ " poured out upon " the Gentiles," free as the golden sunshine, and of a " fellowship " for them all in the long-hidden " mystery " of His salva tion, and of the angelic princes of the heavenly world watching the Church to read there their brightest, deepest lesson in the "variegated wisdom of God," and how, in view of such a A PAULINE DIGRESSION 109 glory of grace, he sees himself to be " less than least of all the saints." It is a digression quite abnormal on strict rhetorical principles. But it is of a kind which carries with it its own peculiar eloquence and impression. Such tangents and excursions of thought are characteristic of overflowing minds, from St Paul of old to Thomas Chalmers in a recent generation ; Chalmers wrote his sermons, because he could never reach the end of any great subject without the curb of manuscript, so strong was the impulse to diverge into the rich fields beside the road. And where is the paren thesis of St Paul that does not give the Church some conspicuous treasures of revelation ? Let us listen then, while we wait : Ver. I. On this account, in view of such a goal of all my work, and of all your hopes, I Paul, yes, no other than this conscious Ego,^ wonderful as that fact is to myself, I, tho prisoner of our (rov) Christ Jesus, (His prisoner, because my captivity is due to the fact that I belong to Him, and in that captivity am wholly His possession ' He frequently writes iya> naOXor. So 2 Cor. x. i, "I Paul myself beseech you " ; Gal. v. a, " Behold I Paul say unto you " ; Col. i. 23, " whereof I Paul am made a minister." This is no commonplace egotism ; it is the voice of an intense and powerful personality, filled with a vivid consciousness of relation and responsibility. no EPHESIAN STUDIES still,) on behalf of, in the interests of the Gospel for, you, the Nations, (for in you I see, by representation, "the Ver. 2. Gentiles " as a whole ;) if, if indeed (etye), you did ever hear of the stewardship of that grace of God which was given me toward you, even the grace, the sovereign gift, of apostolic commission for labour among the Nations^ — : Here on purpose I leave a broken sentence as the .close of a paragraph. For it is just here that the line of thought quits the circle at the tangent. The Apostle begins here to dilate on the glory of the Gospel for " the Nations," and the wonder of his own commission, postponing the account of the prayer in which he beseeches for his converts that they may all experience the indwelling of Christ in the heart. That account ' EiJye ^Kouo-are. As I understand this " if," it is the expression of a certain gracious irony. The commission of St Paul to " the Gentiles " had been well known through the whole circle of his missions for years, and was notorious of course at Ephesus, and generally in Asia (it was at Ephesus that he first definitely withdrew the converts from the synagogue, Acts xix. 8, 9). And .just this notoriety of the fact gives occasion for a gentle, an aXmo^X. pleasant, hypothetical allusion to it : "You may possibly have heard of such a thing as my being the Apostle of the Gentiles ! " T^r Xo-pi-Tos . . . Tijs SoBfioTjs. Observe that he speaks here not of the "stewardship" but of the "grace" as the "gift." See for comment the words below, ver. 8, " to me . . . was this grace given, to preach, etc." So probably Phil. i. 7, "partakers of my grace," i.e. of my apostolic work and suffering. THE MYSTERY REVEALED in is suspended till ver. 14, where at length we see him on his knees to the Father, asking for the promised Spirit, that the saints may each receive the fulness of the blessing of the Son. Let us leave the soul-disturbed construction as it stands, and proceed : Ver. 3. I eissume then that you did once hear that, revelation-wise, by no mere cogitations, reasonings, aspi rations of my own, but by the personal, supernatural information of my Lord, there was made known ^ to me the mystery, the Secret, undiscoverable except as revealed ^ ; as I have written above in brief,^ referring Ver. 4. to which utterance (Trpos 0) you are able, you have the materials, as you read the words over, to per ceive my intelligence (avveanv), my God-given insight, in the mystery, the Secret, of our (rov) Christ ; the hidden wisdom, the long-buried treasures, stored in His work and glorj'. And what is that Secret ? It is the divine Ver. 5. purpose which in * other, different (Ire/aat?), generations was not made known to the sons of men, Jewish or Gentile, as (on the scale and with the unreserved distinctness with which) it has now been ' Read iyvcopicrOi), not iyvapicre. • Such is always the meaning of fiva-rfipiov in the N.T. See on i. 9. ' Upoiypaylm iv 6\tyiia. I sacrifice a literal rendering to preserve the balance in form ofthe terms crvyKKrjpovopji, o-uo-crco/ia, k.t.\. 8 114 EPHESIAN STUDIES eternal life. It shews the wonderful CHRIST, who was, as it were, prepared and developed within that barrier, now rising and overflowing it, and pouring Himself, like the rivers of Paradise, upon all the world, for the blessing of " whosoever will." This Gospel presents Him to " the Gentile " as no mere casual and accidental, however wonderful. Gift of heavenly compassion ; He is the eternally-intended Lord of a Covenant " ordered in all things and sure." Israel was for a season the solitary trustee of that Covenant. But the time has come now for its unreserved conveyance to '' all the seed, not to that which belongs to the Law only, but to that which belongs to Abraham's faith " (Rom. iv. i6). Wonderful Gospel, wonderful in this uni versality of its covenant-scope ! How little do we, so long used to its abundant blessings, understand its 7vonder\ But those primeval heathen converts did. And we too begin again to do so whenever, under conviction of sin, we get a real conviction of mercy, and own that all might have been utterly otherwise. The Eternal might have dealt with a disloyal race " according to their works." But He has dealt with them " according to His abundant mercy," according to " the Son of His love," whom He "gave for the life of the world." The thought of that Gospel fires more and more the heart and utterance of the Apostle. THE VESSEL AND ITS CONTENTS 115 Ver. 7. Of which message I became minister, Sia.Kovo';, working servant and agent, according to, in the spirit and with the strength of, the free gift (Smped), the benignant boon, of commission and inspiration in my apostleship ; the gift of, conferred on me by, the grace which was given me, according to the working of His power ; yes, according to nothing less than that divine inward resource. I was made the Apostle of the Nations, " according to a gift " as regarded my illumi nation and commission, and "according to His power" as regarded my capacity to carry through the vast work in all its weight and fulness. Woe to me if I sent myself; but He sent me. Woe yet more to me if I seek to sustain myself in self-born energies and enthusiasm ; but He is in me, " working His works" (John xiv. 10). With such a power lodged within me, there is no discouragement, while there is unspeakable humiliation, in the fact that the "vessel" is so truly "earthen," in itself so immeasurably un- Ver. 8. worthy of its contents. To me, even me (the emphatic e/j,oi), the less than least ^ of all saints, — seen by my inmost self, in all I know of myself, to be no more than that, (a " saint," yes, a true limb of Christ, a genuine devotee to Him ; but the really unworthiest among them all,)— has been given this grace, this sove reign, unearned bounty — to the Nations ^ to teU as Gospel the unsearchable, the " untrackable," the labyrinthine 1 'EXaxto-TOTtpo), literally " leaster" ; a "comparative super lative " coined by his glowing thought for this unique use. ' Read To'iseSvfcriv, not iv r. «'. ii6 EPHESIAN STUDIES (ave^tXviac7Tov), wealth of our (tov) Christ ; the boundless source and resource in Him for all that man needs for the bliss of his whole being, in time, in eternity, in Ver. 9. life, in death, in glory ; and to illuminate all men, to pour round them, whoever they may be, a flood of sunlight, as to what is, in its amazing fact and character, the dispensation,^ the world-wide distribution, as God designs it, through His servants, of the mystery, the Secret of a world's covenant-blessing in Christ, which has been hidden away, since the ages began, in the God, our God, who created aU things,^ and who in His plan of Redemption has not forgotten that fact of His universal Creatorship. And this " world-wide distribution " of the tidings of such a mercy, what is it to do? It is to gather in a Church of believers out of universal man. And the work of that Church, what is it to be? A work for extension indeed ! It is not only even to illuminate the human world ; it is to cast a reflected glory upwards, to the eyes of the watchers of the world above ; that Ver. 10. now, now at last, in the Gospel age, to the governments and the authorities, the "princes" (Dan. x. 21, etc.) of the angelic host, representatives of that host itself, in the celestial regions, may be made known, intimated, given as information (yvcDpiadrj), by means of the Church, by that great object-lesson in what omni potent Love can do with the material of a ruined race, the variegated, the versatile, the manifold, wisdom of ^ Certainly read olKovo/ila, not KOLvcavia, Omit hia. 'Irfcrov Xpiarov. "WHENCE CAMEi THEY?" 117 God ; the " wisdom " which is never at a loss to carry out its purposes of grace, be the problems presented by its subject what they may. It is a wonderful scene, as the Apostle lifts the veil, and bids us, like Elisha's lad at Dothan, see the invisible around us and above. Behold " the Church," " the company of the faithful." " Whence came they ? " From the Fall, from the death of sin, from the city of destruction, from a profound preference of self to God. Each one of that company, if in terrogated, will say that he, that she, was antecedently as unworthy as possible of grace, justly under sentence, " in the flesh," in which " no good thing dwelleth." " Whence came they ? " From the real circumstances of mortal life ; from the scenes of common toil, and prosaic incident, and everyday intercourse ; from the hopes and fears, the laughter and weeping, the births and deaths of time, just as we know them. They have come to Christ " in the body," " in this tabernacle," " being burthened." They have been received by Him so, and kept by Him so, and under these conditions joined together in Him in the wonderful organism of the limbs of the living Head. Men, women, children, behold them there, upon the earth ; not ii8 EPHESIAN STUDIES in the heavenly future only, as they shall be, but " now," in the present, as they are. And then above them see, bending to the contemplation, " the governments and the authorities in the celestial regions." The spirits of immortality are intently studying the mortal scene below them. They possess in their own ethereal consciousness the experience of all the past since they " sang together" (Job xxxviii. 7) over creation. They live where the vision of God is given to them as it is not given yet to us ; they " always behold His face" ; they " stand in His presence." What then have they to learn from us} Ah, they have to learn something which makes them watch us with wonder and with awe. They see in us indeed all our weakness, and all our sin. But they see a nature which, wrecked by itself, was yet made in the image of their God and ours. And they see this God at work upon that wreck to produce results not only wonderful in themselves but doubly wonderful because of the conditions. It is a thought to inspire the weakest and the least advanced disciple, that he, just as " a man in Christ," is a specimen, an instance, a part and member, of this Object of the at tention of " our elder brethren of the sky." THE OBJECT LESSON 119 The "angel that excels in strength" has things to learn here which he cannot learn from all he sees among his own bright peers of the celestial Order. He has to learn what grace can do with the mortal nature, and under the burthen of the flesh, as it is carried about perhaps by some poor and despised disciple, some young convert in the lanes of the English city, or in the kraal of the African wilderness. His cloudless intelligence finds matter for profound reflection in the phenomenon of firm and reasonable faith exercised by the man who knows God by grace but is utterly unable, from his earthly point of view, to see through some riddle of his Providence, or to comprehend some dark saying of His Word. In his own immortality, never touched by one drop of our cold river, it is instructive to him beyond all our thought to see his God triumphing over pain and death in some sufferer in the fire of martyrdom, or in the torture of cancer, or in the shipwreck, or just in the silent awe of any form of our departure from the body. "In all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that loved us." And what He who loved us is, in His "multifold wisdom," is seen thus " through the Church," as nowhere 120 EPHESIAN STUDIES else in the universe, by the Principalities and Powers. All this, moreover, this education of heaven through earth, if we may dare to phrase it so, is a matter of Ver. II. the plan and will of God ; it is according to the purpose, the programme, of the ages, the long "dispensations" of the slow history of Redemption leading up to the Church Universal of living saints ; the purpose which He, the Father, formed, in the Christ, even Jesus our Lord. For all was planned, as all was to be carried out, " in Him " ; "both Idea and Working were altogether bound up with Him. ' In Christ ' God was to ' reconcile the world ' ; ' in Christ ' the saints were to ' have redemption, in His blood ' ; 'in Him ' to be ' rooted and built up ' ; ' complete in Him ' ; ' abiding in Him ' ; ' walking in Him ' ; ' dying in the Lord ' ; ' in Christ made alive.' " "So God hath greatly purposed." And the Princi palities and Powers see God working that purpose out in a material that only illustrates to the utmost, by its difficulty, His glory. And now what do they see as the innermost wonder of the phenomenon they study ? They see these fallen and mortal beings, this Community of the lost and saved, not only bearing and doing for God here on earth, but spiritually present with Him in the Holy of Holies above. The " saints " are in Christ, who is in God. So they are the intimates of their Father's heart ; His subjects, His vassals, His bondmen, on the one side, but on the other, His own dear children, who THE DIGRESSION CLOSES 121 can say anything to Him. For they are one with the Ver. 12. Well-Beloved, in whom we have our (rriv) freedom of utterance, Trappi^a-iav, our unreserved leave of intercourse, and our introduction, through our (t?)?) faith in Him (aiiTov). For this whole wonderful life is " from faith to faith." To rely, to confide, to act upon the promise, is the secret and the means, alike when the penitent comes first to the feet of divine Compassion, and when the disciple goes deepest into the recesses of "the secret of the Presence." Ver. 13. Wherefore I ask you,* I appeal to you, not to lose heart, as in your loving sympathy you might do, as if you had to feel with me under a failure, amidst (iv) my troubles suffered on your behalf; for this (^rt?) is your glory. In the propagation of such a Gospel the messenger may well be willing to suffer for the sake of the converts, and they in their turn may well not be discouraged when they see him suffer for them. And such a Gospel supplies the very motive to the spirit breathing here, the spirit which cannot pause to contemplate its own " troubles " as such, but thinks only of those for whom they are endured, and of their need of hope and cheer. So closes the long and magnificent digression. It has roved from the immediate theme in hand, but not for a moment has it stepped outside of ' It seems far better to explain ai'rov/iat thus than of prayer to God. That is spoken of in the next sentence, and in much stronger terms. 122 EPHESIAN STUDIES Christ. It is a sudden turn taken in a green labyrinth. But the labyrinth is all alike the dve^iXyCaa-TO's ttXoStos, " the wealth not to be tracked by footprints," of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us return now, with St Paul, to the original matter of the context. But let us only the more involve ourselves, as to faith and love, in the glorious Maze of Him whose Name, with all that it contains, is a boundless Paradise of the believing soul. " Our Garden is a Labyrinth too, Whose paths no clue can tell ; It spreads about us, ever new, A wealth unsearchable.'' THE MAIN THEME RESUMED: PRAYER FOR THE INDWELLING AND THE FULNESS: DOXOLOGY 123 'My prayer hath power with God the grace Unspeakable I now receive ; Through faith 1 see Thee face to face, I see Thee face to face, and live : In vain I have not wept and strove ; Thy nature and Thy name is Love." C. Wesley. 124 CHAPTER VII THE MAIN THEME RESUMED : PRAYER FOR THE INDWELLING AND THE FULNESS : DOXOLOGY Ephesians iii. 14-21 I HAVE already attempted to explain the structure of this part of the Epistle. If I see it aright, we have in the paragraph, iii. 1-13, a digression from a main line of thought, of which line the characteristic note is Divine Indwelling. If the digression had not taken place, we should have seen the Apostle pass at once from the Indwelling as it concerns the whole Church, and the eternal future, to the Indwelling as it concerns the individual heart, and the present hour ; this second theme being connected vitally with the first, because to the the Indwelling in the Church hereafter for ever the great, the glorious, preparatory step is the Indwelling in the heart now. But the digression broke in upon this sequence, though it did so J2S 126 EPHESIAN STUDIES only to give us a view, among other things, of an "unsearchable wealth" in Christ of which we shall presently speak again. But now, it is over. The stream of thought has run its majestic circuit at the side, and once more it flows straight onward, onward to the sea, to the deep. For it will conduct us to " all the fulness of God," to a power which can, and will, do wonders in us and for us "above all that we ask or think." And on its way to that Ocean it will waft us into the blessedness of the Indwelling of Christ in the Heart. Look then, and listen. The Apostle is at prayer, " bowing his knees." The Pretorian at his side may or may not kneel also ; he may be a pagan scoffer, but quite possibly he may be a convert and a brother. Disciples like Epaphras and Luke may be there, to kneel too; or it may be some time when all such friends are absent. But however, Paul is on his knees, and pouring out his innermost heart for the Asians. And what he asks for them, he asks for us ; for it is for them as Christians that he prays. Let us thankfully remember here the marked absence of the local and the temporal in the allusions of our Epistle ; it will bring home the truth and glory of the message Riore fully THE MAIN THOUGHT RESUMED 127 Upon our own souls. Not for believers of one generation, or race, or station, or grade of civilization, or even of experience, is this man praying here. He is praying for Christians simply as such. And that means, for us. We will give ear indeed. And we will remember that it is not only St Paul at prayer. The Lord is in him, that he may intercede. Never was he more inspired than now. It is not he that speaks about the heart, about the Presence, about the blessing ; it is " the Spirit that maketh intercession." We are in the very line, in each petition, of the will of God. Ver. 14. For this cause, for the sake of your present blessedness, and your coming unimaginable glory as the Habitation of God, the " cause " present to my mind when that same phrase (tovtov %»/'"') was used before (ver. i), I bow my knees towards, as looking up towards, the Father,^ the ultimate and eternal Ver. 15. Fountain of all blessing. Him from whom, out of whom (ef ov), as by a sacred derivation of thought ' The words toC K. iipav 'I. X. must certainly be omitted. The evidence of MSS. and patristic quotations is against them, and St Jerome expressly says that the " Latin copies " which contain them are in error. And context favours the omission ; the Harijp is here regarded, immediately and mainly, in His relation not to the blessed Son but to the redeemed Family. That relation is indeed only "in" the Son. But it can be contemplated occasionally by itself; and so,it is here. 128 EPHESIAN STUDIES and word, all the Family^ (Trarpid) in the heavens and upon earth, all the company, all the body, of believers here and of the blessed ones above, human and angelic spirits alike, gets its name, iraTpici. And now, what is the petition ? It is alto gether for the disciples' hearts, and for the Saviour's glory, through the Spirit : Ver. 1 6. That He would give to you, (for it is a sove- ' narljp, iraTpid : it is a real misfortune that in English we cannot keep the verbal point of the Greek, by words which have a verbal kinship. We might perhaps render Trarpm, " father' s-house," or " father' s-family" ; but it would be cumbersome at best. The R.V. here renders " every family" or (margin) "father hood." And this would no doubt be right in view of classical usage, according to which "the whole family" would almost certainly demand jrao-a ^ naTpid. But the usage of N.T. Greek is not so strict, and we may and must accordingly consult context along with wording. What does context say ? Does the Apostle seem most likely here to take up the thought of God's spiritual Fatherhood as the archetype of all family unions, spiritual or not, in earth and heaven ? or the thought of the family oneness of saints and angels under the " Father of spirits " ? To me the answer seems clear for the second alternative. All through this great passage he is full of the thought of the spiritual and universal community. The phrase, " in heaven and earth," itself (compared with i. lo) suggests such thoughts rather than those of ' ' families ' ' in detail. I advocate therefore the Authorized Version. The Rabbis called the angels " the upper family " and Israel " the lower." The parallel with St Paul's language is not perfect, but it is near enough for illustration ; the phrases may be as old as St Paul's time, and may have partially moulded his language here. DIVINE POWER AND ITS RESULT 129 "¦sig" gift, under His own covenant of free grace,') according to, on the scale and in the style of, the wealth of His glory, the resources of His ever-blessed Nature, manifested to us, to be with power made mighty,^ by means of His Spirit, the Holy Spirit of Promise, the Lord of Pentecost, " Spirit of counsel and of might," deep in the inner man,' the region where the new life moves and grows, the regenerate consciousness itself. So the prayer is for power, divine in kind, and, as to its operation, penetrating to the depths of manhood. To what issue and effect ? Is the result to be convulsive and formidable ? Is the operation to come out in words and works of miracle, alarming the world into submission ? No ; it is a power full of life, life infinite and eternal, but so deep that it is still, with the peace of God Himself, and with a joy which is but heavenly love in movement. This " making mighty with power " is to have for its first and main effect just the opening of the heart's inmost ' See, on the mighty gift to the heart under the New Covenant, Jer. xxxi. 31, and the related passages in N.T. ; 2 Cor. iii., Heb. viii., X. See also the close of the present chapter of this book. * KpaTauodrjvai : observe the aorist, with its suggestion of decision and crisis. ^ Eir t6v tcrca avOpawov : lit. " into the inner man." My trans lation may fairly represent this ; the thought is of the inward direction of the Gift ; no surface-work. I30 EPHESIAN STUDIES door to the personal presence of the Saviour, and then, and so, the full apprehension of His salvation : Ver. 17. So that our (tov) Christ may take up His lasting habitation,' by means of faith, in your hearts ; coming to them in a sense, in a respect, so deep and great, as to constitute a practically new arrival, and remaining where He so arrives not as a Guest, precariously detained, but as a Master resident in His proper home ; and this, " by faith," " by your (t^?) faith," through your taking Him at His word, taking Him for granted, and opening the door without misgiving to His entrance. Then, at once the ideas of resultant blessing develope themselves from this glorious germ ; that, in love rooted and founded,^ having stricken your root deep into the soil of the Love of God, having built your house of salvation firm upon its rock, you may Ver. 18. achieve strength (i^iaxva-vre) to grasp,' in the insight and appropriation of the soul, with all the saints, with an experience all the deeper because ' KaToiKrja-m: observe the compound, and the tense. It is to be a settled residence, KaTOuciiv. And it is to be a decisive, critical, beginning — indicated by the aorist. ^ 'El/ ayd;ri; ippi^apivoi Kal Te6fp.e\iaiiivoi : placed here at the beginning of a new sentence, the words seem to amount almost to a sentence by themselves, as if he had said, "that you may be in love rooted, etc., and so may be able, etc." — 'Ev ayan-ij : the reference seems almost certainly to be to the Eternal Love. Nothing less inthe way of dydnrj could be the soiloithe Christian's root, the rock of his foundation. ' Observe again the signiiicant aorists, i^urxicrriTe, KaTaKafiia-dai. "IT PASSETH KNOWLEDGE" 131 consciously one with that of " the whole Family," what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of that mighty Love just mentioned, and just to be mentioned again, that Universe of blessing, with its vast horizons and its boundless sphere, its Purpose, Work, and Ver. 19. Covenant of glorious grace ' ; and to know, with an intelligence now wonderfully developed,^ the knowledge - transcending love of our (rov) Christ ; yes, transcending for ever, while it invites and allures for ever, all that we call knowing, for it is infinite ; so that, as the crown and issue of the whole blissful process of Indwelling, of Intuition, you may be filled' unto, up to, all the fulness of our (rov) God; your whole happy ' "Some curiosities of interpretation attach to this verse. Severianus (cent. 4, 5) . . . finds here an allusion to the shape of the Cross, and in that shape to the Lord's Godhead ('height') and Manhood {'depth '), and to the extent of the apostolic mis sions {^length and breadth'). St Jerome in his Commentary here interprets the words at some length, and finds in the 'height' the holy angels, in the 'depth' the evil spirits, in the ' length ' those of mankind who are on the upward path, and in the ' breadth ' those who are ' sinking towards vices. For broad and am^le is the way which leadeth to death.' The Calvlnist Zanchius adopts from Photius (cent. 9) the ex planation that the reference is to 'the mystery of the free salvation through Christ of the Gentiles and the whole human race ' ; called long, because decreed from eternity ; broad, because extended to all ; deep, because of the descent of Christ to Hades, and because of the resurrection of the dead ; high, because Christ ascended above all heavens." (Note in the Cambridge Bible.) -Tvavai. : again remark the aorist. The whole passage is full of the thought of " new departures " in the life of grace. ' Once more an aorist, irkrjpcoOrJTf. 132 EPHESIAN STUDIES nature flooded, as it were, with all which, being Grace in Him the Giver, can become Grace in us the receivers of the Gift, Is this too much to hope, to ask, to take ? No, Ver. 20. because HE is in the question. But to Him who is able to do beyond all things, to carry His work of blessing to lengths indefinite indeed, vastly beyond all ^ we ask or understand of His wealth and His ways, yet, all the while, according to the power of the Spirit Ver. 21. which is already at work in us; to Him be the glory, in the Church, (not by the Church only, but in it, for it is the occasion and matter of the ascription,) and in Christ Jesus,^ who is supremely the Father's Gift, and therefore supremely the Occasion of His Glory ; unto aU the generations of the age of the ages. Amen. Even so be it, even so shall it be, through that in terminable Future which lies waiting for us in His Eternity ; that " age," that " sum and circumference of ages," ages which again will themselves contain periods faintly imaged by the " generations " which make up the centuries of Time. So ends the Prayer, the "bowing of the knees," and then the Doxology, which seems to come less to close it than to waft it aloft into eternity. This is one of the great Scriptures, the Holy Spirit's words of the first order. Let ' Construct together vtrtpcKTrepttrcrov £v. Observe this grandly characteristic passage, with its repeated incp. ' Almost certainly read Ka\ iv Xpia-T^ 'It/o-ov. MONOD'S COMMENT 133 US recall it, let us ponder it, to be ourselves uplifted, and then abased, but only to be the better uplifted again in the power of God. Adolphe Monod, in his unpretending but pre cious " Explanation " of the Epistle, writes thus of the profound paragraph before us : " After the grandest promises which human language can express, the Holy Ghost here closes by declaring that all which can be expressed is infinitely below the reality which is in God. In vain we mount, even in the track of an Apostle ; we can only contemplate, after all, ' parts of the ways of God' (Job xxvi. 14), and we must always conclude with ' groanings that cannot be uttered' (Rom. viii. 26). Yes, and nothing other can suffice us than this avowal of insufficiency ; nothing less could respond to the vague and vast need of our heart. All that the mind comes to seize distinctly (nettement), and the mouth to enunciate with precision, is incapable of satisfying us. This conclusion accordingly, astonishing and unexpected, is just what we required. " Nothing can restrain or bound the power of God towards us ; nothing in Him, nothing even in us ; no limits set to His power, for it knows no limits ; not even the weakness of our T34 EPHESIAN STUDIES prayers, and the imperfection of our knowledge, for He is able to transcend all our demands and all our conceptions. " But alas for us, if this language, infinitely below the reality which is in God, should be infinitely above the reality which is in us ! Imagine a practical Christianity conceived accord ing to the text ofthe Scriptures only, and irre spective of the personal experience of believers; and then imagine a practical Christianity conceived only according to the experience of believers, and irrespective of the written Word. Should we not say that here were two different religions ? To pass from Scripture to our experience seems like a fall from heaven to earth — not to say, sometimes, to hell ! Let us class (assortissons) our Christianity aright. And may the Lord teach us how to bring our experience into harmony with His promises. Truly, we have need ofa new baptism ofthe Holy Spirit."^ Reflections like these, the reflections of a saint such as Monod, at once abased and profoundly animated by the words we have studied, may well seem the best commentary upon them. The whole passage calls the believer away from a ' Explication de I'Epitre aux Ephisiens, pp. 206, 207. "YOUR BIBLE AND YOUR KNEES" 135 m.ere discussion of phrases to the inner chamber of faith and prayer. " You have your Bible, and you have your knees ; use them " ; so said a venerable Christian, my godfather, Carr John Glyn, who died in 1896, within twenty months of his hundred years. Let us " use them " indeed, that the treasures of this Ephesian paragraph may become in some measure the current coin of our lives. But this very end may be advanced by just such attention to the phrases in detail as may send us to our knees with more articulate aims and hopes. So let me take up some few out of the great words of the paragraph, and point to them, in all earnest, for faith and for expectant prayer. i. "I bow my knees to the Father . . . that He would grant you!' So then this is a matter of divine, personal, benignant gift. Free as the gift of pardon, of justifying righteousness, of adoption, of incorporation, is the gift of the In dwelling and its attendant bliss. For the moment, put away other aspects, other sides, other truths ; they will be sure to be remembered in their place, if we are using " our Bible and our knees." Think just now of just this; "that He would grant you," " that He would give!' Ivo. Z^. 136 EPHESIAN STUDIES " Cease from thine own works " ; " cease from thine own wisdom." This is a gift, free and sovereign ; address thyself in simplicity — to receive. ii. '¦'To be with power made mighty . . . that Christ may take up His habitation in your hearts." This is to be the Spirit's operation, " with power to make you mighty," that you may — not shake the earth, but receive the Indweller. And why do we need a supreme empowering just in order to receive our Life, our Light ? Does the hungry wanderer need power in order to eat the food without which he will soon sink ? Does the bewildered mariner need power to welcome on to his deck the pilot who alone can steer him to the haven of his desire ? No ; but there is another aspect of the matter here. For the heart, though it immeasur ably needs the blessed Indweller, has that in it which dreads His absolute Indwelling. Can it trust Him with complete internal authority? Will He not use it to purposes terrible to the human heart, asserting His position by some infliction, some exaction, awful and unpitying ? So the hand, stretched out to "open the door" (Rev. iii. 20), the inner door — for the King is supposed to be already received into the porch. POWER TO WELCOME PRESENCE 137 and hall, and more public chambers of the being — falls again, and shrinks from that turning of the key which is to set the last recess quite open to the Master. Here is the need for the Spirit's empowering work. Come, Holy Ghost, and shew to the hesitating heart " the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," that lovely glory, shewn in that fair Countenance; then it shall hesitate no more. Beholding His love in His look it shall not dread His power in His grasp. It shall be strong to welcome Him wholly in, for it shall see, in the light of the Spirit, that " in His presence is the fulness of joy," that " to serve Him is to reign." iii. " That Christ may take up His habitation in your hearts!' What, has He not been in residence before ? Can the Ephesian be a Christian indeed, with Christ still absent out of him ? Is it not at Ephesus as at Corinth, where " Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be counterfeits, castaways" (d8oKt/.to(. : 2 Cor. xiii. s)? Well, all that side is vitally true, but there is another side. The Lord must, for our salvation at all, be so in living union with us that we are in Him, and He in us. But His presence in us has its degrees and advances, its less and more, its outer and inner. To drop 138 EPHESIAN STUDIES metaphor, a life may be truly Christian and yet far from fully Christian ; the man may have come really to Christ, and have really cast anchor on Him, and have really confessed Him, and be really seeking to serve Him, yet be keeping back, perhaps quite unconsciously, whole regions of the life from Him. He may be living rather as His ally than as His vassal. He may be rather treating Him as an august Visitor in His servant's house than behaving as the loving bondservant in a house where Christ is always the Master at home. And St Paul cannot rest about the Ephesians till they have, all of them, accepted the Lord simply on His own terms in this matter. They will never satisfy their Apostle, for they cannot possibly satisfy the Lord, if they do not welcome the blessed, the beloved, the adorable Indweller to the heart, not only to the convictions, or even to the conduct, but to the heart. He must be inducted into the central chamber, for it is His proper place. And He must be always there. "Christ" must be "hallowed as Lord in the heart" (i Pet. iii. 15; the true reading). " Though all of us is a temple for Him," says the old Puritan pastor, Bayne, of Cambridge, on THE FUNCTION OF FAITH 139 this passage, "yet the heart is the choir, where He properly sitteth." There let Him sit, supreme and at the centre. In many a Christian's experience it is as if the Christian life began anew, and in an almost heaven, when the will is "with power made mighty" deliberately and without reserve to seat Him there. iv. " By faith " ; "by means of your (t'^s) faith!' Take fullest notice of that phrase, so strong in its simplicity. The Indwelling is, from one side, the sovereign gift of God. From the other, it is a matter for the simplest and most personal reception by man. And then, the form of that reception is just this — faith ; reliance, submissive trust ; not animated action, not exalted aspiration, but acceptance. Wonderful "faith," pregnant of all imaginable blessings, but itself single and simple ; pathway to all virtues, but itself no virtue, for it is just the taking of the infinitely Trustworthy at His word ; is not this the mere act of reasonable self-preservation ? True, faith is the gift of God — but in order that it may be the act of man. Let it be our act to-day. V. "In love rooted and grounded, . . . that you may know the knowledge-transcending love HO EPHESIAN STUDIES of Christ." " From faith to faith" (Rom. i. 17) is the order of the Gospel from one side ; from love to love is its order from another. The Apostle prays that in the Eternal Love (I think we have adequately seen already that it is of that Love he is speaking) they may so feel their " root and foundation " that they may look around from it and contemplate in peace the universe of salvation, and that now, in particular, they may " grasp the love of Christ." As if the apprehension of His love were something very different from only the vestibule and introduction to the Eternal Love in its highest aspects ; rather, the soul is seen advancing from an enjoyment of the divine love in general to that of the special love of Christ, as to a sanctuary within the temple. Wonderful is the testimony of the words, so placed, to the divine glory of the Redeemer. Such is His love in kind that to "know" it is the very hope of the soul. Such is it in measure that it for ever transcends all our knowing. If St Paul had written down in so many words, " Christ is God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God," he could not have preached His Deity more fully. But let us not take the words only as a "UNTO ALL THE FULNESS" 141 contribution to a true Christology. Let us so receive the Indweller by faith that we may be for ever knowing this love of His — yes. His love even to us, just as we are — which yet we can never wholly know. " 0 Son of God, who lovest me, I will be Thine alone ; And all I have and all I am Shall henceforth be Thine own." vi. " Filled, unto all the fulness of God." No fanatical rhetoric is here, nor the least dream of a mingling and confusion of the finite and the Infinite. " Neither the Church, nor the soul, can contain the Infinite. But they can receive the whole, the plenitude [irX-qpcofid), of those blessings which the Infinite One is willing and able at each moment to bestow upon the finite recipient." " The idea is of a vessel connected with an abundant source external to itself, and which will be filled, up to its capacity, if the connexion is complete." ^ " Lord, we ask it, hardly knowing What this wondrous gift may be ; Yet fulfil to overflowing ; Thy great meaning let us see. ' Notes in the Cambridge Bible. 142 EPHESIAN STUDIES " Make us, in Thy royal palace, Vessels worthy of the King ; From Thy fulness fill our chalice. From Thy never-failing spring. " Father, by this blessed filling, Dwell Thyself in us, we pray ; We are waiting. Thou art willing ; Fill us with Thyself to-day." ' So we shut the Apostle's letter once more. Let us do so with that great word of his doxology upon our lips, tw SwajtteW, " To Him WHO IS ABLE." To read such a passage, and to look to ourselves, is despair. To read it, and to look "to Him who is able," is " everlasting comfort and good hope through grace." May it be with us somewhat as it was, a hundred years ago and more, with Dr William Conyers, Vicar of Helmsley, in Yorkshire. Earnest, conscientious, but as yet spiritually unilluminated, he toiled among his parishioners with vast diligence, but always inwardly dis appointed. One day, reading his Bible, he lit upon those words which we studied a little in our last chapter, " The unsearchable riches of Christ!' They struck him with a profound ' Miss F. R. Havergal. CONYERS AND HIS DISCOVERY 143 surprise, and a strange misgiving ; could the Christ, who had seemed to him hitherto a Figure in his theology so august yet so intelligible, so familiar, be the Christ of those words? And he did not rest till he had found Him indeed in the glory of His salvation, and had felt life transfigured in His light. You may think, perhaps rightly, that you stand further on in the knowledge of the Lord than Conyers did when he read of the wealth unsearchable. But you can never be so far advanced in it that new worlds cannot yet open before you. For Christ, as to His riches, is a Labyrinth no clue can traverse ; and as to His love, it passeth knowledge. " Thou art able ; we adore Thee ; We ascribe to Thee the power. And glad anthems to Thy glory We would sing each day and hour ; While the joy of now possessing In Thyself each promised blessing Is our glad unending dower." Miss J. S. Pigott. 144 A RETROSPECT AND REVIEW HS 10 "Through the meadows, past the cities, still the brimming streams are roll'd. Now in torrent, now expanding into silver lakes and gold, Wafting life and increase with them, wealth and beauty manifold. " Whence descends the ceaseless fulness, ever giving, never dry ? Yonder, o'er the climbing forest, see the shining Cause on high — Mountain-snows their watery treasures pouring everlastingly." 146 CHAPTER VIII A RETROSPECT AND REVIEW WE have touched the middle point of the Epistle. The close of the third chapter and the beginning of the fourth mark that point, not precisely in respect of space, for the last three chapters make a considerably longer section than the first three, but in respect of subject- matter. With some obvious qualifications, the first three chapters treat of doctrine, and the last three of practice ; the first lead us to the secrets and resources of the Christian life, and the last to its exercise in the Church and in the world. The connexion of the two sections is vital and profound ; this hardly needs to be explained. But it cannot be too earnestly pressed on the attention of the believing reader. For it is a grand illustration of the truth that, in the Gospel, all the doctrine bears upon practice, and all the 147 148 EPHESIAN STUDIES practice is rooted in doctrine. Or, to put it in terms more living, more personal, more fully true ; all the revelation of God in Christ is for the sake of His people's life and service before Him ; all the Christian's life and service depends, for its peace, purity, and power, upon his revealed Lord and God, known, trusted, invoked, and used. But of this we shall see much more when we travel forward into the latter section of the Epistle. Meanwhile, and that we may follow up this theme the better in its place, let us pause a little while here, and look back upon the ground already traversed. We have as it were reached the top of a mountain road ; the place invites to rest, and also to retrospect. We shall soon move on towards the plains and cities. Let us sit still for a time under the quiet sky, and contemplate the everlasting hills among which we have ascended, as they lift their heads heaven wards and pour their waters down the pass at our feet, towards the scenes of human Hfe. What on the whole then is the view of Christian life, in its source and secret, given us in the first three chapters of our Epistle ? i. We notice first, as we have done before, that the view, whatever it is, has to do not with some disciples, but with all. This is particularly MANY STREAMS, ONE FOUNTAIN 149 noteworthy, when we remember that in the second part of the Epistle we have a full recognition of the varieties of human duty. There we shall find the totally different functions of spouse, parent, child, servant, master, each treated explicitly and apart. But in the first section nothing of the kind occurs. The streams are many, the fountain is one. Whoever and whatever the disciple is, the greatest truths are true for him, for her. The highest, the deepest, the holiest privileges are his or her possession, in the plan of God. And he and she are called, each one, to "possess these possessions" to the full, and to enter in experience into the very sanctuary of blessing. This is a perfectly simple assertion, and manifestly true. Only, it is so sorrowfully in contrast with the current facts of actual Christian life, (or to speak more exactly, of the actual life of Christians,) that it needs continual re statement, to keep it really alive as a practical force upon us. I do not now refer to our nominal, visible " Christendom " in its larger sense, to the multitudes of the "christened" in our own and other regions where the Faith is accepted as the current creed. Rather, I have in view ISO EPHESIAN STUDIES circles which by comparison are near the centre; the people who in Evangelical parlance would be recognized as "converted," as "decided," as really " in earnest." Is it not true that among Christians thus described, and in whose lives there is much to respect, there appears too often a strange contrast when they compare their inner creed and their deepest experience with St Paul's account here of the " grace and peace" of— not remarkable Christians, but — Christians? Not in formula, no doubt, but practically, have we not allowed ourselves to be content with a life of the soul lived rather in the suburbs than in the sanctuary ? A life lived on " religion " rather than on Jesus Christ ? At best, a life lived near Him rather than in Him, and in which it would be difficult to find a congenial place for such words as " in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," " Christ dwelling in the heart by faith"? Yet the Apostle writes those surpassing phrases with the whole Asian mission in his view. Of every one, without exception, who truly calls upon the Lord, he affirms that the Father has raised that man with His dear Son, and has seated him in Christ in the heavenly places. For all the disciples, without reserve, "LET US CLASS OUR CHRISTIANITY" 151 he bows his knees in importunate and expectant prayer that they may be so dealt with by the Spirit that they may, every one of them, have Christ " resident in the heart by faith " — with all the wonderful sequel of that experience. Let us not be content with observing, or with owning, this difference, this contrast. Assortissons notre Christianisme, as Monod says in the extract quoted in our last chapter. " Let us class our Christianity aright." Is it apostolic, or is it something quite different? And if not apostolic, in its convictions, and (in some genuine measure) in its experience, let us make haste in our turn to "bow our knees unto the Father." " I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me. For I am a Christian, O my Lord, and Thou meanest the fulness of Thy blessing for every one of Thy disciples." ii. We observe next, coming into detail, that the apostolic doctrine of the Christian life is that it is a life wholly and sublimely heavenly in its source. Truly, as in the warm language of some of our beautiful old hymns, the eternal world is its home of birth : " Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings. Thy better portion trace; Rise, from transitory things, Toward heaven, thy native place." 152 EPHESIAN STUDIES I do not think that either John Cennick, in that heart-moving song of faith, or St Paul here, means to tell us that we had a personal pre-existence, and lived in heaven before we were born of our mothers here below. But they do mean, the Apostle does tell us, that we believers did exist to the eternal Mind "before the foundation ofthe world"; that then and there we were "chosen in Christ"; "pre destinated to the adoption of children by means of Jesus Christ"; "blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," Let us look from our hill-top upon that great Alp of truth, shining all over with the sunshine of everlasting love. It has its precipices, it has indeed. Cave prcscipitium, " Beware of the edge," was well said by Augustine, great teacher of the sovereignty of grace, and of the mystery of the eternal purpose. But the mountain is as beautiful as it is steep and massive, viewed from the foot of the Cross, and seen as part of the great landscape and system, of Redemption. It has no frown then for any human soul which in the least degree is seeking God. And for the soul which has found Him in Christ, it only smiles and radiates blessing from all its peaks and glaciers, with the assurance of "UNSPEAKABLE COMFORT" 153 a salvation nothing less than eternal in its origin, its purpose, and its end. It is the light of Christ which shines upon those steeps and summits. He looks out upon the believing soul from the mysteries of the choice, and the fore- ordination, and the blessing, and the acceptance. It is no law of fate, no iron destiny, with which we deal ; it is the will of the Father, manifested and effected in the Son ; nothing there can be alien, really and ultimately, from eternal Love. So let us dwell in due time and measure, on the revelations of the first great paragraph of the Epistle, with glad and thankful hearts. In the words of the Seventeenth Article of the English Church, " the godly consideration of predestination and our election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to " (note the deep conditioning words) " godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their minds to high and heavenly things." ^ ' I quote a few sentences written on this subject in some notes on the Epistle to the Romans prepared for a Bible-reading Union : " The sovereignty of grace is a side of revelation full of awe. . . . Only, we are well assured that it is not the whole 154 EPHESIAN STUDIES iii. Another grand aspect of the inner Chris tian life, as seen in this section of the Epistle, is that it is a life of supernatural illumination. For his Ephesian converts, for all of them, (let us note that point with renewed recollection,) the Apostle prays that the Holy Ghost may so work as the Lord of Light that they may supernaturally see the present and the coming grandeur and wonder of salvation ; "the hope of the calling," " the riches of the glory of God's inheritance, consisting of His saints," and also the mysterious force working in them now, even His resurrection-power, the same power which called their Lord from His grave, and set Him on the throne, and made Him Head of the Body. Let this be observed, as a divine suggestion for the life ofall true Christians. The Ephesians of the truth, but one side of it. Whatever it means, it leaves untouched and unhindered the message of John iii. i6. The two no more clash with each other, in fact, than the northern side of the Himalaya mountains clashes with the southern. We cannot see both sides at once, either in the mountain-range, or in the system of truth. But God can ; and another day he will give us a view-point, in glory, from which we shall see it all in harmony. Meanwhile, faith is nobly exercised, and the believer, having come as simply as a child to Jesus, gets this precious treasure out of the rock of sovereignty — that it is of the Lord that he (or she) believes and loves ; ' not of yourselves, it is the gift of God ' (Eph. ii. 8). So, 'where is boasting?' And also, 'where are doubts and fears ? ' The Giver of the gift is also the Keeper of the gifted one — ' through faith, unto salvation.' " ILLUMINATION 155 are viewed by St Paul, evidently, as already abundantly alive in the spiritual sense. "When ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise"; "You did He make alive, dead as you were in your trespasses and your sins"; aye, " He made you sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." What more did they want ? In one respect, nothing more at all, for they had " received Christ Jesus the Lord," as their eternal Life, by the Life-Giver's power; and "all spiritual blessings" are "in Christ Jesus," and therefore are in them in whom He is. But this may be true in covenant, in provision, and very far as yet from true in experience, in conscious possession. So, for these Spirit-sealed disciples, the Apostle prays for the Spirit — not as for a fresh personal advent of the Holy Ghost to them, but as for a fresh putting forth of His power upon them. And the special result of this is to be that they know what they possess. Their " heart's eyes " (i. 18) are to be lighted up, to see the landscape of glory before them, and also the golden treasures, wrought out of the mines of heaven, actually in their hands for present use upon the way. He wants them to be nothing short of "enlightened Christians" in the highest sense of the term ; to be illuminati iS6 EPHESIAN STUDIES indeed. They are to be simple as infants in the sense of need, in the tenderness of peni tence, in directness of reliance, and in gladness of obedience, yet to be " wiser than the aged " all the while in God-given insight into the mighty " reason of their hope," and into the secrets of God, "revealed to babes," for His people's present power and joy. This was the Apostle's standard for common Christian life in Asia ; and the Apostle was no visionary. He meant anything in the world but fanaticism, and fitful ecstasies, and the reveries of an abstract pietism. But he knew well that for the fulness of human life in a sinful world nothing can be more practically useful than the fulness of the Spirit of God, as He fully manifests to the believer the depth of man's need and the magnificence of the Lord's supply. As then, so now. An illuminated Christian life is "revealed unto babes'' in the nineteenth century, as in the first. To the young, to the uneducated, to the naturally slow, the Spirit in our day, as in that day, " takes of the things of Christ and shews them," in a way indescribably different from that of the mere literary and verbal exegesis of the student. Only a few weeks ago a Christian friend, widely experienced TWO EXAMPLES 157 in the realities of life, was talking to me .of a man singularly illuminated, filled to a remarkable degree with divine light, light shed upon the fulness of Christ, " the hope of His calling," and the " greatness of His power" in the hearts of His disciples. This person's life was out wardly so consistent with its manifest inward brightness that he was a proverb in his neigh bourhood for all that was happy and helpful. And who was he, who is he ? A workman, a labourer, employed under the County Council of London to cleanse the sewers in a district of the East. I have myself sat, time after time, by the bed of an old man, once the bailiff" of a small farmer in Dorset, and supposed for many a year to be the type of all that was dull and ignorant. But Christ, through a saint of His, found the old man in his latter days, as he lay decayed and blind in a little room, in a back yard, in a dark lane. And on the Spirit's work of conviction and regeneration came down the Spirit's work of " en lightening the eyes of the heart," with a wonderful insight into the hope of the calling, and the greatness of the power. I have listened to that feeble old peasant as he got upon his favourite and wonderful theme of salvation ; self-conscious ness was utterly absent from the tone, the manner. 158 EPHESIAN STUDIES the phrase ; humbly, very quietly, never glibly, the words would come. But the Lord spoke through them ; His light was in them. Truly, He had " given understanding to the simple," supernatural understanding of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, the inner verities of our salvation. Shall we too covet the working within us of "the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him " ? Shall we go upon the Saviour's explicit promise (Luke xi. 13) and "ask the Father"? "Ask Him!" Such is the brief inscription of a card which, day by day, meets my eye as I sit at my study-table ; it was given me not long ago by a Christian friend. Out of the Lord's promise it takes the implied precept. "He shall give the Holy Spirit to them that — ask Him"; therefore, "ask Him." For every department of the revealed work ofthe Comforter — "ask Him." Ask the Father, in the Name of the Son, at the instance of the Son, on the warrant of His word. Then we too shall live the life which was to be the normal life of all the Asian disciples, the life of those who supernaturally see their hope of glory, and supernaturally experience "the greatness of His power to usward who believe." THE INDWELLING 159 iv. But the Apostle, as we have seen, has even more to pray for in the interest of the Ephesians. And again, it is in the interest ot all of them that he prays. His thought about any of them cannot be satisfied without this supreme result of the Holy Spirit's work within them — " Christ dwelling in their hearts, by faith." In the proper place I translated that passage (iii. 14, etc.), and gave some comments on its expressions in detail, and on its general message. Here I attempt no fresh particulars of exposition ; I only point my reader's attention to two manifest facts in the passage. The first is that the " coming of Christ to reside in the heart, by faith," is presented as a definite thing in itself; a blessing, a gift, an experience, not to be con fused with the Christian life in general, but which the truly living Christian may yet greatly need to seek. The other fact is that, unmistakably, St Paul here views this blessing, this experience, as by no means reserved for a select few among the disciples. He is thinking of the whole Church. He is " bowing his knees," with the whole mission-community upon his heart. The people whom he addresses in the last paragraphs of the Epistle are all equally before him here ; i6o EPHESIAN STUDIES the husbands and wives of Asia, the fathers and mothers, the sons and daughters, the masters and the slaves. His prayer is that every one of them, in all the days of their common-place human life, in all the strong temptations of that life to live apart from God, may so live close to God that this shall be the description, the formula, of that life — " Christ dwelling in the heart by faith." So it was a definite blessing, and it was a blessing urgently to be sought for by them all. Observe further that it stood related on the one side to purely miraculous divine action, and on the other side to quite simple human recep tion. It required on the one side that the Christian convert should be "strengthened with might by the Spirit in the inward man " ; no power short of that could enable the being to enter upon this " secret of the Lord." On the other side, the reception of Christ as Indweller was to be simply "by faith"; that is, by the personal reliant welcome of the human affections and will, opening the door without, reserve, bidding " my Lord the King to come to His own house in peace." Is there need that we should remind one another that these are truths for our century as "KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS" i6i much as for the first ? There should be no need to do so, but indeed there is. With simplicity and humility I do remind my reader, and God knows I would be daily reminded myself, that every one of us is divinely intended to live a Christian life of which the inmost secret is this, Christ dwelling in the heart, by faith ; the Spirit strengthening us thereto in the inner man. I shrink from an elaborate attempted analysis of the blessed mystery in itself I would only say a little about what must assuredly be some of its results where it has begun to be. It must produce a deep and absolutely genuine humility. It must produce an inner calm which shall greatly tell upon the air and manner of outward life, aye, on look, and on tone of discourse. It must produce an abiding " Christ- consciousness," at the back, so to speak, of the manifold experiences of life ; with this presence in the heart, by faith, we shall not find it a chimerical hope, day by day, and hour by hour, to "do all to the glory of God." Our life in its activities and interests may, and very possibly will, go on as before ; we shall walk, and talk, and work, and rest, and sigh, and smile, as men really living in a real society. People will find us doing, not dreaming ; attentive, active, full II 1 62 EPHESIAN STUDIES of the sense of duty and responsibility — only, kept amidst it all, by a power not our own, in a tone and temper which mean that "the Lord is there." " I sit here and talk to you," said Tersteegen to his friend Evertsen, " but within my heart is the eternal adoration, unceasing and undis turbed. I thank God that He has given me a little chamber into which no creature has entered besides." ^ Tersteegen lived a real and useful life. He did not shun his kind. His mind was fully open to his period ; he astonished Frederick the Great by the manly good sense and high ability of a written criticism on one of the King's anti- Christian writings. But behind it all, Christ dwelt in his heart, by faith ; and the Indwelling only made his life more real. Have we not known our Tersteegens ? One word more in closing this line of re flection. It is suggested by the words just quoted ; " within my heart is the eternal adora tion." Yes, this also will assuredly be one precious result and evidence of the Indwelling. Within the heart will be adoration. If indeed " the Lord is there," He will be felt there to ' Mrs Bevan, Sketches ofthe Quiet in the Land, p. 430. "IT IS THE LORD" 163 be the Lord. All His fair characters and attributes will in their measure be made known to us ; but all will be overshadowed, or rather overshone, with this — it is the Lord. " My Master, O my Master ! " Only, " Lord" seems to say more than even "Master"; the Lord is the Master who is the Maker too; who is not to be served only, even with the most entire surrender, but to be worshipped all the while. He knows our frame ; He knows that we cannot be perpetually, with each breath, formu lating an articulate Te Deum to Him in explicit words, or even thoughts. But He can keep our inmost being, as to its spiritual attitude, for ever upon its knees. And He only knows how greatly He can enable us to speak our worship too, with an instinctive readiness and frequency which once we could not have imagined. " Christ dwelling in the heart by faith." Let us clasp and cherish the words, and use them in the most practical needs of life. "Not I, but Christ liveth in me " ; " Christ dwelleth in me." I listened lately with deep attention to a Christian man's quiet narrative, given to me in private, of his experience of discovery in this matter. " The fear of man " had been a burthen i64 EPHESIAN STUDIES to him. It was brought home to him that the secret of deliverance was to recollect that his Lord was in him, and that his Lord was not afraid. Sudden and wonderful was the revolution within. Some circumstances attended it which I cannot for a moment think to be, in God's purpose, normally meant for all believers. But the essence of the thing — is it not meant for all ? For it is but an extension and application, in the light of the Holy Spirit, of the truth of the Indwelling in the heart, by faith. Come in then. Lord, oh come, and dwell, and let Thy presence evermore expand within. "O Jesus Christ, grow Thou in me. And all things else recede ; My heart be daily nearer Thee, From sin be daily freed." ' I thus conclude this chapter of retrospect and review. After all, I have only taken a few great specimens from the treasures of our Epistle, to illustrate its view of the inner Christian life. I have said nothing, for example, of the teachings of St Paul here upon the ideal of the Christian Church, in relation to the soul of the Christian ' From the German of Lavater: O fesu Christe, wachs in mir. The English will be found in Hymns of Consecration and Faith. A REMEDY FOR CURRENT EVILS 165 man. But let this at least be remembered, in that direction. We are living in a period of deep and complicated unrest and perplexity in the visible Church of Christ. There is much to rejoice us in many quarters and many aspects of the life of Christendom. But there are those of us whose hearts often fail them when they contemplate the phenomena, within the Church of England for example, of doubt, of worldly conformity, of grotesque and retrograde superstition, of altogether unchastened wrangling. No thoughtfvil Christian can look on unmoved ; few but must think often over the problem of practical measures for reformation. But let the Ephesian Epistle teach us this, that the deepest of all secrets for strength and cohesion in social Christian life is the extension far and wide in individual Christians of the life hid with Christ in God, the Spirit's light shed in the soul upon the glories of salvation, faith's welcome to the Lord's own Dwelling in the heart. " Make my life a bright outshining Of Thy life, that all may see Thine own resurrection-power Mightily shewn forth in me ; Ever let my heart become Yet more consciously Thy home." Miss J. S. Pigott. l66 HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : HUMILITY, LOVE, HARMONY 167 "The invisible world with thee hath sympathized; Be thy affections raised and solemnized." Wordsworth. i6S CHAPTER IX HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : HUMILITY, LOVE, HARMONY Ephesians iv. 1-7 THE First Part of the Epistle is now con cluded, and the Second opens. We pass from the revelation of doctrine to the development of practice. Of course this must be said with some quali fication. In the First Part we have had practice implied and alluded to ; as where (ii. 8) St Paul tells us that we were " created in Christ Jesus unto good tvorks!' and indeed in the manifest holy bearing of the entire exposition. And in the Second Part we shall find passage upon passage where doctrine is announced and en forced ; some of these passages are as important as any of their kind in the New Testament. Altogether we find truth and life, here in Ephesians, as generally in Scripture, so closely, 169 170 EPHESIAN STUDIES so vitally interwoven that it is impossible to treat either of the two as really isolated. Doctrine runs of itself into practice, in the mind of the Apostles, and practice always feels its footing in doctrine. Let the suggestion given us by this fact never be forgotten by the Christian teacher. Does he really mean to be a messenger of the Gospel} Then let him often remind himself of this double phenomenon of the Good Tidings — that its end is " our sanctification " (i Thess. iv. 3), in the most practical sense possible, and that it seeks that end through the supernatural means of the message of Christ for us and Christ in us. It is only too possible to forget one or the other of these two sides of the nature of the Gospel. Sometimes we forget that practical holiness, conformity to God's will in real life, and not only security and spiritual enjoyment, is its aim ; and a seriously one-sided type of teaching must result from this. On the other hand it is some times forgotten that the grand peculiarity of the Good Tidings, properly so called, is to reveal a way towards this aim which is of grace, not nature, of God, not man. It takes man from the hands of the Law, convinced and humbled, silenced into self-despair, conscious to the heart "THE GOSPEL" 171 that he can save himself neither from his Judge nor from himself. And' then it shews him that wonderful Secret which it was not at all the business of the Law to shew him — the secret of redemption in the blood of the Lamb, and of purity and power in the gift of the Holy Ghost. This, and nothing else nor less, is the Gospel. What leads up to it, by burning into us the sense of the need of it, is not the Gospel, properly ; it is the Law, whether it be the Law as written at Sinai or as spoken in the Sermon on the Mount.^ I have heard of great preachers whose per petual message in the pulpit was the sinfulness of sin, and the profound ramification of sin in the human heart. In all true preaching that stern element should be present ; for the minister of the Gospel is also the vindicator and assertor of the Law. But the teaching which is all con viction is not Gospel teaching. In a strict sense, it is not Christian teaching ; not distinctively ' The Sermon on the Mount may be described as " the Law glorified." It is an inestimable statement of the essentials of a holy life, " piercing even to the thoughts and intents of the heart." But it is not the Gospel; "no flesh shall be saved" by the Sermon on the Mount. In order to carry out its precepts, in any real sort, we need all the Gospel of the Cross and the Spirit. 172 EPHESIAN STUDIES Christian. For the peculiarity, the " difference," of the Christian message is not its detection of the disease but its revelation of the remedy. The most soul-searching ministry becomes a ministry of the Gospel only as it goes on to set out the Lord Christ and the power of the eternal Spirit as the hope and liberty of the sinner. Aye, and to be a Gospel ministry indeed it must not only set Christ out but magnify Him, glorify Him, dilating and dwelling upon His " unsearch able riches " in their application to every need of man. But we have digressed a little, while con sidering the structure of our Epistle, and the vital inter-texture of its two parts. Let us come back, and observe again (what is obvious) that this inter-texture still leaves the two parts broadly distinguished. On the whole, the first three chapters are doctrinal all along, and the last three are very largely the practical application of the doctrine. If we ask for the picture of the true Christian, for his tangible character, as we shall see it and feel it in life, it is to the second part that we go, not to the first. Come hither then, and watch the Apostle as he draws that portrait. What will be the first steps of the process ? THE CHRISTIAN'S BEARING 173 A painter commonly thinks first of the natural attitude and aspect of his sitter, before coming to the details of feature. What, in this immortal portrait, will be the chosen and characteristic /o.jz- tion, the sic sedebat, sic se gerebat, of the Ephesian Christian ? The question is the more interesting after our study of the man's position and posses sions, particularly after that last stage of our view of them, in which we saw that he was called to live as one " filled unto all the fulness of God." How v/ill he bear himself under such astonishing conditions ? Behold him yonder! His walk, his look, his manner, whatever else they are, denote one who has indeed learned the humility of love. Ver. I. I appeal to you,^ therefore, I the prisoner in the Lord, the man whose captivity is due to his union with his Master and yours, and who has thus a sacred claim on your attention, to set out on life's walk^ in a way worthy of, in moral correspondence with, the calling ' napaxaXm: perhaps the above rendering is better than "beseech," as irapaKaXeiv usually means "to exhort," "to encourage," and the like. But I am doubtful. — For a close and beautiful parallel see Rom. xii. i. 2 UfpiiraTtjcrai : the aorist perhaps justifies my rather elaborate rendering. It is not nepiiraTelv, the continuous course, but a point in it ; a "new departure" of more assured and conscious con sistency. But I do not press this as if it were the only possible exposition ; the aorist sometimes gathers up an idea into a point rather than marks a point of time. T74 EPHESIAN STUDIES with which you were called, when the heavenly message reached you, and the heavenly grace drew you to close with it.^ Yes, I appeal to you to take care that your actual tone and bearing answers to the inward transfiguration, to your new standing and your new endowments as the called ones of your redeeming King. Great and wonderful that standing and those endowments are. My exposition of them will aid you to get some yet larger view of them than you had before ; yet even so, they are " gifts unspeakable," " wealth unsearchable," a " love passing knowledge," wonders " far above all we ask or think." But then, the grander your place and your resources, the more conspicuous is the sovereign mercy which has con ferred them. You look around, and find yourselves '' called " to all the peace and all the power of a living union with Christ, planned for you in the deep eternity, realized now in your living persons, so that you are " seated together with Him in the heavenly places." But you remember instantly Jww you are so seated, and so enriched. You were dead, and a boundless mercy has bid you live. You were excommunicated aliens, and God has been pleased in His glorious freedom to give you the citizenship, yea, the nobility of the Israel of God. Ponder your magnificence of condition, ' See above, on i. i8, for remarks on the proper meaning of (caXfiy, kKtjctis, in the Epistles. Practically, our common use of the word "conversion" nearly conveys the meaning; only with the difference that, while "conversion" rather emphasizes the human side in the great change, "calling" rather draws atten tion to the divine side, the Voice of prevailing power. HUMILITY IS E.SSENTIAL 175 till you begin in some true sense to realize it. But remember how you reached it, and each reflection upon it, while it rejoices your souls with a joy full of glory, and educates you already for the exaltations of the life to come, will only set you lower in your own esteem. " Lord, is it I ? " " What have I that I did not receive," even as the destitute wanderer receives the bounty of a prince ? So the very greatness of the Christian's elevation, seen in the light of the Lord, tends directly to his personal humility. It is the profound secret of an abasement (not debase ment) which cannot possibly be a matter for merely theoretical estimates ; it must lay the man so low in his own esteem before God that he cannot possibly be other than softened and chastened before his fellow-men. He has been trusted with the riches of his King, and he feels them in his hands. But he remembers that his King has first forgiven him a hopeless debt, many more than ten thousand talents. He is "seated with the princes of His people." But he deserved, in law, to be " delivered unto the tormentors." Are his eyes really open to the greatness of his salvation ? Then he sees his own demerit as he could not see it in the light of a salvation smaller and less divinely generous, 17C EPHESIAN STUDIES The first, the deepest, the all-pervading effect upon character, which must issue from a real insight into the glory of our " calling," is holy humbleness. The really illuminated Christian must be humble, and that in ways which men around him must find out without mistake. So the Apostle proceeds : Ver. 2, With all lowly-mindedness, with an unreservedly (TrocTj??) humble estimate of self,^ and meekness, an unreserved, simple-hearted, submission under trial, in whatever form it comes,^ at once prostrate and at peace beneath the will of God ; with longsuffering, the enduring, unweariable "spirit" (Ovfio'i, luncpodviiLd), which knows how to outlast pain or provocation in a ^ " TaiTftvocppocrvvri ... is a distinctively Christian grace, viewed as a thing always to be sought and cherished. Pagan ethics, at best, just recognized it as right where necessary, but not as good and happy per se. The Gospel puts its obligation and its blessedness on the same footing for all believers, as being all absolutely dependent for all true good upon the raercy of Another. — The corresponding adjective [raireu'ds] is used (Matt. xi. 29) by our Lord of Himself. Trench [Synonyms, s.v. Taneivopocrvvrj, npadTvisI remarks that we have Him there recog nizing His entire dependence as Man on the Father. Not moral defect, but ' creatureliness,' he says, is the thought there. ' In His human nature He must be the pattern of all . . . creaturely dependence.' " (Note in the Cambridge Bible.) ' See again Matt. xi. 29, where our blessed Master describes Himself as npaos. His supreme exercise of n-padnjt was when He yielded Himself to the prospect of suffering in the Garden, and to the outrages of His enemies at His trial and crucifixion. FORBEARING WITH A'i PURPOSE 177 strength learnt only at the Redeemer's feet ^ ; the noble opposite to the "short temper" which soon gives way, and whose -outbursts are only sinful weakness under the thinnest mask. " With " these fair, tender graces, attended and escorted as it were by their strong gentle ness, live up to your " calling," forbearing one another, allowing each for the others' frailties and mistakes, aye, when they turn and wound you, in love, " finding your joy in the felicity of others," and so finding it easy to see with their eyes and, if need be, to take sides with them against yourselves. And let all this be done not only as right in itself, but in connexion with a far-reaching purpose, affecting your whole community ; bear, and forbear, and love, Ver. 3. as those who are giving diligence, aiming in earnest (a-irovSa^ovTe^), to preserve, with a watchful (TTjpetv) custody, the oneness of the Spirit, the com munity, the identity, of feeling and of aim, generated by your common experience of the grace and power of the Holy Ghost, in the bond of our peace (t^? elpijvTj^). That " peace " with God, and in Him with one another, which is in fact Christ Himself (ii. 14), in His sacrifice and His presence, is to form the " bond " which shall maintain you in a holy union of spiritual hope and aim. To animate the thought, think on the mighty facts connected with this deep oneness ; so will they the Ver. 4. better be realized in life. Remember— One ' An attempt was made, in the seventeenth century, to naturalize in English the word longanimity (like magnanimity), to repre sent p.aKpo6vp.la. The Vulgate here has longanimitas. 12 178 EPHESIAN STUDIES body, and one Spirit ; one Organism, and one only, con sisting of the regenerated and living members of the one Head, all animated by the One eternal Spirit who first brought each into vital contact with the Lord, and now maintains each and all in Him ; even as you were actually (Kai) called, converted, (by this same divine Agent,) in one hope of your calling ; so as to find your selves, whatever your natural diversities as individuals, all included and united " in " the one glorious prospect (iXvi'i) opened up in Christ. The eternal future, with its oneness, is to bear upon the trials and duties of the present, and to draw the believing Church together in view of it.' Yes, in view of your possessions and your privileges, everything contributes to the weight of this Ver. s. holy watchword. Unity ; one Lord Christ Jesus, the same and undivided, Owner and King equally of all His people ; one faith, one identical secret for peace and power, a saving reliance on His one Name,^ a secret equally necessary and equally open for you all ; one baptism, the same God-given symbol and seal, in every ' Cp. Col. i. 4 for a parallel. There " the hope laid up for you in heaven " is presented as a reason why i^ia, Tr\v iXniSa) for "the love ye have towards all the saints." Great indeed is meant to be the binding power of a common eternal hope. •¦' nUns is here explained not of the Christian's creed but of the Christian's trust. I believe this to be required, or at least strongly suggested, by the general use of the word ¦nlaris in the writings of St Paul. Hardly ever, if ever, does he use it distinctly in the sense of creed. Of course some "creed," however brief, is required in order to " trust," if it is to be trust in the trust worthy Object. But this is not in question where we are examining the use of the word TriVrtr. UNITY AND DIVERSITY 179 case, upon the one saving faith — the same in the sacred simplicity of its Rite, in the holiness of the Triune Name (Matt, xxviii. 19) named therein, and in the riches of the Covenant of which it is the initiation and lastly, crowning all, as the ultimate and infinite glory Ver. 6. of all true unity, one God and Father of all, of all His individual children equally, of all to whom, in His Son, He has " given authority to become children of God, even to them that believe on the name" of Christ (John i. 12); the Father who is over all His people, presiding, ruling, owning, and, through them all, working out His will by them as His means, and in them all,' dwelling in their hearts, and in their com munity, as in His shrine, Flis home. Thus far we have the argument for humbleness and love derived from the watchword Unity. Now the Apostle turns to the opposite while vitally related truth, Diversity, and draws the same inference from that side also. The Asian believer (and the English) is to " give diligence," the diligence of thoughtful recollection and patient watchfulness, to cultivate the true "solidarity" of Christian life, because its root is one. He is to do this also, and to do it the better, because meantime its branches, leaves, and fruits are many. He is to be prepared for ' Read iv nda-iv, not iv tt. vfiiv, and probably not iv tt. fnuv. But the reference is unmistakable. i8o EPHESIAN STUDIES a wide diversity in the manifestations of it, and in the functions of those who equally share in it. He is to be more than prepared for this ; it is to be his happiness to observe and welcome it, for it is the result of his Lord's use of the individualities of His people for the more complete manifestation of Himself Let us take the first sentence of this new paragraph, the better to put the complementary truths in their harmony before us; the paragraph as a whole must be deferred for another chapter of exposition. Ver. 7. But to each one of us was given, when the Master called His servant, when the Head brought the limb into touch and union, grace, the free gift alike of work to do' and of power to do it, not in any fortuitous or merely general fashion, but vvith perfect distributive skill, according to the measure, in a calculated adjustment, of the gift of our {rov) Christ. The " grace " was the " gift," free, full, and sovereign ; it was " the gift of Christ," absolutely His to provide and to dispense. Its allotment, the dealing out of the " talents " from the one great fund, vvas governed by His own deep design, manifold in detail, one in end. ' Xdpis is often used by St Paul in reference to the grant of duty, though always in connexion vvith the grant of faculty for it. See e.g. Phil. i. 7, and above, ch. iii. 8. THE LAW OF LOVE ISI Let each happy recipient take his " gift," and use it, and be glad. And as for the Householder's assign ment to a fellow-servant, "What is that to thee? Follow thou Me." We pause once more in our translation and exposition. In the passage just traversed, what messages emerge as the most conspicuous and weighty ? We would fain " hear what God the Lord will speak " in this word of His. i. All through, as with " the pleasant voice of the Mighty One," He speaks to His people the blissful law of love. That is to say, He bids each disciple forget himself and remember others, in the magic power of "so great salva tion." There are many things in Christian life. " But one thing is needful." There are gifts eminent and shining. But there is always one "more excellent way"; it is the way of holy love. Not love anyhow, but love learnt of the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord; love "worthy of the calling wherewith we were called." Such a love must, if true to itself, be true to its cause. It must be lowly, it must be meek, it must be long-suffering and forbearing. No doubt on occasion it will abundantly prove itself to be brave, to be active, resourceful, practical; "not in word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth." 1 82 EPHESIAN STUDIES But all its courage and all its workfulness will have at the very heart of them that grace which the world cannot give, humbleness, meekness, the spirit which has learnt self-abasement in " the secret of the presence" of a perfect Saviour. Be this remembered by us all in these days of hurry, of unchastened liberty, and abundant self-advertisement. Alas, such " days are evil " for close intercourse with God in Christ, and deep insights into His covenant-treasures, as by souls which " have an unction from the Holy One," Therefore all the more those who seek to be disciples indeed must watch, and pray, and ponder the often neglected Word, that they may "know the hope of their calling," and then may "walk worthy of their calling" — with the walk of humbleness and love. ii. The paragraph speaks to us all along of the deep sacredness of Christian Unity. " Be hold, how good and pleasant a thing ! " From every point of view the happy duty is enforced, of " giving diligence," of being in earnest, for unity. Its deadly enemy, the spirit of self, is here commanded to depart in the name of our " heavenly calling," whicli, "calling" us to Christ, calls us immeasurably above the miserable self- seeking and self-assertion which dislocate and "ONE BAPTISM" 183 disintegrate the union of souls. The celestial friends of unity are here called to the front — the recollected oneness of our new life in Christ, of our faith within, of our baptism without, of our Master, ot our Father. Beyond question, the Apostle means a unity which is tangible, practical, working. His mention of our Baptism may remind us of this, if we need it ; the oneness of the sacred outward Rite suggests at once a community of life which in some measure must express itself externally and publicly. " One baptism ! " said a venerable Hindoo convert a few years ago to a Christian visitor, who, sitting by the old man's sick-bed in the mud-hut in Bengal, had just recited to him the words of this Ephesian passage. The Englishman reached the phrase, " one faith " ; the ex- Brahmin, who had been literally wor shipped till he was baptized, and then at once treated " as the offscouring of all things," quietly, but with indescribable impressiveness, took up the next words, " one baptism 1 " Indeed the Apostle has in view a unity which does not satisfy itself with sentiment. It prizes all possible actual coherence of order, and organization; all such methods of worship as may best aid the believing company to enjoy 1 84 EPHESIAN STUDIES a public fellowship together before God as true and general as possible. Easy and ill-considered separations, even in things most external, are assuredly wounds to such unity, and in that respect are sins. The Christian Church should reflect as much as may be outwardly the holy inward principle and power of unity in Christ. Yet let us on the other hand earnestly remember that the context and the terms of this passage alike lead us, for the heart of the matter, to a region of things far other than that of authority, administration, succession. For his basis of unity the Apostle goes to the height of heaven and to the depth of the sanctified soul. He has in his deepest thought not a Society founded by Christ on earth to convey His grace, but the Church written in heaven, and the Lord of it present in His every member's heart, welcomed in by personal faith, under the power of the eternal Spirit, in response to imploring prayer. Such was our Master's own thought of Unity, in the great High Priestly Prayer : — " that they may be one in Us ; that they may be one even as We are One." Poor and unsatisfying are the results where " Unity," " Corporate Life," and the like, are the perpetual watchwords, but THE LAW OF TRUE UNITY 185 where they bear a primary reference to order, function, and succession in the ministry of the Church. One cannot but ask the question sometimes, when contemplating phenomena of an ardent ecclesiasticism, is this the worthy goal of ten thousand efforts, of innumerable assertions of " catholicity " — this spirit and tone, these enterprises and actions, so little akin either to the love or to the simplicity, the openness, of the heavenly Gospel ? Suppose such " unity " to be attained to the uttermost, beyond even the dreams of Rome. Would it contribute at all to making " the world believe that the Father hath sent the Son, and hath loved us even as He loved Him " (John xvii. 23) ? No, it would not. But the manifestation of the presence of the Lord in all who bear His Name, so that they forget themselves in Him, would do so to a degree now inconceivable. It would tend more than all ecclesiastical schemes to an external and operative cohesion. But it would do so not by policy, but by grace; not by the universal acceptance of a hierarchical programme, but by " the life of Jesus manifested in mortal flesh." ' Partakers of the Saviour's grace, The same in mind, in heart. Nor joy nor grief, nor time nor place, Nor life nor death can part." C. Wesley. 1 86 HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : DIVER SITY AND HARMONY OF GIFTS AND SERVICE .87 "Saint Paul in his Epistles has written more fully and wisely of virtues and good works than all the philosophei-s." Luther. i88 CHAPTER X HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : DIVERSITY AND HARMONY OF GIFTS AND SERVICE Ephesians iv. 7-16 Ver. 7. But to each one of us was given grace, according to the measure of the gift of our Christ ; in perfect corre spondence to His plan for each and for all, and as Ver. 8. His own sovereign endowment. Wherefore, (because the spiritual fact and the Scripture promise of it must tally,) it saith, the prophetic Oracle saith, as with a living voice,^ Ascending on high. He led captive a captivity, a host of captives, and gave gifts to men, to mankind, rot? avQpuynoi'i. Words whose phraseology lends itself, in the light of Christ, to an interpretation exactly appropriate to Him who, for our salvation, came so immeasurably far down, that He might then and Ver. 9. therefore mount so immeasurably high : Now ' It seems better to explain \iyci, thus than by "He saith," as in A.V. — For an exaraple of the many passages in which, in Scripture, Scripture is almost personified, cp. Gal. iii. 8: "The Scripture, foreseeing . . . , preached before the Gospel unto Abraham." igb EPHESIAN STUDIES the phrase, " He ascended," what is it, what does it mean, if not that He also descended,^ aye, to the lower regions of ,the earth, to the subterranean Sepulchre, and to that hidden Separate State of which the Sepulchre is the Ver. 10. portal and the type ? ^ The Descender, He, He and none other (auro's), and He because He descended, is also the Ascender, the Conqueror who went up, far above all the heavens, all the spheres and regions of blessed creature-life, to the Uncreated Glory itself, to the Throne, to the Majesty on high ; that He might ^ fill all things, the Universe and its contents, to, TrdvTa — fill them with the presence and the power of One who, being God over all, is now also the Son of Man, and Ver. II. the Lamb that was slain.* And He, none other than He (avTO'i), this wonderful Descending and now Ascended Christ, in the virtue and the prerogative of His Sufferings and His Glory, forthwith "gave," as ' Probably the word "first," nprnrov, ofthe Received Text is to be omitted. It is most likely an early explanatory note. * Some have interpreted ra KaroTepa fiiprj rrjs yijr to mean merely the earth, considered as a region lower than the heavens ; "the lower parts, consisting of the earth." So Bp Pearson. But the reference to the Grave seems both more suitable to the context and more congenial to the phrase. Cp. Ps. Ixiii. 9 : " They shall go into the lower parts of the earth." And see the grand spiritually-parallel passage, Phil, ii., where the Saviour's Exalta tion follows upon His " obedience even to the length of death." ^ Lit. " may," iikr\pit>cTr) : but usage favours our rendering. ¦* "There is no reference here to a diffused and ubiquitous corporeity, but to a pervading and energizing omnipresence. . . . Christ is perfect God, and perfect and glorified Man ; as the former He is present everywhere ; as the latter He can be present anywhere" (Bp EUicott). THE GIFT OF THE ASCENDED LORD igt we have seen (ver. 8), " gifts unto men." What were those gifts ? In brief, they were a Spirit-filled Ministry, with a view to the development of a Spirit-filled Church, united in the Spirit to the Lord Himself And He gave some men as apostles, some as prophets, prophets of the Christian order, some as evangelists, devoted expressly to the extension of the Church rather than to its internal edification,* some as shepherds and teachers — two sides of one work ; men who were set over the local " flocks '' of believers to be their leaders and instructors in the Lord. And these " gifts " were given not to terminate in the ministers themselves, but altogether for the sake of the Church at large. And they were given for the Church at large on purpose that " the Ministry " might not absorb or monopolize ministration, but might pro mote its exercise through the whole Body. For what do we read as the aim and object of the giving ? With Ver. 12. a view to the equipment, the adjustment, the adaptation and furnishing (KaTapTicr^iov), of the saints, of all the true members of the Head, for work of service, for active and fruitful enterprise and labour in their Lord's Name and for His glory ; all summed up in the parallel phrase, for the upbuilding of the Body of our (tov) Christ ; for the winning of new " members " to the ' "This passage would lead us to think of the Evangelists as standing between the [apostles and prophets, pastors and teachers;] sent forth, as missionary preachers of the Gospel, by the first, and as such preparing the way for the labours of the second" (Smith's Diet. Bibl., s.v. Evangelist). This would fairly describe, from one point of view, what appears to have been the function ofthe "evangelist" Timothy (2 Tim. iv. 5). 192 EPHESIAN STUDIES living Organism, and for the deepening and developing of the cohesion of the whole, by all holy influences of word and work. A noble process, with a glorious goal ! All was to be aimed at nothing short of the production of an ideal community of ideal members, each and all alike animated and sanctified by saving reliance on the Head Ver. 13. and sanctifying acquaintance with Him ; till we attain (KUTavT^crufiev), the whole number of us (ol TTcivTe's), to (el's) the unity of, the unity generated and conditioned by, our (t^?) faith in and our (t%) true knowledge (i'n-iyvmcTea';) of the Son of God, (in whom we too are the sons of the Eternal Father ;) yes, (to put the same prospect in more concrete terms,) to a full- grown (Tekeiov) man, a " man " in the sense not of humanity only (avOpwirov) but of matured and strong humanity (avhpa) ; even to the measure, the standard, of the stature of the fulness of Christ. For nothing short of this is to satisfy our hopes ; the Christian is to grow, and the Church is to grow, in spiritual maturity, till the result is no less than "the fulness of Christ," the attained ideal of all that is meant by " CHRIST." And what is that ? It is that which shall be when the glorious Head shall have for the vehicle of His action a mystical Body complete and perfected, faultless and immortally mature.* ' "Cp. the phrases, 'fulness ofthe Gentiles' (Rom. xi. 25), and ' fulness of the time ' (Gal. iv. 4). The phrase here appears to be analogous : the total, at length attained, of what is tjieant by Clirist. And ' Christ ' in this passage (so full of the idea of "THE DICE-PLAY OF MEN" 193 Such is the grand maturity, the developed and full- grown " manhood," of the ideal Body, as it shall be. And it is to be always more and more approached and realized even now. Even now the purpose and the process are to issue in a noble relative strength and Ver. 14. fulness of holy character ; that we may be no longer infants, "childish" in respect of ignorance and the weakness of ignorance, borne on billows and drifted about by every wind of the teaching which would beguile us, in, in the sphere and influence of, the dice-play, the unscrupulous religious cozenage, of men, (these mere men, who have no Christ, no God, behind them ;) in their cunning, with a view to, to reach the ends of, the scheming of their (r???) deceit. For alas, there are those around you who not only do lead you astray, but mean to do it, laying deliberate traps, and arranging well- drawn methods, on purpose to guide you away from the Christ whom they do not love. The purpose of the great Giver's plan is the opposite to this ; it is, as we have seen, that you should not be exposed helpless the oneness, in and with the Lord, of His mystical Body) is, in effect, Christ and His Church ... as in i Cor. xii. 12, ' as the body is one, and hath many limbs, so also is Christ: The Lord the Son becomes in accomplished fact all that He wills, and is willed, to be, only when He is the Head of a perfected mystical Body which lives by His sacred Life and is His incorporate •limbs.' ... So He and they are guardedly and reverently spoken of as One Christ; with full reservation, from other Scriptures, of the truth of the undying personality of each individual ' limb ' of the glorious Head, and of His divine Per sonality." (Note in the Cambridge Bible.) 13 t94 EPHESIAN STUDIES Ver. IS. to these wiles, but, being followers of truth,* ia love, not in bitterness and prejudice, but purely seeking the glory of God and the good of man, should grow, with an ever deepening and more vivifying contact, into Him, in all respects, as to your whole being and your whole life — into Him who is the Head, our (6) Christ. ¦ The more you thus " grow into Him," with an ever closer cohesion of faith, and hope, and love, the nearer will your union with one another be, and the better the Ver. i6. whole condition of your organism ; for out of Him,^ with resources ever drawn from His fulness, all the Body, getting' adjusted together, and getting braced together, through every joint of, every nexus which is a channel for, the supply of life and power from the Head, according to His working, in the measure of each part, effects (iroietTai, a fuller word than woiei) the increase of the Body, its development alike in stature and in strength, to the upbuilding of itself, in love. For love is the inmost condition of the whole work — "the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord," the sunshine in which the true life basks and grows. Here is indeed a paragraph pregnant of truth and life. The comment shall take the form of ' 'AXrjdevovTes : Alford renders the word as above. It certainly means more than " truth-speaking," though of course it includes it. It surely points, in this context, to "the Truth" of the Gospel and the Christian's devotion to it. ' I change the relative (eg ou) here into the demonstrative, to relieve the length of the sentence as paraphrased. ' Observe the present participles here. CHRIST IN PSALM LXVIII 195 detached remarks upon some of its greater contents. i. What strikes us first is the citation from the Psalm, made to illuminate and enforce the thought that grace, in its oneness and its variety, is " the gift of Christ." The Apostle takes us back, for a prophetic verification, to Psalm Ixviii., and shews us the Conqueror ascending, after battle, to the throne. He leads a host of captives with Him, helpless beneath His mighty hand, to vex His people no more. And He "gives gifts to men." Here, says St Paul, in effect, is Christ — Christ who went down first from His throne on the eternal hills to the plain, nay, to the dark valley of the conflict, and who thence returned. Incarnate and Glorified, to His heavenly seat again, and from that seat dispensed the gifts of Pentecost, and particularly now the gift of the Pentecostal, Ministry in the Pentecostal Church. Two problems present themselves. The first is one of translation ; for the Hebrew, as familiar to St Paul as the Authorized Version, or the Prayer Book Version, is to us, runs here : " Thou didst take gifts in man " ; that is, " amongst men!' The path to St Paul's rendering (which is not that of the Septuagint) is smoothed by that of the Chaldee Targum, or Paraphrase, 196 EPHESIAN STUDIES perhaps of the Apostle's date : " Thou hast given to them gifts, even to the sons of men." And the key to these renderings may well lie in the thought that the Conqueror took that He might give; He gave what He first had won. " In man," that is, among His human subjects, He distri buted the spoils of victory. His bounty was not only bounty ; it was conquest first. The other difficulty is a more general one. Does the sixty-eighth Psalm, as we read it, claim (so to speak) a Messianic reference } Are we to think that the Psalmist, David or whoever he was, foresaw the Lord, and sang of Him .-• I should for myself be very slow to answer that question. To say that he did not do so would be to say what we cannot possibly be sure of Some sorts of modern criticism glide much too easily into theories of the composition of Scripture which practically eliminate all supernormal con ditions from the consciousness of its writers. But literature, far outside the Bible, offers abundant evidence for the possibility of totally supernormal conditions in human minds, foreseeing and fore telling ; the records of the " Second Sight " are full of such things. I cannot say but that the author of this wonderful Psalm really was lifted above the horizon of time, and saw Messiah, PSALMIST AND INSPIRER 197 however far off, in His glory, in His victory, and then sung about Him in mysterious verse. But I am not careful to assert this. After all, his " first reference " may have been to some great event of his own time, some triumph of the old Israel, in relation to which he seemed to see, above the rejoicings on earth, above all the festal chorus of the Temple, with its minstrels and singers, and shouting people, the everlasting King Himself, Israel's true Lord, leading His triumph in the skies. But all the while the Poet's true Possessor and Inspirer would have had His view beyond the temporal horizon, and under the veil of the national story would have indicated in His own way the coming Triumph of Redemption. The "consciousness" of Psalmists and Prophets is a deeply interesting study, so far as it is possible. But it is secondary. The primary thing is the "consciousness" of their Inspirer. And our Lord Jesus, in His risen life, as much at least as before He suffered, bore abundant witness to the fact that the Inspirer filled the Old Scriptures, the Psalms included, with "things concerning Himself" (Luke xxiv.). "We feel free to recognize any ' first reference ' fairly provable ; but also bound to believe that the Divine Author worked through the human author. 198 EPHESIAN STUDIES SO as to convey eternal and permanent truth through his imagery and words, and so as to make the whole terminate on Christ, whether the human author was aware of it or not." ^ ii. We take note of some remarkable data presented to us here, for true views of the Christian Ministry. We have, first, its Divine Institution. From the Apostle to the Pastor-Teacher, it is " the gift of Christ." Perfectly true then is that view of the Ministry (only it must be rightly applied) which sees in it, as to its essence, not an emergence from below, a mere product of the needs of the Church, developed in merely "natural" ways, but a gift from above. Let that thought both awe and animate the true Minister, and give the private Christian a due sense of honouring love towards the Pastorate. On the other hand we observe that the em phasis of the passage lies upon the truth that the ideal Ministry is a Ministry of spiritual power. We have here, of course, indications of grade and order ; and the thought of the distribution and difference of functions is the main thought of the context. But the " gifts " are all alike ' Note in the Cambridge Bible, THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 199 in this, that they are given by the just-ascended Lord ; they are Pentecostal gifts. This calls attention supremely to the witnessing work of the Christian Ministry. That Ministry has many sides to its duties and commission ; the " shep herd " must needs be in some sense the guardian, and the "teacher" the guide. But the Pente costal " gift " was above all things a gift for witness; "Ye shall receive power, by the coming of the Holy Ghost upon you, and ye shall be witnesses of Me " (Acts i. 8). Again and again in the Acts the Apostles themselves appear as, above all things, witnesses. Such, to the end, is the Christian minister, in his true idea. His characteristic function is profoundly different from that of the Aaronic priest. Distinctively, (let me deliberately say it, with the New Testament open,) it is not " sacerdotal " at all. It Is pro phetic ; it is the function of the Christ-given, Spirit-filled, witness to the Lord and His Word, before the Church and before the world. We observe again, as another and most momentous side of the matter, that a Ministry so conditioned cannot possibly absorb into itself the spiritual functions of the Church. Rather, it will quicken and develope in the Church the sense and exercise of spiritual functions. The 200 EPHESIAN STUDIES one purpose of the Ministry mentioned here by the Apostle, its one great raison d'Hre in his view here, is this. Note the translation of ver. 12:" With a view to (tt/jo's) the equipment of the saints for (ets) work of service." Who are "the saints"? Briefly, all believers. A saint, in the Epistles, is just the Christian as he should be ; the disciple assumed to be true to Christ and (Rom. viii. 9) possessed of His Holy Spirit. He may or may not bear public office in the Church. But is he a member, a limb, of it ? Then he exists for " work of service " ; he is to " yield himself unto God, and his members as instruments of righteousness unto Him." Whatever the details of practice, this is the principle. And the function of the true pastor and teacher is to help him, to equip him, for such a life ; to do all he can to quicken the " saint's " conscience in the work of the Lord, and to animate his zeal, and to welcome his activity, and in all wise and kindly ways to seek to make the most of it by guiding and combining it. In the modern Church countless illustrations of this truth happily exist. More and more, in many quarters, it is being recollected that "the laity," 6 Xao's, the holy People, are the Church, for which THE MINISTRY OF THE LAITY 201 the Ministry exists, and that the Christian layman, and woman, has an all-important place in "work of service " ; not only in the " serving of tables," but in witnessing and teaching. But there is still grave need for a larger recognition of that fact, alike by the pastorate and the laity. There certainly was once a time when pious men of strict Church opinions dreaded the least approach to such work of service. A veteran Christian, a layman of high position and culture, told me lately that fifty years ago he asked an Oxford friend what he thought of his (the narrator's) work among his poor neighbours as a voluntary Scripture-reader. Might he read the Bible to an old cottager ? Yes, certainly. Might he, if she said she did not understand, explain it to her? No, certainly not; that would be usurping the work of the priesthood. Did Priscilla then (Acts xviii. 26) usurp it? Assuredly not, in St Luke's opinion ; she was doing "work of service" as a member of the Church of God. Meanwhile, let this passage remind us that the ideal of the matter is that "the saints" should indeed do "work of service," and con tribute their labour and witness to "the upbuilding of the body of Christ " ; but that they should not EPHESIAN STUDIES therefore slight order, cohesion, and the loving guidance of the spiritual Ministry. I am very far from saying that there is no place in the Lord's work for the "free lance" worker; lives upon which His blessing manifestly abides are evidence enough to the contrary. But I do say that this is the anomaly, not the rule ; Scripture and reason alike assure us of this. " Prophet, evangelist, pastor- teacher," are, in the rule of the Master's will, necessary to " the saints " for their " work of service " ; as on the other hand " the saints " are utterly indispensable to the full work of the Christian minister. How easy, in view of these remarks, to suggest problems of difficulty, and cases of impossibility, on either side ! Yes, but the principles abide, and their silent influence, under the Lord and the Spirit, will be of infinite value in the Church Visible, with all its confusions and distresses. Solvetur ambulando cum Deo. iii. The passage gives us some invaluable messages upon Christian maturity. The Apostle glides from the topic of work — the work of the spiritual Ministry and the work of the believing Church — to that of character, the character of the Community. To be sure, the character of the individual is not forgotten ; it is impossible CHRISTIAN MATURITY 203 to read verses 13-15 and not to feel that what is true of the Body must be true also of the member ; for no community can be really mature and stable in spirit and tone unless it consists, prevalently at least, of mature and stable in dividuals. But the main thought is of the Body. And St Paul, we see, views the Christian Body as one which is to be always growing towards an ideal whose great features are an adult and well-grounded fidelity to the revealed Gospel, such as to resist and throw off the assaults of subtle error, while yet maintaining a spirit of love, full of the love of God. There is a point of view from which the Christian character cannot be too child-like — at the Master's feet. But there are points from which alike the man and the Church must avoid to the utmost the childish in thought and faith. For the Lord's work and witness, there is an urgent need of the mature, the intelligent, the man-like, if the cause of Christ is to be adequately maintained and advanced in " this naughty world." St Paul evidently strove to cultivate this spirit (the opposite of conceit and self-importance) in his converts. " I speak as to thoughtful persons ; judge you what I say " (i Cor. X. 15); such are his words to the 204 EPHESIAN STUDIES Corinthian community, over a matter of profound doctrinal and practical moment. Alike towards the " pastor-teacher " within, and towards the advocate of " another Gospel " from without, he would have their attitude to be that ol men ; men conscious of their maturity, aware of their reasons and their convictions, while at the same time sobered and humbled by an adult sense of their responsibility and their imperfections. I do not forget that the bright ideal of ver. 13 cannot be fully realized till the pilgrim Church steps into the world of glory. There only, most assuredly, will be actually attained " the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ " ; bright, magnificent, blessed hope ! Yet the context here bears mainly not upon eternity but upon time. It deals mainly with a period when errors and dangers are still around, and when the Body is still in process of "upbuilding." Its reference, then, is to an " adultness " rather relative than absolute. It animates us with the thought of a manhood in Christ attainable now, while yet from another aspect it is only a step to the full and immortal manhood of heaven. iv. Lastly, here as everywhere, we find all that is said of Ministry, and of Saints, and of Body, and of corporate Life, ruled and glorified THE LIMB AND THE HEAD 205 by what is said of Jesus Christ. Verses 15, 16, take us altogether to Him. The remarkable imagery of ver. 16 does this in a way peculiar to itself. For it puts before us the Body, in its multiplicity of articulation ; yet it suggests the thought that each limb lives by a contact with THE Head, immediate and personal. The material figure bursts, as it were, and gives way, and leaves to us the view of an organism such that the' limb does not live, ultimately, by its contact with other limbs, however full of life, but by having its own " joint of supply," its own individual point of contact with the Head. So it grows, and thrives, and works. And He is also the secret of growth and energy for all its fellow-limbs. Therefore, because of Him, as the inmost Secret, there is cohesion, continuity, harmony, in the whole organism. After all, the supreme requisite for life and labour is personal and immediate union with the Lord. Wonderful picture — a Church, a Body, indeed! It is alive all over. Everywhere there is " work of service," promoted in every limb by those limbs whose function is in any special sense that of leadership. Everywhere there is a 2o6 EPHESIAN STUDIES steady growth of adult intelligence and purpose. Everywhere there is the pulse of love, as the whole Organism feels the vital warmth of the eternal Love. And the secret of the whole is the blessed Head, "into" whom the limbs " grow " with ever-deepening contact, and from whom they draw all His fulness for all their need, "To know, to do, the Head's commands. For this the Body lives and grows ; All speed of feet and skill of hands Is for Him spent, and from Him flows." HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING ; THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW 207 " A Christian praises God for His justice, and yet fears Him for His mercy. He is so ashamed as that he dares not open his mouth before God, and yet he comes with boldness to God, and asks Him anything he needs. He is so humble as to acknowledge himself to deserve nothing but evil, and yet believes that God means him all good. He is the most lowly-minded, yet the greatest aspirer; most contented, yet ever craving." Bacon : Characters of a Christian in Paradoxes. 208 CHAPTER XI HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW Ephesians iv. 17-24 ST PAUL pursues the theme of practical Holiness. He draws nearer and nearer, as he pursues it, to the duties of the common day, to the application of eternal principle, eternal blessing, in the intercourse of the city, the street, the home. He has led us, as we saw in the last chapter but one, from the mysteries and bliss of our heavenly life with Christ and His living presence in us, to the resultant precepts of humility, of mutual forbearance, of watchful avoidance of the separatism which comes of selfishness. In view of the oneness of believers in their glorious Head, he has gone on, as we saw in our last chapter, to speak of a living unity whose growth and exercise are aided by the diversity of the members in their gifts and 209 14 2IO EPHESIAN STUDIES functions in the Body. Alike their spiritual fulness in Christ, and their limits and imperfec tions of experience, and their differences of practical gift and mission, are to draw them nearer to Him, and nearer to one another. "Growing into Him," they will indeed each individually grow, with a rich maturity of the soul, and they will mutually contribute each to the whole Body's growth, in its cohesion and its capacity. He now draws closer to the thought of " holiness in common things." He cannot speak only of the larger aspects of life and relation ; he must deal in minute but firm touches with the individual's call to ptirity, and truthfulness, and fidelity, and the spirit of forgiveness. It will not do only to soar into true conceptions of the mystical Body, and to remain aloft ; we must come down to be " sweet at home." The close practicality of the appeal, meanwhile, will have all along the support of the recollection of eternal truths ; it will root itself in the doctrine of the Old Man and the New. Ver. 17. This then I say and protest (/laprvpofiai), calling you in as it were as witnesses, by the response of con science, to the eternal facts of grace and duty, in the Lord, (for I am in Him, and you are in Him, living VANITY OF VANITIES 211 limbs of the One Head, and therefore related Christ- wise to each other in everything,) that no longer should you walk, live, act, converse, as once you did (firjKeTi), in the way in which actually (xai) the Nations ^ are walking all around you. And what is the character of that "walk"? It is in the vanity of their mind, under an illusion (fiuTaioTT]'}) ' beclouding their reason ; for the principles of it can only seem good to man's mind when the eternal facts are hidden from it, and sin, the great failure of all failures, seems to bring freedom and gain. They "walk'' as those who have Ver. 18. been and are darkened in their (tj}) under standing,' aye, as alienated from the life of God, dis located from man's ideal union and communion with the blessed Creator who is his true " Life Eternal " ; on account of the ignorance which exists in them, igno rance of their great need and of His fair surpassing glory of love and holiness ; in other words, on account of the hardening * of their heart, the loss of the sensibility ¦ Probably omit the word Xoin-a before cdvt]. ' No idea of " seli-conceit" resides in such "vanity." It is the emptiness, the delusion, the " vain shew " of substance with out reality. They mistake lie for truth, sin for happiness. ' " [Aiavom] may fairly be said to be the reason [vovs] in action. Here accordingly the phrase defines, so to speak, the phrase just previous ; the general illusion of the reason comes out in obfus cated acts of thought" (Cambridge Bible). — "Have been and are " is an attempt to render io-K-orcojiivoi, ovtcs. (It seems better, in view of rhythm, to connect &vt(s with icrKOTwfiivoi than with aTTijXXorpt&i/icf o(. ) * napaiTis : the word means failure of sensation in general ; "blindness " is one phase of such failure, but only one. 212 EPHESIAN STUDIES of their inner being (KapSla) towards the Highest Good, under the dreadful anasthetic, sin. Do we ask for visible evidence of the existence of such a condition ? Look at the characteristics of the developed grace-less life ; they who live it are such as,^ Ver. 19. having got beyond the pain (d7r??\7??/<;oTe?) of doing iniquity, gave over^ themselves, yes, themselves by their own act,' to wantonness, the scorn of all moral restraint; ("Who is Lord over us?"); resulting in an active dealing in all impurity, in a spirit of greed; yes, the pursuit of evil becomes in time a business, a trade (e/jyacr/a), followed up with all the keen and unscrupulous pertinacity of the selfish hunter after gold. It is a tremendous picture. Do we hesitate to accept it as it stands ? It is inevitable that we should feel some difficulty in so accepting it, unless we read altogether without thought. For who is not aware that, even among the most abandoned, there are differences in actual sinful ness? And who is not aware that in heathendom, ¦ OXtivis : " ocrns is more than ffui and less than quippe qui." It does just more than me.rA-y denote; it borders upon descrip tion.— T\lq translation here is a little paraphrastic, to bring out the meaning better. 2 Observe the aorist. An ideal crisis is in view; a definite choice; "evil, be thou my good." In too many an experience such crises are actual, not only ideal. 3 'EauTow is emphatic by position. WHAT DOES THE DESCRIPTION MEAN? 213 ancient and modern alike, there have been and are manifestations of the power of conscience, and exercises of the human will on the side of virtue, which we cannot possibly put down as so much falsehood and illusion ? Are we indeed to think, in view of all this, that " the Nations," in their countless numbers, have all "got beyond the pain " of sin, and have " given themselves over to wantonness " ? In reply, we may first remark that assuredly the Apostle is here speaking broadly and gene rally, as regards a developed and manifested wickedness in the world. His own words and actions on occasion assure us that he did not as a fact look upon every pagan person as an advanced and abandoned transgressor. " I am not mad, most noble Festus " ; these are words which indicate, as they come from an absolutely truthful man, a certain moral regard for the person addressed. So with Sergius Paulus in Cyprus, so with the Athenians on Areopagus, so with the Lystrians in their turn ; the tone is that of one who speaks with candour and sympathy, as well as with fidelity and decision, in his appeal to man for God. It seems reason able to say that here, to the Ephesians, he is speaking of a broad phenomenon of open sin, 214 EPHESIAN STUDIES yet with a full recollection, behind his words, of reserves and exceptions. But then, other things are to be remem bered. First, as regards the actual condition of heathenism, of heathen society in its mass and its rule. Is it easy to overrate its horrible corruption ? Those of my readers who are familiar with classical literature will surely bear me out when I answer. No. I appeal for justi fication not only to deliberate pictures of wickedness, drawn by Greek or Roman pens, but to passing allusions to current morals in all kinds of places in the old authors. Is it not rare to find an amatory poem of theirs which, however beautiful in form, is also pure ? Are not the biographies of even comparatively worthy person ages, for instance, the Galba of Suetonius, defaced with unblushing allusions to sins now unnamable ? Is the taint of even that deep pollution absent from the Platonic page itself? But if such things can be said of circles where things were at the best, what must have been the corruption of the mass ? One thing is certain, that the early literary " Defenders of the Faith," the " Apologists," do not hesitate to appeal to their heathen readers to confess the conspicuous moral difference ARISTIDES AND HIS WITNESS 215 between the Christians and " the Nations." Notably is this the case with Aristides, in the second century ; and his witness is the more impressive because he appears to stand on a sort of border-line, and not yet to have cast in his lot personally with the Lord and His people. He recites the sins of "the Greeks" in terms which compel a translator for general readers to leave frequent gaps in the translation ; summing up with the sentence (ch. xxvi.) : " I have no doubt that the world stands by reason of the intercession of the Christians. But the rest of the peoples are deceived and deceivers ; and they grope as if in the dark, and are unwilling to know the truth, and like drunken men they stagger, and thrust one another, and fall down. The Greeks practise foul things, and then turn the ridicule of their foulness upon the Christians." ^ And is the non-Christian world of our own time better than that old world ? I fear it is only an optimistic dream which finds in it anything greatly to modify the estimate of an Aristides. Everywhere, still, as St James tells us (iii. 9), men are " made after the similitude of God," * I quote, somewhat freely, from the excellent translation of Aristides by Mrs Rendel Harris. 4i6 EPHESIAN STUDIES made in the mystery of a moral personality ; conscience and will are present everywhere. But everywhere man is fallen. And the developments of the fallen state, left really to themselves, are awful still. As I write, I hear of a recent laborious and accurate examination, by an American student, of the actual moral condition of non-Christian peoples, which tends to bring this out in the light of provable facts ; certainly with sufficient fulness to silence in candid hearts the thought that pagan humanity can do without the Gospel. But before we leave this passage let us re member that it points, with its deepest meaning, not only at the actual sinfulness of the dark world but at its potential evil. It speaks, in universal terms, of gross iniquities. Those iniquities are, in the divine mercy, largely restrained from their natural developments, even in the non-Christian regions, by the presence of conscience. But they are all latent, all implicit, in the awful principle of sin in (not some selected human hearts, ex ceptionally bad, but) the human heart, fallen from dependence upon God. Does my reader, in some real measure, know his own heart} Has he, in serious earnest, I do not mean in a morbid restlessness of conscience, but with a OUR FALL IMPLIES A HOPE 217 conscience soberly and fully awake, learnt to weigh his motives, and to watch the play of his thoughts ? Has God drawn near to him in conviction " of sin, and righteousness, and judgment " ? Then I need not write at any further length to give moral proof of the point. Before we leave this stern paragraph, let us however remember that even through its dark ness shine the rays of salvation. For what does it imply concerning this terribly fallen and sinning world ? That it is a world, a race, a mankind, which by the very fact of its fall bears witness to its having been made by a Blessed Creator for infinitely better things. True, it is lost, it is condemned, it is dead in trespasses and sins. It is "alienated from the life of God" ; "ignorance is in it"; "blindness of heart." But those very terms imply that in its origin as a race, in the idea of its being, it was altogether otherwise. " Man," in his idea, was once in communion with " the life of God," or he could not be said to be "alienated" from it ; who can be alienated from a position he has never occupied?^ If so, we ' I would be careful not to be misunderstood, as if I could mean that the individual, I for instance or my reader, began his personal life in harmony with God, and therefore holy and good. 2i8 EPHESIAN STUDIES have here not only an account of ourselves as men which should drive us in awe and penitence to the feet of God, crying, " Unclean, unclean " ; we have a hope put already into our hands. Were we but "stones," He could " raise up of us children to Abraham." But we are not stones. We are ruined men ; and Man was made to be in contact with "the life of God." Will it not be the Maker's joy to restore us ? Shall it not be to Him no "strange work," but divinely congenial, to act for us in our awful need, in His Son, and according to His promise? From the very depth of our discovered iniquity, then, de profundis, let us look up to Him. We deserve only His death -sentence. But He created our nature on purpose for life and holiness in contact with Himself. And in the Second Man He has provided for what is indeed, from one side, a " New Creation," altogether new, but from and then personally fell from holiness to sin. Scripture and consciousness alike witness against the Pelagian theory. But the Race, the Nature, was " created upright,'' and fell by its own act. And that most mysterious fact is as it were reflected in each individual by the equally mysterious (but not less certain) fact that we freely speak of ourselves as "fallen" beings. We are where our nature was not made to be — in personal sin. And this is at once an alarm and shame, and the con dition to a blessed hope, for every individual who looks up to the Restorer. THE LIGHT AND ITS CHILDREN 219 another, the Restoration of ruins which still bear, in their polluted fragments, the impress of His hand. But let us take up the Apostle's words again. He has given us a view of the awful darkness ; he passes now to the light, and to the children of the light. Ver. 20. But you did not so, in such sympathy with the deadly tendencies of sin, learn our (tov) Christ, when, in your conversion, you found in Him the true Subject- matter of His own Gospel, the " hidden wisdom " of Ver. 21. pardon, holiness, and heaven ; if indeed, taking it for granted that,^ it was He whom you heard,^ as the Message spoken to your souls, and if it was in Him that you were taught, so that your teachers' words were all summed up " in " Him, and you, as hearers, found yourselves learning " in " union with Him as Saviour and Head ; even as in om: (t^) Jesus, and in Him only, truth is. For indeed there, and only there, is truth to be found ; the lines of solid fact and spiritual reality meet nowhere but in Him, in this divine Christ who is also "the Man Christ Jesus," ' This is the practical meaning of eiyc (as in iii. 2). It does not imply any doubt, necessarily, but calls the reader to verify the statement. ' SItov is emphatic by position. And the accusative after aKoviiv suggests "hearing Him" rather as Message than as Teacher. 220 EPHESIAN STUDIES as historical as He is eternal. And what line in particular did the "hearing," and the "teaching," and the " truth," take, for the purpose before us now, this purpose of practical holiness ? It was all with reference Ver. 22. to your putting off, your laying aside, (as regards your former course of life, in " regard " of the need of a revolution and conclusion for that dark "course,") the Old Man, the old, the former, the now past, state of things for your humanity, in which, as unrenewed sons of Adam, you were under the death- sentence of the broken law and under the bondage of sin within ; that " Man," that personified state of you men, which is decaying, corrupting, like a moral corpse, on its way to final ruin, according to, in the fashion inevitably due to, the desires of its (tij?) deceit — the lusts which respond to the wiles of temptation with which it plays and parleys. And the " teaching " and the " truth " were not negative only, speaking only of a "putting-off" ; they were positive, with the glorious watchwords of renewal and investiture : with Ver. 23. reference, on the other side (Se), to your being renewed, in a holy process ^ of new development, the bright antithesis to the process of "decay" now arrested and reversed a "renewal" in respect of the spirit of your mind— your spiritual life and faculty coming out in mental action ; your human spirit awakened and enabled to grasp saving truth, and so to find the secret of an abiding blessing. And along ' ' h.vaviovcr6ai : a present infinitive. A PREGNANT PASSAGE 221 with this, the " teaching " had reference to the fact that you did put on ^ the New Man, the new, the grace-given, state of things for your humanity, in which, as re generated members of Christ, you have exchanged doom for peace and moral bondage for spiritual freedom ; that " Man," that personified state of you " men in Christ," which, true to God (KaTo, Qeov), "answering His great idea," was created, constituted, when it was provided in Christ Jesus, the Second Man, in righteousness, in loyal correspondence to the Will of God, and sanctity, piety,^ of the truth, the truth of the Gospel; for to that truth "sanctity" belongs, as a fruit which the truth ever tends to produce, and as the fair adornment of its holy stem. The passage thus before us is important in more than one respect. It is instructive in the first place as an example of what the Epistle has already so often illustrated to us, the con nexion of doctrine with life. St Paul is intent here upon the practical holiness of the Ephesians. He is unalterably desirous that in every detail of daily life they shall " walk uprightly, and ' I paraphrase freely here, to bring out the force of the aorist infinitive, ivhicrairBai, and the reference (which I believe to be intended) to not s. duty hut s. fact. The "putting-on," like the "putting-off," is viewed, I believe, as fait accompli. * 'Oo-ioTij? : see Trench, N. T. Synonyms, series ii., § xxxviii. It is the virtue which " reverengeg everlasting sanctities and owns their obligation," 222 EPHESIAN STUDIES work righteousness, and speak the truth from the heart" (Ps. xv. 2). How does he approach this matter, with all its infinite importance for the realities of human intercourse ? By taking his disciples inward and upward to the secret things of the grace of God. He conducts their thought, that he may conduct their faith, straight to the personal Christ, to the wonderful Lord Jesus, as the meeting-point of all the lines of truth. And then he reminds them (it is a reminder, not a new announcement ; he must be referring to lessons given long before in " the school of Tyrannus ") of facts and principles which sound at first as visionary and far away as possible, but which are potent for immediate use. He speaks to them about an Old Man and a New Man, and about "putting off" the one and " putting on " the other, as of facts in a mysterious biography of the human spirit. How dreamy, how exquisitely unpractical, says the wisdom of the world ! But the Apostle is wiser than that wisdom. He is speaking prac tically, for he is speaking of facts which are as solid and operative for the spirit as gravitation and magnetism are for the body. He knows that behind the term " the Old Man " lie facts, deep as man himself, of sin, righteousness, POWER OF TRUTH UPON PRACTICE 223 judgment, guilt, bondage — a chain which no force of the human will can break, if only because it can have no adequate fulcrum apart from Christ. And he knows that behind the term "New Man " lie all the solid treasures of redemption ; Christ for us, Christ in us ; a contact with eternal love, and with divine power for victory and freedom in the soul, which can work with glorious practicality in the hour of present-day temptation. So he takes the Asian believer in to the hidden place, and bids him take out of it, clasped firmly in his hands, the facts of his supernatural salvation, in order to a supernatural result — a life of heavenly purity and love lived amidst perfectly earthly circumstances. Do we not know in experience, in our measure, what this means ? True it is that nothing is more lifeless than a theory of life without practice. But nothing is more living than a life really lived with a strong, sure, theory behind it. The man knows the law of action, as well as the line of it, and loses no time in fumbling for his resource. He has learned the nature of his weapon, and the use of it ; so far from his being encumbered by his knowledge, in the hour of conflict, it is just his knowledge which makes him move and strike with decision. Did we 2 24 EPHESIAN STUDIES never experience, in our own inner history, a time when, after long uncertainties and confusions, we came (perhaps on a sudden) to find that our way to inward conquest was a way quite definite and quite supernatural, that is to say, Christ used by faith ? And was not that discovery instantly applicable to "the next thing" in the path of common duty ? Was it not our delight to spend it upon the most concrete difficulties — to find it act upon the next solicitation to ini- patience, to envy, to unfaithfulness, to cowardice, to indolence, to impure thought? Mystery may stand in the closest possible relation to all that is practical. Who can tell us all about the physical mystery of electricity ? But for all that, there is no unreality about the electric telegraph, and the electric lamp, and the electric carriage. These are things practical enough to be matters of common use, commercial investment, and state legislation. In conclusion, we note a point or two in the phraseology of the passage. i. "The Old Man"; "the New Man." It seems important to observe that these terms are not synonyms for "the flesh" and "the Spirit" respectively. They are such that the Apostle here contemplates our definitely and altogether "PUTTING OFF" AND "PUTTING ON" 223 quitting the Old Man to enter the New. On the other hand he contemplates (e.g. Gal. v. 16, 17) the abiding presence and counteraction in our being of "the flesh" and "the Spirit," though he expressly reminds us that the divine purpose is that the Spirit shall be the continuous Conqueror of the flesh. "The Old Man," "the New Man," are not elements or presences in us ; they are, highly personified, relations and connexions attaching to us. As such the one may be definitely left, the other definitely entered. ii. " Put off," "put on." If I have understood and expounded aright, the immediate thought of the Apostle, in the aTTodecrdai and evZva-aa-dai, deals with the "accomplished facts" of divine Redemp tion ; the provision for us in the Lord Jesus Christ of a complete transference and emancipation, so that the believer, once "in the Lord," has stepped out of the old position and has entered upon the new, however imperfect his consciousness of it may be, and however much he may have to learn of the further possibilities of his present position. This is an aspect of truth which needs often and earnestly to be remembered and used. A grasp of the facts of the Covenant of God, a handling of our present possessions in IS 426 EPHESIAN STUDIES Christ, is one of the mightiest secrets of the disciple's life of faith. Only, that aspect will continually translate itself into another ; the recollection of covenant possession will pass on into the action of conscious acquisition. The man who knows that he possesses Christ will evermore resolve, in experience, to find Him. The man who knows that, by the grace of God, he has put the New Man on, will therefore rise up, in working experience, in view of each hour's need, to " put on the Lord Jesus Christ." HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING: TOTAL ABSTINENCE FROM SINNING IN THE FORGIVEN LIFE 227 " Je n'ai plus de force que pour m'occuper de I'amour de Dieu. Dieu nous a aim^ : c'est toute la doctrine de I'Evangile. Aimons Dieu : e'en est toute la morale.'' Monod, Adieux. "Order my footsteps in Thy Word, And make my heart sincere; Let sin have no dominion. Lord, But keep my conscience clear." Watts. 228 CHAPTER XII HOLY RESULTS OF HEAVENLY BLESSING : TOTAL ABSTINENCE FROM SINNING IN THE FORGIVEN LIFE Ephesians iv. 25— v. 2 IN the last chapter we watched the Apostle's actual approach to the treatment of the practical holiness of the disciples, and his first words about some great details. In particular, he has put his readers face to face with the awful facts of the corruption of man's heart apart from God, and so of the unspeakable corruption of current human life. And he has reminded them that they " have not so learned our Christ." Yet still we have had to wait for the full stream of explicit precepts. The Epistle to the Ephesians has been powerfully characterized, I think by the late Dr C. J. Vaughan, as a writing so full of eternity that, even when it stoops to the earth, its heavenly wings, by their slightest 229 230 EPHESIAN STUDIES waft, bear it aloft again to the regions of tran scendent truth. So here the Apostle, laying down for his converts the rule of purity, rises for a moment to the mystery of the Old Man and the New, and so to the wonder of our vital union with " the Second Man" as the ultimate account of our power to be really holy at all. Here, as everywhere, such digressions upward are pregnant with the suggestion of the living bond between the really spiritual and the really practical. Nothing indeed is meant to be more matter-of-fact, or, if I may use the phrase, more workmanlike, than the Christian's attention to right-doing in his common life this hour. Nothing is more remote from his Master's mind, or from the mind of his Master's Apostle, than that he should think it really a "stoop to the earth" to be careful to be pure and true in the next little thing, as if it was something greater and higher to muse upon eternal principles. Yet it is as certain as both revelation and experience can make it that a sure grasp upon eternal principles is of infinite importance for the really right doing of the duties of time. Of this we have been just reminded, then, and we shall have it set before us again and again in the remaining pages of the Epistle. But now comes THE LAW OF TRUTHFULNESS 231 in at length the fuller and more particular treat ment of duty. The long wings of the angel of truth are folded, though ever ready to expand again, and his white feet walk upon the familiar surface of our common life. Ver. 25. Wherefore, because you have " learned Christ," and have " put on the New Man," coming out of the polluted darkness into the clear, clean light, laying aside decisively (airodefievoi, aorist) the falsehood, to yp-€vSo<;, the whole class of thought and speech which falls under the head of untruth, speak truth each with his neigh bour, particularly now his Christian neighbour, his fellow-believer; because we are one another's limbs, one spiritual organism in our Head, and thus vitally related to each other, with an absolute obligation to serve each other's good. To all men, indeed, you will act as under the law of truth, for you belong to Him who is the Truth itself ; your lie, to the veriest pagan, would belie Him. But this wider circle of duty will be all the better fulfilled for a special fidelity to the inner circle, the family of faith. So glorify God by a truthful tongue. Glorify Him also by a kindly temper. Be angry Ver. z6. and do not sin^-; if wrath must sometimes ' "The words are verbatim the LXX. version of Ps. iv. 4. The literal Hebrew there is, ' tremble, and sin not: And the verb rendered ' tremble ' may denote the tremor of grief, awe, or anger indifferently. The question of interpretation thus becomes one of context, and it has been suggested (by Dr Kay) that the reference is to the temptation to David's followers, during Absalom's rebellion, to give way to unholy wrath against the 232 EPHESIAN STUDIES be, (and it sometimes must be, while wrong is in the world,) see to it that it is unsinful wrath, wrath in the line of God's will, pure displeasure at evil, not partisan ship for self And where there has been failure of patience, be prompt to return to love ; let not the sun set upon your exasperation ^ ; lay feeling of all grievance at the Lord's feet absolutely, before you part for the night ; dare not to refuse your " neighbour " a farewell Ver. 27. in the peace of Christ ; nor give place to the devil, who, "wherever he finds a heart shut, finds a door open," and who knows too well how to use it, till he fills the inner chamber with his dreadful presence, and the man "who hateth his brother knoweth not whither he goeth" (i John ii. 11)— from sin to sin. As with truth of word and gentleness of temper, so Ver. 28. with honesty and honour. The stealer, the man once used to pilfer or to plunder as if it were but a foible — " everybody does it ! " — let him no longer rebels. Bishop Perowne, though saying that the LXX. Greek is ' certainly a possible rendering,' refers the words to the tremor of awe before God. And he remarks that St Paul gives here the Greek version ' not in the way of direct citation,' [but as using its words as the vehicle of his thought]. This last remark is important. The N.T. does not necessarily endorse a certain version ofthe O.T. by adopting its wording for a special purpose without the decisive formula, ' it is written,' or the like. Still the suggestion of Dr Kay is noteworthy in itself, and it would give a peculiar point and force to the words here." (Note in the Cambridge Bible:) ' " Wetstein quotes a parallel from Plutarch . . . who says of the Pythagoreans that it was their rule, if betrayed into angry reviling, to shake hands before the sun set." (Note in the Cambridge Bible:) A POSITIVE REPENTANCE 233 steal ; let him put a quiet, decisive, close to the whole habit in every form. Nor only so ; let him aim at a positive and not merely a negative repentance ; let him resolve upon a life-long course of reparation, in the way of active distribution of his own to others ^ ; rather than the slightest further trifling with the old sin, let him be a toiler, labouring hard (KoiriaTco) as for a main object, working with his own hands (TaU IB la i's %e/)