The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians Part 14

When, turning from Christ Himself in His own person and presence, before whom praise is speechless, we contemplate the manifestations of His love to mankind; when we consider that its fountain lies in the bosom of the Eternal; when we trace its footsteps prepared from the world's foundation, and perceive it choosing a people for its own and making its promises and raising up its heralds and forerunners; when at last it can hide and refrain itself no longer, but comes forth incarnate with lowly heart to take our infirmities and carry our diseases--yea, to put away our sin by the sacrifice of itself; when we behold that same Love which the hands of men had slain, setting up its cross for the sign of its covenant of peace with mankind, and enthroned in the majesty of heaven waiting even as a bridegroom joyously for the time when its ransomed shall be brought home, redeemed from iniquity and gathered unto itself from all the kindreds of the earth; and when we see how this mystery of love, in its sufferings and glories and its deep-laid plans for all the creatures, engages the ardent study and sympathy of the heavenly princ.i.p.alities,--in view of these things, who can but feel himself unworthy to know the love of Christ or to speak one word on its behalf?

Are we not ready to say like Peter, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord"?

This is a revelation that searches every man's soul who looks into it.

What is there so confounding to our reason and our human self-complacency as the discovery: "He loved me; He gave Himself up for me"--that He should do it, and should _need_ to do it! It was this that went to Saul's heart, that gave the mortal blow to the Jewish pride in him, strong as it was with the growth of centuries. The bearer of this grace and the amba.s.sador of Christ's love to the Gentiles, he feels himself to be "less than the least of all the saints." We carry in our hands to show to men a heavenly light, which throws our own unloveliness into dark relief.

II. The _love of Christ_ connects together, in the apostle's thoughts, _the greatness of the Church_ and _the fulness of G.o.d_. The two former conceptions--Christ's love and the Church's greatness--go together in our minds; knowing them, we are led onwards to the realization of the last.

The "fulness [_pleroma_] of G.o.d," and the "filling" (or "completing") of believers in Christ are ideas characteristic of this group of epistles.

The first of these expressions we have discussed already in its connexion with Christ, in chapter i. 23; we shall meet with it again as "the fulness of Christ" in chapter iv. 13. The phrase before us is, in substance, identical with that of the latter text. Christ contains the Divine plenitude; He embodies it in His person, and conveys it to the world by His redemption. St Paul desires for the Asian Christians that they may receive it; it is the ultimate mark of his prayer. He wishes them to gain the total sum of all that G.o.d communicates to men. He would have them "filled"--their nature made complete both in its individual and social relations, their powers of mind and heart brought into full exercise, their spiritual capacities developed and replenished--"filled unto all the plenitude of G.o.d."

This is no humanistic or humanitarian ideal. The mark of Christian completeness is on a different and higher plane than any that is set up by culture. The ideal Christian is a greater man than the ideal citizen or artist or philosopher: he may include within himself any or all of these characters, but he transcends them. He may conform to none of these types, and yet be a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Our race cannot rest in any perfection that stops short of "the fulness of G.o.d." When we have received all that G.o.d has to give in Christ, when the community of men is once more a family of G.o.d and the Father's will is done on earth as in heaven, then and not before will our life be complete. That is the goal of humanity; and the civilization that does not lead to it is a wandering from the way. "You are complete in Christ," says the apostle.

The progress of the ages since confirms the saying.

The apostle prays that his readers may know the love of Christ. This is a part of the Divine plenitude; nor is there anything in it deeper. But there is more to know. When he asks for "_all_ the fulness," he thinks of other elements of revelation in which we are to partic.i.p.ate. G.o.d's _wisdom_, His _truth_, His _righteousness_, along with His _love_ in its manifold forms,--all the qualities that, in one word, go to make up His _holiness_, are communicable and belong to the image stamped by the Holy Spirit on the nature of G.o.d's children. "Ye shall be holy, for I am holy" is G.o.d's standing command to His sons. So Jesus bids His disciples, "Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." St Paul's prayer "is but another way of expressing the continuous aspiration and effort after holiness which is enjoined in our Lord's precept"

(Lightfoot).

While the holiness of G.o.d gathers up into one stream of white radiance the revelation of His character, "the fulness of G.o.d" spreads it abroad in its many-coloured richness and variety. The term accords with the affluence of thought that marks this supplication. The might of the Spirit that strengthens weak human hearts, the greatness of the Christ who is the guest of our faith, His wide-spreading kingdom and the vast interests it embraces and His own love surpa.s.sing all,--these objects of the soul's desire issue from the fulness of G.o.d; and they lead us in pursuing them, like streams pouring into the ocean, back to the eternal G.o.dhead. The mediatorial kingdom has its end; Christ, when He has "put down all rule and authority," will at last "yield it up to His G.o.d and Father"; and "the Son Himself will be subjected to Him that put all things under Him, that G.o.d may be all in all" (1 Cor. xv. 24-28). This is the crown of the Redeemer's mission, the end which His love to the Father seeks. But when that end is reached, and the soul with immediate vision beholds the Father's glory, the Plenitude will be still new and unexhausted; the soul will then begin its deepest lessons in the knowledge of G.o.d which is life eternal.

St Paul is conscious of the extreme boldness of the prayer he has just uttered. But he protests that, instead of going beyond G.o.d's purposes, it falls short of them. This a.s.surance rises, in verses 20 and 21, into a rapture of praise. It is a cry of exultation, a true song of triumph, that breaks from the apostle's lips:--

"Now unto Him that is able to do above all things,-- Yea, far exceedingly beyond what we ask or think,-- According to the power that worketh in us: To Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus, Unto all generations of the age of the ages.--Amen!"

(vv. 20, 21).

Praise soars higher than prayer. When St Paul has reached in supplication the summit of his desires, he sees the plenitude of G.o.d's gifts still by a whole heaven outreaching him. But it is only from these mountain-tops hardly won in the exercise of prayer, in their still air and tranquil light, that the boundless realms of promise are visible.

G.o.d's giving surpa.s.ses immeasurably our thought and asking; but there must be the asking and the thinking for it to surpa.s.s. He puts always more into our hand and better things than we expected--when the expectant hand is reached out to Him.

Man's desires will never overtake G.o.d's bounty. Hearing the prayer just offered, unbelief will say: "You have asked too much. It is preposterous to expect that raw Gentile converts, scarcely raised above their heathen debas.e.m.e.nt, should enter into these exalted notions of yours about Christ and the Church and should be filled with the fulness of G.o.d!

Prayer must be rational and within the bounds of possibility, offered 'with the understanding' as well as 'with the spirit,' or it becomes mere extravagance."--The apostle gives a twofold answer to this kind of scepticism. He appeals to the Divine omnipotence. "With men," you say, "this is impossible." Humanly speaking, St Paul's Gentile disciples were incapable of any high spiritual culture; they were unpromising material, with "not many wise or many n.o.ble" amongst them, some of them before their conversion stained with infamous vices. Who is to make saints and G.o.dlike men out of such human refuse as this! But "with G.o.d," as Jesus said, "all things are possible." _Faex urbis, lux orbis_: "the sc.u.m of the city is made the light of the world!" The force at work upon the minds of these degraded pagans--slaves, thieves, prost.i.tutes, as some of them had been--is the love of Christ; it is the power of the Holy Ghost, the might of the strength which raises the dead to life eternal.

Let us therefore praise Him "who is able to do beyond all things"--beyond the best that His best servants have wished and striven for. Had men ever asked or thought of such a gift to the world as Jesus Christ? Had the prophets foreseen one tenth part of His greatness? In their boldest dreams did the disciples antic.i.p.ate the wonders of the day of Pentecost and of the later miracles of grace accomplished by their preaching? How far exceedingly had these things already surpa.s.sed the utmost that the Church asked or thought.

St Paul's reliance is not upon the "ability" alone, upon the abstract omnipotence of G.o.d. The force upon which he counts is lodged in the Church, and is in visible and constant operation. "According to the power _that worketh in us_" he expects these vast results to be achieved. This power is the same as that he invoked in verse 16,--the might of the Spirit of G.o.d in the inward man. It is the spring of courage and joy, the source of religious intelligence (i. 17, 18) and personal holiness, the very power that raised the dead body of Jesus to life, as it will raise hereafter all the holy dead to share His immortality (Rom. viii. 11). St Paul was conscious at this time in a remarkable degree of the supernatural energy working within his own mind. It is of this that he speaks to the Colossians, in language very similar to that of our text, when he says: "I toil hard, striving according to His energy that works in me in power." As he labours for the Church in writing that epistle, he is sensible of another Power acting within his spirit and distinguished from it by his consciousness, which tasks his faculties to the utmost to follow its dictates and express its meaning.

The presence of this mysterious power of the Spirit St Paul constantly felt when engaged in prayer,--"The Spirit helpeth our infirmities"; He "makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered" (Rom.

viii. 26, 27). On this point the experience of earnest Christian believers in all ages confirms that of St Paul. The sublime prayer to which he has just given utterance, is not his own. There is more in it than the mere Paul, a weak man, would have dared to ask or think. He who inspires the prayer will fulfil it. The Searcher of hearts knows better than the man who conceived it, infinitely better than we who are trying for our own help to interpret it, all that this intercession means. G.o.d will hear the pleading of His Spirit. The Power that prompts our prayers, and the Power that grants their answer are the same. The former is limited in its action by human infirmity; the latter knows no limit.

Its only measure is the fulness of G.o.d. To Him who works in us all good desires, and works far beyond us to bring our good desires to good effect, be the glory of all for ever!

In such measure, then, shall glory be to G.o.d "in the Church and in Christ Jesus." We see how the Church takes up the foreground of Paul's horizon. This epistle has taught us that G.o.d desires far more than our individual salvation, however complete that might be. Christ came not to save men only, but mankind. It is "in the Church" that G.o.d's consummate glory will be seen. No man in his fragmentary self-hood, no number of men in their separate capacity can conceivably attain "unto the fulness of G.o.d." It will need all humanity for that,--to reflect the full-orbed splendour of Divine revelation. Isolated and divided from each other, we render to G.o.d a dimmed and partial glory. "With one accord, with one mouth" we are called to "glorify the G.o.d and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Wherefore the apostle bids us "receive one another, as Christ also received us, to the glory of G.o.d" (Rom. xv. 6, 7).

The Church, being the creation of G.o.d's love in Christ and the receptacle of His communicative fulness, is the vessel formed for His praise. Her worship is a daily tribute to the Divine majesty and bounty.

The life of her people in the world, her witness for Christ and warfare against sin, her ceaseless ministries to human sorrow and need proclaim the Divine goodness, righteousness and truth. From the heavenly places where she dwells with Christ, she reflects the light of G.o.d's glory and makes it shine into the depths of evil at her feet. It was the Church's voice that St John heard in heaven as "the voice of a great mult.i.tude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our G.o.d, the Almighty reigneth!" Each soul new-born into the fellowship of faith adds another note to make up the mult.i.tudinous harmony of the Church's praise to G.o.d.

Nor does the Church by herself alone render this praise and honour unto G.o.d. The display of G.o.d's manifold wisdom in His dealings with mankind is drawing admiration, as St Paul believed, from the celestial spheres (ver. 10). The story of earth's redemption is the theme of endless songs in heaven. All creation joins in concert with the redeemed from the earth, and swells the chorus of their triumph. "I heard," says John in another place, "a voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures, and the elders, saying with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain! And every created thing which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all things that are in them, heard I saying:

Unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, Be blessing and honour and glory and dominion-- For ever and ever."

But the Church is the centre of this tribute of the universe to G.o.d and to His Christ.

_The Church and Christ Jesus_ are wedded in this doxology, even as they were in the foregoing supplication (vv. 18, 19). In the Bride and the Bridegroom, in the Redeemed and the Redeemer, in the many brethren and in the Firstborn is this perfect glory to be paid to G.o.d. "In the midst of the congregation" Christ the Son of man sings evermore the Father's praise (Heb. ii. 12). No glory is paid to G.o.d by men which is not due to Him; nor does He render to the Father any tribute in which His people are without a share. "The glory which thou hast given me I have given them," said Jesus to the Father praying for His Church, "that they may be one, even as we are one" (John xvii. 22). Our union with each other in Christ is perfected by our union with Him in realizing the Father's glory, in receiving and manifesting the fulness of G.o.d.

The duration of the glory to be paid to G.o.d by Christ and His Church is expressed by a c.u.mulative phrase in keeping with the tenor of the pa.s.sage to which it belongs: "unto all generations of the age of the ages." It reminds us of "the ages to come" through which the apostle in chapter ii. 7 foresaw that G.o.d's mercy to his own age would be celebrated. It carries our thoughts along the vista of the future, till time melts into eternity. When the apostle desires that G.o.d's praise may resound in the Church "unto _all generations_," he no longer supposes that the mystery of G.o.d may be finished speedily as men count years. The history of mankind stretches before his gaze into its dim futurity. The successive "generations" gather themselves into that one consummate "age" of the kingdom of G.o.d, the grand cycle in which all "the ages" are contained. With its completion time itself is no more. Its swelling current, laden with the tribute of all the worlds and all their histories, reaches the eternal ocean.

The end comes: G.o.d is all in all. At this furthest horizon of thought, Christ and His own are seen together rendering to G.o.d unceasing glory.

_THE EXHORTATION._

CHAPTER iv. 1--vi. 20.

_ON CHURCH LIFE._

CHAPTER iv. 1-16.

"It is good we return unto the ancient bond of unity in the Church of G.o.d, which was _one faith_, _one baptism_, and not _one hierarchy_, _one discipline_; and that we observe the league of Christians, as it was penned by our Saviour Christ, which is in substance of doctrine this: _He that is not with us is against us_; and in things indifferent and but of circ.u.mstance this: _He that is not against us is with us_."--LORD BACON: _Certain Considerations touching the better Pacification and Edification of the Church of England_, addressed to King James I.

CHAPTER XVI.

_THE FUNDAMENTAL UNITIES._

"I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

"There is one body, and one Spirit, Even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One G.o.d and Father of all, Who is over all, and through all, and in all."

EPH. iv. 1-6.

This Encyclical of St Paul to the Churches of Asia is the most formal and deliberate of his writings since the great epistle to the Romans. In entering upon its hortatory and practical part we are reminded of the transition from doctrine to exhortation in that epistle. Here as in Romans xi., xii. the apostle's theological teaching, brought with measured steps to its conclusion, has been followed by an act of worship expressing the profound and holy joy which fills his spirit as he views the purposes of G.o.d thus displayed in the gospel and the Church. In this exalted mood, as one sitting in heavenly places with Christ Jesus, St Paul surveys the condition of his readers and addresses himself to their duties and necessities. His homily, like his argument, is inwoven with the golden thread of devotion; and the smooth flow of the epistle breaks ever and again into the music of thanksgiving.

The apostle resumes the words of self-description dropped in chapter iii. 1. He appeals to his readers with pathetic dignity: "I the prisoner in the Lord"; and the expression gathers new solemnity from that which he has told us in the last chapter of the mystery and grandeur of his office. He is "_the_ prisoner"--the one whose bonds were known through all the Churches and manifest even in the imperial palace (Phil. i.

12-14). It was "in the Lord" that he wore this heavy chain, brought upon him in Christ's service and borne joyfully for His people's sake. He is now a martyr apostle. If his confinement detained him from his Gentile flock, at least it should add sacred force to the message he was able to convey. The tone of the apostle's letters at this time shows that he was sensible of the increased consideration which the afflictions of the last few years had given to him in the eyes of the Church. He is thankful for this influence, and makes good use of it.

His first and main appeal to the Asian brethren, as we should expect from the previous tenor of the letter, is an exhortation to _unity_. It is an obvious conclusion from the doctrine of the Church that he has taught them. The "oneness of the Spirit" which they must "earnestly endeavour to preserve," is the unity which their possession of the Holy Spirit of itself implies. "Having access in one Spirit to the Father,"

the antipathetic Jewish and Gentile factors of the Church are reconciled; "in the Spirit" they "are builded together for a habitation of G.o.d" (ii. 18-22). This unity when St Paul wrote was an actual and visible fact, despite the violent efforts of the Judaizers to destroy it. The "right hands of fellowship" exchanged between himself and James, Peter, and John at the conference of Jerusalem were a witness thereto (Gal. ii. 7-10). But it was a union that needed for its maintenance the efforts of right-thinking men and sons of peace everywhere. St Paul bids all who read his letter help to keep Christ's peace in the Churches.

The conditions for such pursuing and preserving of peace in the fold of Christ are briefly indicated in verses 1 and 2. There must be--

(1) _A due sense of the dignity of our Christian calling_: "Walk worthily," he says, "of the calling where with you were called." This exhortation, of course, includes much besides in its scope; it is the preface to all the exhortations of the three following chapters, the basis, in fact, of every worthy appeal to Christian men; but it bears in the first instance, and pointedly, upon Church unity. Levity of temper, low and poor conceptions of religion militate against the catholic spirit; they create an atmosphere rife with causes of contention.

"Whereas there is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal and walk as men?"