St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians Part 3

3. And his good wishes for them he sums up in the terms 'Grace and peace in G.o.d our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' Grace is that free and unmerited favour or good-will of G.o.d towards man which takes shape in a continuous outflow of the very riches of G.o.d's {52} inmost being and spirit into the life of man through Christ; and peace of heart, G.o.dward and manward, 'central peace subsisting at the heart of endless agitation' is that by the possession and bestowal of which Christianity best gives a.s.surance of its divine origin.

We notice that these divine gifts are ascribed to 'G.o.d our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' St. Paul does not generally call Christ by the t.i.tle G.o.d, partly, no doubt, from long engrained habit of language, but partly also because nothing was more important than that no language should be used in the first propagation of Christianity which could give excuse for confusing the Christian belief in the threefold Name with the worship of many G.o.ds. But, from the first, Christ, in St.

Paul's language, is exalted as Lord into a simply divine supremacy, and a.s.sociated most intimately with all the most exclusively divine operations in the world without, and in the heart of man within.

Moreover, St. Paul refuses absolutely to tolerate any a.s.sociation of other, however exalted, beings with Christ in lordship or mediatorship, all created beings whatever being simply the work of His hands[8].

There remains, therefore, no room to {53} question that St. Paul believed Christ to be strictly divine: to be Himself no creature, no highest archangel, but one who, with the Holy Spirit alone, is truly proper and essential to the divine being; and it affords us, therefore, no manner of surprise that from time to time St. Paul actually calls Christ G.o.d, as in the Epistle to the Romans 'who is over all, G.o.d blessed for ever[9],' and probably in the Epistle to t.i.tus 'our great G.o.d and saviour Jesus Christ[10].'

[1] 2 Cor. viii. 23.

[2] 1 Cor. ix. 1.

[3] 1 Cor. xv. 8.

[4] 2 Cor. xii. 11.

[5] Gal. i. 1.

[6] Tertullian, _de An._ 39, rightly interprets 1 Cor. vii. 14, 'now are they [the children of whose parents one was a Christian] holy,' as meaning, now are they already consecrated and marked out for baptismal sanctification by the prerogative of their birth.

[7] Acts ix. 13, 33.

[8] Cf. 1 Cor. viii. 6; Col. i. 16.

[9] Rom. ix. 5.

[10] t.i.t. ii. 13.

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DIVISION I. CHAPTERS I. 3-IV. 17.

-- I. CHAPTER i. 3-14.

_St. Paul's leading thoughts._

[Sidenote: _St. Paul's leading thoughts_]

Before we read the opening paragraph of St. Paul's letter we had better review the great thoughts which are prominent in his mind as he writes.

My ambition is to make my readers feel that ideas which, because they have become Christian commonplaces or because they have been blackened by controversy, have by this time a ring of unreality about them, or of theological remoteness, or of controversial bitterness, are in fact, if we will 'consider them anew,' ideas the most important, the most practical, and the most closely adapted to the moral needs of the plain man.

i.

St. Paul writes to the Christians as 'in Christ,' 'in the beloved,'

'blessed with all spiritual benediction in the heavenly places in Christ,' 'adopted {55} as sons through Jesus Christ.' We are all of us perfectly familiar with the idea of Christ as, so to speak, a personal and individual redeemer, as the holy and righteous one, the beloved and accepted Son, who is risen from the dead and exalted to supreme sovereignty in heaven. But popular theology has not been quite so familiar with the idea that Christ was and is all this in our manhood, not simply because He was G.o.d as well as man (true as this is); but because as man He was anointed with the Holy Spirit of G.o.d: that it was in the power of that Spirit that He lived His life of holiness and wrought His miracles of power: that it was in the power of that Spirit that He taught and suffered and died and was glorified. Nor has popular Christianity been familiar with the resulting truth: that by that divine Spirit which possessed Him as man, the life of Christ is extended beyond Himself to take in those who believe in Him, and make them members of 'the church which is his body.' Yet, in fact, this extension is implied even in the name Christ. The king Messiah, the Christ of the Old Testament, is but the central figure of a whole kingdom a.s.sociated with Him, and all the characteristic phrases for Christ in the New Testament {56} express the same idea. He is the 'first-born among many brethren[1]'; He is the 'first fruits[2]' of a great harvest; He is the 'head of the body[3]'; He is the 'bridegroom'

inseparable from 'the bride[4]'; He is the second Adam, that is, head of a new humanity[5]. Thus if the heavens closed around the ascending Christ, and hid Him from view, they opened again around the descending Spirit, descending into the heart of the Christian society to perpetuate Christ's life and presence there. This historical ascent and descent only embody in unmistakable facts the truth that the life-giving Spirit, who made the manhood of Christ so satisfying to our moral aspirations, is also and with the same reality, though not with the same perfection or freedom, living and working in that great society which He founded to represent Him on earth. Because this society is possessed by the Spirit, therefore it lives in the same life as Christ, it and all its individual members are 'in Christ.' In one place, indeed, St. Paul includes the Church, the body, with its head under the one name 'the Christ[6].'

[Sidenote: _Life in Christ_]

It is because the Church thus shares Christ's {57} life that it is already spoken of as sharing His exaltation. We 'sit together in the heavenly places with Christ' for no other reason than because, though we are on earth, our life is bound up invisibly but in living reality with the life of the glorified Christ, and we have in Him free access into the courts of heaven. For this reason again, as the fulness of the divine attributes dwells in the glorified Christ--all the fulness of the G.o.dhead bodily, so the same fulness is attributed, ideally at least, to the Church too. It too is 'the fulness of him that filleth all in all.' To St. Paul's mind there is one true human life in which men are one with one another because they are at one with G.o.d. That true human life is Christ's life, which He once lived on earth, and which He is at present living in the glory of G.o.d, and which is fulfilled with all the completeness of the divine life itself. But that true human life is also shared by each and every member of His Church, without exception, without reference to race or learning, or wealth, or s.e.x, or age.

I have said that this is ideally the case. This identification of Christ with the Church, that is to say, is not yet fully realized. The Church is not yet glorified, not yet morally perfected nor {58} full grown in the divine attributes. Its particular members may be living deceitful and dishonourable lives. This is to say in other words that G.o.d's work in 'redemption of his own possession,' His acquirement of a people to Himself, is not yet complete. The purchase-money is paid, but it has not yet taken full effect. But redemption is an accomplished fact in the sense that all the conditions of the final success are already there. The ideal may be freely realized in every Christian because he has received the 'earnest' or pledge of the Spirit, the pledge, that is, of all that is to be accomplished in him.

And this Spirit was received by each Christian at a particular and a.s.signable moment. We know what stress St. Paul laid at Ephesus on proper Christian baptism and the laying on of hands which followed it[7]. By baptism men were spoken of as incorporated into Christ.

With the laying on of hands was a.s.sociated the bestowal of the Spirit.

Henceforth a Christian had no need to ask for the Spirit as if He were not already bestowed upon him; he had only to bring into practical use spiritual forces and powers which the divine bounty had already put at his disposal.

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If we compare this set of ideas with those that have been current in our popular theology, we shall find that the main difference lies in this, that here the stress is laid on the work of Christ _in_ man by His Spirit, while the theology which has been popular among us has laid the stress rather on the 'vicarious' work of Christ outside us and _for_ us, by making a propitiation for our sins. Now in fact this latter doctrine is an unmistakable part of St. Paul's teaching in this epistle and elsewhere. And all the mistakes to which it has led are due to its not having been kept in proper relation to the set of ideas which I have just been endeavouring to expound. 'Christ for us,' the sacrifice of propitiation has been separated from 'Christ in us,' our new life; whereas really the sacrifice was but a necessary removal of an obstacle, preliminary to the new life.

It was a necessary preliminary that Christ should put us on a fresh basis, should enable us to break from our past and make a fresh start in the divine acceptance. This He did by making atonement for our sins, offering as a propitiatory sacrifice His life, even to the shedding of His blood, that the Father might be enabled to forgive our sins. This transaction is always {60} represented in the New Testament as being the act of the Father as well as of the Son, for the divine persons are not separable--neither an act by which the Son forces the unwilling hand of the Father, nor an act in which the Father lays an undeserved burden upon an unwilling Son--and the idea of propitiation seems to St. Paul, as indeed it has seemed to men generally, a thoroughly natural idea. Only in one place does he make any suggestion as to why such a preliminary sacrifice of propitiation was necessary.

There[8] he seems to find the moral necessity for it in the fact that through long ages G.o.d's 'forbearance' had left men to work through their own resources and so to find out their need of Him. 'He suffered all nations to walk in their own ways.' He 'winked at' or 'overlooked times of ignorance.' He 'pa.s.sed over sins[9].' This was part of His educative process. One result of it, however, was a lowering of the moral ideas entertained of the divine character. Thus G.o.d's righteousness, which means holiness and compa.s.sion combined, needed to be declared especially at that crisis of the divine dealings when G.o.d was coming out towards {61} men, whom He had educated by His seeming absence to feel their need of Him, with the offer of His love. The free bounty of His mercy must not be misunderstood as if it were indifference or laxity about moral wickedness. Thus the proclamation of His compa.s.sion must be a.s.sociated with something which would make unmistakable the severity of His holiness and His moral claim. This twofold end is what Christ accomplishes. Thus if He is the revealer of the compa.s.sion of the Father, He also vindicates the divine character by a great act of moral reparation, made in man's name and on man's behalf, to the divine holiness which our sins have ignored and outraged. This great act of reparation is consummated in the bloodshedding of the Christ. The sacrifice of consummate obedience is carried to its extreme point and accepted in its perfection. G.o.d in Christ receives from man, and that publicly, a perfect reparation: an acknowledgement without fault or drawback: a perfect sacrifice. Now G.o.d can forgive the sins of men freely and without moral risk, if they come to Him in the name of Christ. To come to G.o.d in the name of Christ means, of course, to come in conscious moral identification of one's self with Christ, with {62} His Spirit and His motives. The faith which simply accepts the bounty of forgiveness through Christ's sacrifice, must pa.s.s necessarily into the faith which corresponds obediently with the divine love. Thus the purpose of the atonement is never expressed as being that we should be let off punishment, or simply that we should be forgiven, but rather that, being forgiven, we should be united to Christ in His life[10]. The propitiation which Christ offered is only the removal of a preliminary obstacle to our fellowship with Him in the life of G.o.d. The work of Christ 'for us'

has no meaning or efficacy till it has begun to pa.s.s into the work of Christ 'in us' by His a.s.similating Spirit. It was only as baptized into Christ and sharing His Spirit that Christians could accept the forgiveness of their sins through the shedding of Christ's blood. The sacrament of new life is also the sacrament of absolution, and the washing away of sins. Nothing in fact can be plainer in this Epistle to the Ephesians than that 'the redemption through Christ's blood, even the forgiveness of trespa.s.ses[11]' was only a preliminary removal of {63} obstacles to that fellowship with G.o.d in Christ by His Spirit which is the secret of the Church.

ii.

[Sidenote: _Predestination_]

St. Paul's mind is full of the idea of predestination. He delights to contemplate the eternal purpose of G.o.d as lying behind what seems to us the painfully slow method by which divine results are actually won.

What age-long processes have been necessary both among the Jews and among the Gentiles before this young church, this divine society of man with G.o.d has become possible! What slow working through 'times of ignorance,' what infinite delay in the divine forbearance--as we should now say, what age-long processes of developement! But St. Paul is quite certain that the result is no afterthought, no accident of the moment; but that from end to end of the universe there reaches a method of the divine wisdom, and that here in the catholic church it has arrived at an issue. 'G.o.d chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish (as spotless victims) before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself.' 'Fore-ordained {64} to be a heritage according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will.' So he a.s.severates and repeats and insists.

There are, we may say, two ideas commonly a.s.sociated with predestination which St. Paul gives us no warrant for a.s.serting. The one is the predestination of individuals to eternal loss or destruction. That G.o.d should create any single individual with the intention of eternally destroying or punishing him is a horrible idea, and, without prying into mysteries, we may say boldly that there is no warrant for it in the Old or New Testaments. G.o.d is indeed represented as predestinating men, like Jacob and Esau, to a higher or lower place in the order of the world or the church. There are 'vessels' made by the divine potter to purposes of 'honour,' and 'vessels' made to purposes (comparatively) of 'dishonour[12]': there are more honourable and less honourable limbs of the body[13]. But this does not prejudice the eternal prospects of those who in this world hold the less advantageous posts. With G.o.d is no respect of persons. Again G.o.d is represented as predestinating men to moral hardness of heart where such hardness is a judgement on previous wilfulness. Thus {65} men may be predestined to temporary rejection of G.o.d, as in St. Paul's mind the majority of the contemporary Jews were. That was their judgement, and their punishment[14]. It was however not G.o.d's first intention for them nor His last. Those chapters of St. Paul[15] which contain the most terrible things about the present reprobation of the Jews contain also the most emphatic repudiation of the idea that moral reprobation was G.o.d's first idea for them, or His last. 'The gifts and calling of G.o.d,' that is, His good gifts and calling, says St. Paul, speaking of the now 'reprobate' Jews, are 'without repentance[16].' G.o.d's present reprobation of them is only a process towards a fresh opportunity.

'G.o.d hath shut up all into disobedience that he might have mercy upon all[17].' Men may baffle the original divine purpose, and that, so far as their own blessedness is concerned, even finally: they may become finally 'reprobate': but the divine purpose for them at its root remains a purpose for good. 'G.o.d will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth[18].'

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And once again, the idea of a predestination for good, taking effect necessarily and irrespective of men's co-operation, is an idea which has been intruded unjustifiably into St. Paul's thought. It exalts his whole being to consider that he is co-operating with G.o.d, and that the conditions under which he lives represent a divine purpose with which he is called to work. It is this which makes him feel it is worth while working: it is this which nerves and sustains him in all sufferings, and enlarges his horizon in all restraints: but he never suggests that it does not lie within the mysterious power of his own will to withdraw himself from co-operation with G.o.d. It is at least conceivable to him that he should himself be rejected[19]. In that famous list of external forces which he feels are unable to tear him from the grasp of the divine love, his own will is not included[20], nor could be included without gross inconsistency.

Beyond all question there is here one problem which remains for all time unsolved and insoluble--the relation of divine fore-knowledge[21]

{67} to human freedom. If we men are free to choose, how can it be, or can it really be the case at all, that G.o.d knows beforehand actually how each individual will behave in each particular case? This is a problem which we cannot fathom any more than we can fathom any of the problems which require for their solution an experience of what an absolute and eternal consciousness can mean. But the problem belongs to metaphysics. It inheres in the idea of eternity and G.o.d. The Bible neither creates it nor solves it. We may say it does not touch it.

Certainly when St. Paul dwells upon the thought of divine predestination he dwells upon it in order to emphasize that, through all the vicissitudes of the world's history, a divine purpose runs; and especially that G.o.d works out His universal purposes through specially selected agents 'his elect,' on whom His choice rests for special ends in accordance with an eternal design and intention. And the sense of co-operating with an eternal purpose of G.o.d inspires and strengthens him. For G.o.d will not drop His work by the way. Whom He did foreknow or mark out beforehand for His divine purposes, them He also foreordained or predestinated to sonship, and in due time called into the number {68} of His elect, and justified them, that is, pardoned their sins and gave them a new standing-ground in Christ, and glorified or will glorify them by the gradual operation of His grace[22]. The steps or moments of the divine action recognized in the Epistle to the Romans are practically the same as those alluded to in the Epistle to the Ephesians. There also is the eternal choice, and the predestination to sonship, and at a particular time the call into the Church, and the justification or remission of sins through the blood of Christ, and the gradual promotion through sanctification to glory. And the moral fruit of contemplating G.o.d's eternal purpose for His elect, and the stages of His work upon them, is to be cheerful confidence of a right sort. G.o.d will not drop them by the way, nor the work which they are 'called' to accomplish. 'G.o.d who hath begun a good work will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ[23].' Wherever St. Paul recognizes a movement towards good in the single soul or in the world, he knows that it is no accidental or pa.s.sing phase: it has its roots in the eternal will, and unless we resist it in wilful obstinacy, the eternal will shall at last {69} carry it on to perfection. 'There shall never be one lost good.'

It is not out of place to notice in this connexion how closely akin is St. Paul's thought to the modern philosophy of evolution. Only to St.

Paul the slow process of cosmic or human evolution is in no kind of opposition to the idea of divine design.

iii.

[Sidenote: _The elect_]

This predestinated body, the Church, is what in another word St. Paul calls the 'elect' or 'chosen.' The idea of election has had a very false turn given to it, partly through mistakes which have been already alluded to, partly because the idea of election has been separated from another idea with which in the Bible it is most closely a.s.sociated, the idea of a universal purpose to which the elect minister. No thought can be more prominent in the Old Testament than the thought that some men out of mult.i.tudes have been chosen by G.o.d to be in a special relation of intimacy with Him. 'You only have I known, O Israel, of all the families of the earth.' But this election to special knowledge of G.o.d, and special spiritual opportunity, {70} carries with it a corresponding responsibility. It is no piece of favouritism on G.o.d's part. The greater our opportunity the more is required of us. 'You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities[24].' The fact is that the principle of inequality in capacity and opportunity runs through the whole world both in individuals and in societies. A great genius or a great nation has special privileges and opportunities, but also, in the sight of G.o.d who judges men according to their opportunities, special responsibilities. But also (and this is by far the most important point) the special vocation of every elect individual or body is for the sake of others[25]. It is G.o.d's method to work through the few upon the many. That is the law of ministry which binds all the world of strong and weak, of rich and poor, of learned and ignorant, into one. Thus Abraham had been chosen alone, but it was that, through his seed, all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Israel was exclusively the people of G.o.d, but it was in order that all nations should learn from them at last the word of G.o.d. The apostles were {71} the first 'elect' in Christ with a little Jewish company. 'We'--so St.

Paul speaks of the Jewish Christians--'we who had before hoped in Christ.' But it was to show the way to all the Gentiles ('ye also, who have heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation,') who were also to const.i.tute 'G.o.d's own possession' and His 'heritage.' The purpose to be realized is a universal one: it is the re-union of man with man, as such, by being all together reunited to G.o.d in one body.

And this idea is to have application even beyond the bounds of humanity. Unity is the principle of all things as G.o.d created the world. 'In Christ,' St. Paul writes to the Colossians, 'all things consist' or 'hold together in one system[26].' It is only sin, whether in man or in the dimly-known spiritual world which lies beyond, which has spoiled this unity, and in separating the creatures from G.o.d has separated them from one another. And the Church of the reconciliation is G.o.d's elect body to represent a divine purpose of restoration far wider than itself--extending in fact to all creation. It is the divine purpose, with a view to 'a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up' or 'bring together again in unity' all things in {72} Christ; the things in the heaven, the dim spiritual forces of which we have only glimpses, and the things upon the earth which we know so much better.