The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians Part 2

grim prophets of man's brutal and murderous pa.s.sions, bear witness to a war in nature that goes back far towards the foundation of the world.

And this rent and discord in the frame of things it was His part to reconcile "in whom and for whom all things were created." This universal deliverance, it seems, is dependent upon ours. "The creation itself lifts up its head, and is looking out for the revelation of the sons of G.o.d" (Rom. viii. 19). In founding the world, foreseeing its bondage to corruption, G.o.d prepared through His elect sons in Christ a deliverance the glory of which will make its sufferings to seem but a light thing.

"In thee," said G.o.d to Abraham, "shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed": so in the final "adoption,--to wit, the redemption of our body" (Rom. viii. 23), all creatures shall exult; and our mother earth, still travailing in pain with us, will remember her anguish no more.

The Divine election of men in Christ is further defined in the words of verse 5: "Having in love predestined us," and "according to the good pleasure of His will." _Election_ is selection; it is the antecedent in the mind of G.o.d in Christ of the preference which Christ showed when He said to His disciples, "I have chosen you out of the world." It is, moreover, a _fore-ordination in love_: an expression which indicates on the one hand the disposition in G.o.d that prompted and sustains His choice, and on the other the determination of the almighty Will whereby the all-wise Choice is put into operation and takes effect. In this pre-ordaining control of human history G.o.d "determined the fore-appointed seasons and the bounds of human habitation" (Acts xvii.

26). The Divine prescience--that "depth of the wisdom and knowledge of G.o.d"--as well as His absolute righteousness, forbids the treasonable thought of anything arbitrary or unfair cleaving to this pre-determination--anything that should override our free-will and make our responsibility an illusion. "Whom He did _foreknow_, He also did predestinate" (Rom. viii. 29). He foresees everything, and allows for everything.

The consistence of foreknowledge with free-will is an enigma which the apostle did not attempt to solve. His reply to all questions touching the justice of G.o.d's administration in the elections of grace--questions painfully felt and keenly agitated then as they are now, and that pressed upon himself in the case of his Jewish kindred with a cruel force (Rom. ix. 3)--his answer to his own heart, and to us, lies in the last words of verse 5: "according to the good pleasure of His will." It is what Jesus said concerning the strange preferences of Divine grace: "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight." What pleases Him can only be wise and right. What pleases Him, must content us.

Impatience is unbelief. Let us wait to see the end of the Lord. In numberless instances--such as that of the choice between Jacob and Esau, and that of Paul and the believing remnant of Israel as against their nation--G.o.d's ways have justified themselves to after times; so they will universally. Our little spark of intelligence glances upon one spot in a boundless ocean, on the surface of immeasurable depths.

The purpose of this loving fore-ordination of believing men in Christ is twofold; it concerns at once their _character_ and their _state_: "He chose us out--that we should be holy and without blemish in His sight,"

and "unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ for Himself." These two purposes are one. G.o.d's sons must be holy; and holy men are His sons.

For this end "we" were elected of G.o.d in the beginning. Nay, with this end in view the world was founded and the human race came into being, to provide G.o.d with such sons[28] and that Christ might be "the firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. viii. 28-30).

"That we should be holy"--should be _saints_. This the readers are already: "To the saints" the apostle writes (ver. 1). They are men devoted to G.o.d by their own choice and will, meeting G.o.d's choice and will for them. Imperfect saints they may be, by no means as yet "without blemish"; but they are already, and abidingly, "sanctified in Christ Jesus" (1 Cor. i. 2) and "sealed" for G.o.d's possession "by the Holy Spirit" (vv. 13, 14). In this fact lies their hope of moral perfection and the impulse and power to attain it. Their task is to "perfect" their existing "holiness" (2 Cor. vii. 1), "cleansing themselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit." Let no Christian say, "I do not pretend to be a saint." This is to renounce your calling. You _are_ a saint if you are a true believer in Christ; and you are to be an unblemished saint.

Thus the Church is at last to be presented, and every man in his own order, "faultless before the presence of His glory, with exceeding joy."[29] G.o.d could not invite us in His grace to anything inferior. A blemished saint--a smeared picture, a flawed marble--this is not like His work; it is not like Himself. Such saintship cannot approve itself "before Him." He must carry out His ideal, must fashion the new man as he was created in Christ after His own faultless image, and make human holiness a transcript of the Divine (1 Peter i. 16).

Now, this Divine character is native to the sons of G.o.d. The ideal which G.o.d had for men was always the same. The father of the race was made in His image. In the Old Testament Israel receives the command: "You shall be holy, for I, Jehovah your G.o.d, am holy." But it was in Jesus Christ that the breadth of this command was disclosed, and the possibility of our personal obedience to it. The law of Christian sonship, manifest only in shadow in the Levitical sanct.i.ty, is now p.r.o.nounced by Jesus: "You shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Verses 4 and 5 are therefore strictly parallel: G.o.d elected us in Christ to be perfect saints; for He predestined us through Jesus Christ to be His sons.

Sonship to Himself is the Christian status, the rank and standing which G.o.d confers on those who believe in His Son; it accrues to them by the fact that they are in Christ.[30] It is defined by the term _adoption_, which St Paul employs in this sense in Romans viii. 15, 23, as well as in Galatians iv. 5. Adoption was a peculiar inst.i.tution of Roman law, familiar to Paul as a citizen of Rome; and it aptly describes to Gentile believers their relation to the family of G.o.d. "By adoption under the Roman law an entire stranger in blood became a member of the family into which he was adopted, exactly as if he had been born in it. He a.s.sumed the family name, partook in its system of sacrificial rites, and became, not on sufferance or at will, but to all intents and purposes a member of the house of his adopter.... This metaphor was St Paul's translation into the language of Gentile thought of Christ's great doctrine of the New Birth. He exchanges the physical metaphor of regeneration for the legal metaphor of adoption. The adopted becomes in the eye of the law a new creature. He was born again into a new family. By the aid of this figure the Gentile convert was enabled to realize in a vivid manner the fatherhood of G.o.d, the brotherhood of the faithful, the obliteration of past penalties, the right to the mystic inheritance. He was enabled to realize that upon this spiritual act 'Old things pa.s.sed away and all things became new.'"[31]

This exalted status belonged to men in the purpose of G.o.d from eternity; but as a matter of fact it was inst.i.tuted "through Jesus Christ," the historical Redeemer. Whether previously (Jewish) servants in G.o.d's house or (Gentile) aliens excluded from it (ii. 12), those who believed in Jesus as the Christ received a spirit of adoption and dared to call G.o.d _Father_! This unspeakable privilege had been preparing for them through the ages past in G.o.d's hidden wisdom. Throughout the wild course of human apostasy the Father looked forward to the time when He might again through Jesus Christ make men His sons; and His promises and preparations were directed to this one end. The predestination having such an end, how fitly it is said: "_in love_ having foreordained us."

Four times, in these three verses, with exulting emphasis, the apostle claims this distinction for "us." _Who_, then, are the objects of the primordial election of grace? Does St Paul use the p.r.o.noun distributively, thinking of individuals--you and me and so many others, the personal recipients of saving grace? or does he mean the Church, as that is collectively the family of G.o.d and the object of His loving ordination? In this epistle, the latter is surely the thought in the apostle's mind.[32] As Hofmann says: "The body of Christians is the object of this choice, not as composed of a certain number of individuals--a sum of 'the elect' opposed to a sum of the non-elect--but as the Church taken out of and separated from the world."

On the other hand, we may not widen the p.r.o.noun further; we cannot allow that the sonship here signified is man's natural relation to G.o.d, that to which he was born by creation. This robs the word "adoption" of its distinctive force. The sonship in question, while grounded "in Christ"

from eternity, is conferred "through" the incarnate and crucified "Jesus Christ"; it redounds "to the praise of the glory of His _grace_." Now, grace is G.o.d's redeeming love toward sinners. G.o.d's purpose of grace toward mankind, embedded, as one may say, in creation, is realized in the body of redeemed men. But this community, we rejoice to believe, is vastly larger than the visible aggregate of Churches; for how many who knew not His name, have yet walked in the true light which lighteth every man.

There lies in the words "in Christ" a principle of exclusion, as well as of wide inclusion. Men cannot be in Christ against their will, who persistently put Him, His gospel and His laws, away from them. When we close with Christ by faith, we begin to enter into the purpose of our being. We find the place prepared for us before the foundation of the world in the kingdom of Divine love. We live henceforth "to the praise of the glory of His grace!"

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Ch. ii. 7, iii. 5, 21; Col. i. 26.

[27] Vv. 13, 14; Rom. viii. 2-6, 16; 1 Cor. ii. 12; Gal v. 16, 22-25.

[28] e?? a?t??, _for Him_; not a?t?, _to Him_.

[29] Ch. v. 25-27; Col. i. 27-29; Jude 24.

[30] On _sonship_, see Chapters XV.-XVII. and XIX. in _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor's Bible).

[31] From a valuable and suggestive paper by W. E. Ball, LL.D., on "St Paul and the Roman Law," in the _Contemporary Review_, August 1891.

[32] See vv. 12, 13, where Jews and Gentiles, collectively, are distinguished; and ch. ii. 11, 12, iii. 2-6, 21, iv. 4, 5, v. 25-27.

CHAPTER III.

_THE BESTOWMENT OF GRACE._

"Which grace He bestowed on us, in the Beloved One: In whom we have the redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespa.s.ses, According to the riches of His grace: Which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, making known to us the mystery of His will, According to His good pleasure: Which He purposed in Him, for dispensation in the fulness of the times, _Purposing_ to gather into one body all things in the Christ-- The things belonging to the heavens, and the things upon the earth--yea, in Him, In whom also we received our heritage, as we had been foreordained, According to purpose of Him who worketh all things According to the counsel of His will,-- That we might be to the praise of His glory."[33]

EPH. i. 6_b_-12_a_.

The blessedness of men in Christ is not matter of purpose only, but of reality and experience. With the word _grace_ in the middle of the sixth verse the apostle's thought begins a new movement. We have seen Grace hidden in the depths of eternity in the form of sovereign and fatherly election, lodging its purpose in the foundation of the world. From those mysterious depths we turn to the living world in our own breast. There, too, Grace dwells and reigns: "which grace He imparted to us, in the Beloved,--in whom we have redemption through His blood."

The leading word of this clause we can only paraphrase; it has no English equivalent. St Paul perforce turns _grace_ into a verb; this verb occurs in the New Testament but once besides,--in Luke i. 28, the angel's salutation to Mary: "Hail thou that art highly favoured (made-an-object-of-grace)."[34] If we could employ our verb _to grace_ in a sense corresponding to that of the noun _grace_ in the apostle's dialect and nearly the opposite of _to disgrace_, then _graced_ would signify what he means here, viz., _treated with grace_, made its recipients.

G.o.d "showed us grace _in the Beloved_"--or, to render the phrase with full emphasis, "in that Beloved One"--even as He "chose us in Him before the world's foundation" and "in love predestined us for adoption." The grace is conveyed upon the basis of our relationship to Christ: on that ground it was conceived in the counsels of eternity. The Voice from heaven which said at the baptism of Jesus and again at the transfiguration, "This is my Son, the Beloved," uttered G.o.d's eternal thought regarding Christ. And that regard of G.o.d toward the Son of His love is the fountain of His love and grace to men.

Christ is the Beloved not of the Father alone, but of the created universe. All that know the Lord Jesus must needs love and adore Him--unless their hearts are eaten out by sin. Not to love Him is to be anathema. "If any man love me," said Jesus, "my Father will love him."

Nothing so much pleases G.o.d and brings us into fellowship with G.o.d so direct and joyous, as our love to Jesus Christ. About this at least heaven and earth may agree, that He is the altogether lovely and love-worthy. Agreement in this will bring about agreement in everything.

The love of Christ will tune the jarring universe into harmony.

1. Of grace bestowed, the first manifestation, in the experience of Paul and his readers, was _the forgiveness of their trespa.s.ses_ (comp. ii.

13-18). This is "the redemption" that "we _have_." And it comes "through His _blood_." The epistles to the Galatians and Romans[35] expound at length the apostle's doctrine touching the remission of sin and the relation of Christ's death to human transgression. To _redemption_ we shall return in considering verse 14, where the word is used, as again in chapter iv. 30, in its further application.

In Romans iii. 22-26 "the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" is declared to be the means by which we are acquitted in the judgement of G.o.d from the guilt of past transgressions. And this redemption consists in the "propitiatory sacrifice" which Christ offered in shedding His blood--a sacrifice wherein we partic.i.p.ate "through faith." The language of this verse contains by implication all that is affirmed there. In this connexion, and according to the full intent of the word, redemption is _release by ransom_. The life-blood of Jesus Christ was the _price_ that He paid in order to secure our lawful release from the penalties entailed by our trespa.s.ses.[36] This Jesus Christ implied beforehand, when He spoke of "giving His life a ransom for many"; and when He said, in handing to His disciples the cup of the Last Supper: "This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." Using another synonymous term, St Paul tells us that "Christ _bought us out of_ the curse of the law"; and he bases on this expression a strong practical appeal: "You are not your own, for you were bought with a price."[37] These sayings, and others like them, point unmistakably to the fact that our trespa.s.ses as men against G.o.d's inflexible law, apart from Christ's intervention, must have issued in our eternal ruin. By His death on the cross Christ has made such amends to the law, that the awful sentence is averted, and our complete release from the power of sin is rendered possible.

On rising from the dead our Saviour commissioned the apostles to "proclaim in His name repentance and remission of sins to all nations"

(Luke xxiv. 47). It was thus He proposed to save the world. This proclamation is the "good news" of the gospel. The announcement meets the first need of the serious and awakened human spirit. It answers the question which arises in the breast of every man who thinks earnestly about his personal relations to G.o.d and to the laws of his being. We cannot wonder that St Paul sets the remission of sins first amongst the bestowments of G.o.d's grace, and makes it the foundation of all the rest.

Does it occupy the like position in modern Christian teaching? Do we realize the criminality of sin, the fearfulness of G.o.d's displeasure, the infinite worth of His forgiveness and the obligations under which it places us, as St Paul and his converts did? or even as our fathers did a few generations ago? "It is my impression," writes Dr. R. W. Dale,[38]

"that both religious people and those who do not profess to be religious must be conscious that G.o.d's Forgiveness, if they ever think of it at all, does not create any deep and strong emotion.... The difference between the way in which we think of the Divine Forgiveness and the way in which it was thought of by David and Isaiah, by Christ Himself, by Peter, Paul, and John; by the saints of all Christian Churches in past times, both in the East and in the West; ... by the leaders of the Evangelical Revival in the last century--the difference, I say, between the way in which the Forgiveness of sins was thought of by them, and the way in which we think of it, is very startling. The difference is so great, it affects so seriously the whole system of the religious thought and life, that we may be said to have invented a new religion.... The difference between our religion and the religion of other times is this--that we do not believe that G.o.d has any strong resentment against sin or against those who are guilty of sin. And since His resentment has gone, His mercy has gone with it. We have not a G.o.d who is more merciful than the G.o.d of our fathers, but a G.o.d who is less righteous; and a G.o.d who is not righteous, a G.o.d who does not glow with fiery indignation against sin, is no G.o.d at all."

These are solemn words, to be deeply pondered. They come from one of the most sagacious observers and justly revered teachers of our time. We have made a real advance in breadth and human sympathy; and there has been throughout our Churches a genuine and much needed awakening of philanthropic activity. But if we are _departing from the living G.o.d_, what will this avail us? If "the redemption through Christ's blood, the forgiveness of our trespa.s.ses," is no longer to us the momentous and glorious fact that it was to the apostles, then it is time to ask whether our G.o.d is in truth the same as theirs, whether He is still the G.o.d and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ--whether we are not, haply, fabricating for ourselves another gospel. Without a piercing sense of the shame and ruin involved in human sin, we shall not put its remission where St Paul does, at the foundation of G.o.d's benefits to men. Without this sentiment, we can only wonder at the pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude with which he receives the atonement and measures by its completeness the riches of G.o.d's grace.

II. Along with this chief blessing of forgiveness, there came another to the apostolic Church. With the heart the mind, with the conscience the intellect was quickened and endowed: "which [grace] He shed abundantly upon us _in all wisdom and intelligence_."

This sequel to verse 7 is somewhat of a surprise. The reader is apt to slur over verse 8, half sensible of some jar and incongruity between it and the context. It scarcely occurs to us to a.s.sociate wisdom and good sense with the pardon of sin, as kindred bestowments of the gospel.

Minds of the evangelical order are often supposed, indeed, to be wanting in intellectual excellencies and indifferent to their value. Is it not true that "not many wise after the flesh were called"? Do we not glory above everything in preaching a "simple gospel"?

But there is another side to all this. "Christ was made of G.o.d unto us _wisdom_." This attribute the apostle even sets first when he writes to the wisdom-seeking Greeks, mocked by their worn-out and confused philosophies (1 Cor. i. 30). To a close observer of the primitive Christian societies few things must have been more noticeable than the powerful mental stimulus imparted by the new faith. These epistles are a witness to the fact. That such letters could be addressed to communities gathered mainly from the lower ranks of society--consisting of slaves, common artizans, poor women--shows that the moral regeneration effected in St Paul's converts was accompanied by an extraordinary excitement and activity of thought. In this the apostle recognised the work of the Holy Spirit, a mark of G.o.d's special favour and blessing. "I give thanks always for you," he writes to the Corinthians, "for the grace of G.o.d that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched by Him, in all word and all knowledge." The leaders of the apostolic Church were the profoundest thinkers of their day; though at the time the world held them for babblers, because their dialect was not of its schools. They drew from stores of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ, which none of the princes of this world knew.

Of such wisdom our epistle is full, and G.o.d "has made it to abound" to the readers in these inspired pages. Paul's "understanding in the mystery of Christ" was always deepening. In his lonely prison musings the length and breadth of the Divine counsels are disclosed to him as never before. He sees the course of the ages and the universe of being illuminated by the light of the knowledge of Christ. And what he sees, all men are to see through him (iii. 9). Blessed be G.o.d who has given to His Church through His apostles, and through the great Christian teachers of every age, His precious gifts of wisdom and prudence, and made His grace richly to overflow from the heart into the mind and understanding of men!

This intellectual gift is twofold: _phronesis_ as well as _sophia_,--the bestowment not only of deep spiritual thought, but of moral sagacity, good sense and thoughtfulness. This is a choice _charism_--a mercy of the Lord. For want of it how sadly is the fruit of other graces spoilt and wasted. How brightly it shines in St Paul himself! What luminous and wholesome views of life, what a fund of practical sense there is in the teaching of this letter.

St Paul rejoices in these gifts of the understanding and claims them for the Church, having in his view the false knowledge, the "philosophy and vain deceit" that was making its appearance in the Asian Churches (Col.

ii. 4, 8, etc.). Our safeguard against intellectual perils lies not in ignorance, but in deeper heart-knowledge. When the grace that bestows redemption through Christ's blood adds its concomitant blessing of enlightenment, when it elevates the mind as it cleanses the heart, and abounds to us in all wisdom and prudence, the winds of doctrine and the waves of speculation blow and beat in vain; they can but bring health to a Church thus established in its faith.

Verses 9 and 10 describe the object of this new knowledge. They state the doctrine which gave this powerful mental impulse to the apostolic Church, disclosing to it a vast field of view, and supplying the most fertile and vigorous principles of moral wisdom. This impulse lay in the revelation of G.o.d's purpose to reconst.i.tute the universe in Christ. The declaration of "the mystery of His will" comes in at this point episodically, and by the way; and we reserve it for consideration to the end of the present Chapter.

But let us observe here that our wisdom and prudence lie in the knowledge of G.o.d's will. Truth is not to be found in any system of logical notions, in schemes and syntheses of the laws of nature or of thought. The human mind can never rest for long in abstractions. It will not accept for its basis of thought that which is less real and positive than itself. By its rational instincts it is compelled to seek a Reason and a Conscience at the centre of things,--a living G.o.d. It craves to know _the mystery of His will_.