The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians Part 26

"Having cleansed" is a phrase congruous with the figure of _the laver_, or _bath_ (comp. again t.i.t. iii. 5-7),--an image suggested, as one would think, by the bride-bath of the wedding-day in the ancient marriage customs. To this St Paul sees a counterpart in baptism, "the laver of water in the word." The cleansing and withal refreshing virtues of water made it an obvious symbol of regeneration. The emblem is twofold; it pictures at once the removal of guilt, and the imparting of new strength. One goes into the bath exhausted, and covered with dust; one comes out clean and fresh. Hence the baptism of the new believer in Christ had, in St Paul's view, a double aspect.[143] It looked backward to the old life of sin abandoned, and forward to the new life of holiness commenced. Thus it corresponded to the burial of Jesus (Rom.

vi. 4), the point of juncture between death and resurrection. Baptism served as the visible and formal expression of the soul's pa.s.sage through the gate of forgiveness into the sanctified life.

Along with this older teaching, a further and kindred significance is now given to the baptismal rite. It denotes the soul's affiance to its Lord. As the maiden's bath on the morning of her marriage betokened the purity in which she united herself to her betrothed, so the baptismal laver summons the Church to present herself "a chaste virgin unto Christ" (2 Cor. xi. 2). It signifies and seals her forgiveness, and pledges her in all her members to await the Bridegroom in garments unspotted from the world, with the pure and faithful love which will not be ashamed before Him at His coming. For this end Christ set up the baptismal laver.

Upon our construction of the text, the words "that He might sanctify her" express a purpose complete in itself--viz., that of the Church's consecration to G.o.d. Then follow the means to this sanctification: "having cleansed her in the water-bath through the word,"--which washing, at the same time, has its purpose on the part of the Lord who appointed it--viz., "that He might present her to Himself" a glorious and spotless Church.

At the end of verse 27 the sentence doubles back upon itself, in Paul's characteristic fashion. The twofold aim of Christ's sacrifice of love on the Church's behalf--viz., her consecration to G.o.d, and her spotless purity fitting her for perfect union with her Lord--is restated in the final clause, by way of contrast with the "spots and wrinkles and such-like things" that are washed out: "but that she may be holy and without blemish."

We pa.s.sed by, for the moment, the concluding phrase of verse 26, with which the apostle qualifies his reference to the baptismal cleansing; we are by no means forgetting it. "Having cleansed her," he writes, "by the laver of water _in_ [_the_] _word_." This adjunct is deeply significant.

It impresses on baptism a spiritual character, and excludes every theurgic conception of the rite, every doctrine that gives to it in the least degree a mechanical efficacy. "Without the word the sacrament could only influence man by magic, outward or inward" (Dorner). The "word" of which the apostle speaks,[144] is that of chapter vi. 17, "G.o.d's word--the Spirit's sword"; of Romans x. 8, "the word of faith which we proclaim"; of Luke i. 37, "the word from G.o.d which shall not be powerless"; of John xvii. 8, etc., "the words" that the Father had given to the Son, and the Son in turn to men. It is the Divine utterance, spoken and believed. In this accompaniment lies the power of the laver. The baptismal affusion is the outward seal of an inward transaction, that takes place in the spirit of believing utterers and hearers of the gospel word. This saving word receives in baptism its concrete expression; it becomes the _verb.u.m visibile_.

The "word" in question is defined in Romans x. 8, 9: "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that G.o.d raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved!" Let the hearer respond, "I do so confess and believe," on the strength of this confession he is baptized, and in the conjoint act of faith and baptism--in the _obedience_ of faith signified by his baptism--he is saved from his past sins and made an heir of life eternal. The rite is the simplest and most universal in application one can conceive. In heathen countries baptism recovers its primitive significance, as the decisive act of rupture with idolatry and acceptance of Christ as Lord, which in our usage is often overlaid and forgotten.

This interpretation gives a key to the obscure text of St Peter upon the same subject (1 Ep. iii. 21): "Baptism saves you--not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the questioning with regard to G.o.d of a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." The vital const.i.tuent of the rite is not the application of water to the body, but the challenge which the word makes therein to the conscience respecting the things of G.o.d,--the inquiry thus conveyed, to which a sincere believer in the resurrection of Christ makes joyful and ready answer. It is, in fine, _the appeal to faith_ contained in baptism that gives to the latter its saving worth.

The "word" that makes Christian ordinances valid, is not the past utterance of G.o.d alone, which may remain a dead letter, preserved in the oracles of Scripture or the official forms of the Church, but that word alive and active, re-spoken and transmitted from soul to soul by the breath of the Holy Spirit. Without this animating word of faith, baptism is but the pouring or sprinkling of so much water on the body; the Lord's Supper is only the consumption of so much bread and wine.

All the nations will at last, in obedience to Christ's command, be baptized into the thrice-holy Name; and the work of baptism will be complete. Then the Church will issue from her bath, cleansed more effectually than the old world that emerged with Noah from the deluge.

Every "spot and wrinkle" will pa.s.s from her face: the worldly pa.s.sions that stained her features, the fears and anxieties that knit her brow or furrowed her cheek, will vanish away. In her radiant beauty, in her chaste and spotless love, Christ will lead forth His Church before His Father and the holy angels, "as a bride adorned for her husband." From eternity He set His love upon her; on the cross He won her back from her infidelity at the price of His blood. Through the ages He has been wooing her to Himself, and schooling her in wise and manifold ways that she might be fit for her heavenly calling. Now the end of this long task of redemption has arrived. The message goes forth to Christ's friends in all the worlds: "Come, gather yourselves to the great supper of G.o.d!

The marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready!

He hath given her fine linen bright and pure, that she may array herself. Let us rejoice and exult, and give to Him the glory!" Through what cleansing fires, through what baptisms even of blood she has still to pa.s.s ere the consummation is reached, He only knows who loved her and gave Himself for her. He will spare to His Church nothing, either of bounty or of trial, that her perfection needs.

II. Concerning Christ's lordly _authority_ over His Church we have had occasion to speak already in other places. A word or two may be added here.

We acknowledge the Church to be "subject to Christ in everything." We proclaim ourselves, like the apostle, "slaves of Christ Jesus." But this subjection is too often a form rather than a fact. In protesting our independence of Popish and priestly lords of G.o.d's heritage, we are sometimes in danger of ignoring our dependence upon Him, and of dethroning, in effect, the one Lord Jesus Christ. Christian communities act and speak too much in the style of political republics. They a.s.sume the att.i.tude of self-directing and self-responsible bodies.

The Church is no democracy, any more than it is an aristocracy or a sacerdotal absolutism: it is a _Christocracy_. The people are not rulers in the house of G.o.d; they are the ruled, laity and ministers alike. "One is your Master, even the Christ; and all ye are brethren." We acknowledge this in theory; but our language and spirit would oftentimes be other than they are, if we were penetrated by the sense of the continual presence and majesty of the Lord Christ in our a.s.semblies.

Royalties and n.o.bilities, and the holders of popular power--all whose "names are named in this world," along with the princ.i.p.alities in heavenly places, when they come into the precincts of the Church must lay aside their robes and forget their t.i.tles, and speak humbly as in the Master's presence. What is it to the glorious Church of Jesus Christ that Lord So-and-so wears a coronet and owns half a county? or that Midas can fill her coffers, if he is pleased and humoured? or that this or that orator guides at his will the fierce democracy? He is no more than a man who will die, and appear before the judgement-seat of Christ.

The Church's protection from human tyranny, from schemes of ambition, from the intrusion of political methods and designs, lies in her sense of the splendour and reality of Christ's dominion, and of her own eternal life in Him.

III. We come now to the profound mystery disclosed, or half-disclosed at the end of this section, that of _the origination of the Church from Christ_, which accounts for His love to the Church and His authority over her. He nourishes and cherishes the Church, we are told in verses 29, 30, "because we are members of His body."

Now, this membership is, in its origin, as old as creation. G.o.d "chose us in Christ before the world's foundation" (i. 4). We were created in the Son of G.o.d's love, antecedently to our redemption by Him. Such is the teaching of this and the companion epistle (Col. i. 14-18). Christ recovers through the cross that which pertains inherently to Him, which belonged to Him by nature and is as a part of Himself. From this standpoint the connexion of verses 30 and 31 becomes intelligible.[145]

It is not, strictly speaking, "on account of this"; but "in correspondence with this"[146] says the apostle, suiting the original phrase to his purpose. The derivation of Eve from the body of Adam, as that is affirmed in the mysterious words of Genesis, is a.n.a.logous to the derivation of the Church from Christ. The latter relationship existed in its ideal, and as conceived in the purpose of G.o.d, prior to the appearance of the human race. In St Paul's theory, the origin of woman in man which forms the basis of marriage in Scripture, looked further back to the origin of humanity in Christ Himself.

The train of thought that the apostle resumes here he followed in 1 Corinthians xi. 3-12: "I would have you know that the head of every man is the Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is G.o.d.... Man is the image and glory of G.o.d: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man." So it is with Christ and His bride the Church.

"The LORD G.o.d caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof: and the rib which the LORD G.o.d had taken from the man, made He a woman, and brought her to the man. And the man said,

This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: She shall be called Woman [_Isshah_], because she was taken out of Man [_Ish_].

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: And they shall be one flesh" (Gen. ii. 21-24).

Thus the first father of our race prophesied, and sang his wedding song.

In some mystical, but real sense, marriage is a _reunion_, the reincorporation of what had been sundered. Seeking his other self, the complement of his nature, the man breaks the ties of birth and founds a new home. So the inspired author of the pa.s.sage in Genesis explains the origin of marriage, and the instinct which draws the bridegroom to his bride.

But our apostle sees within this declaration a deeper truth, kept secret from the foundation of the world. When he speaks of "this great _mystery_," he means thereby not marriage itself, but _the saying of Adam about it_. This text was a standing problem to the Jewish interpreters. "But for my part," says the apostle, "I refer it to Christ and to the Church." St Paul, who has so often before drawn the parallel between Adam and Christ, by the light of this a.n.a.logy perceives a new and rich meaning in the old dark sentence. It helps him to see how believers in Christ, forming collectively His body, are not only grafted into Him (as he puts it in the epistle to the Romans), but were derived from Him and formed in the very mould of His nature.

What is affirmed in Colossians i. 16, 17 concerning the universe in general, is true in its perfect degree of redeemed humanity: "_In Him_ were created all things," as well as "through Him and for Him." Eve was created in Adam; and Adam in Christ. We are "partakers of a Divine nature," by our spiritual origin in Him who is the image of G.o.d and the root of humanity. The union of the first human pair and every true marriage since, being in effect, as Adam puts it, a restoration and redintegration, symbolizes the fellowship of Christ with mankind. This intention was in the mind of G.o.d at the inst.i.tution of human life; it took expression in the prophetic words of the Book of Genesis, whose deeper sense St Paul is now able for the first time to unfold.

In our union through grace and faith with Christ crucified, we realize again the original design of our being. Christ has purchased by His blood no new or foreign bride, but her who was His from eternity,--the child who had wandered from the Father's house, the betrothed who had left her Lord and Spouse. In regard to this "mystery of our coherence in Christ," Richard Hooker says, in words that suggest many aspects of this doctrine: "The Church is in Christ, as Eve was in Adam. Yea, by grace we are every one of us in Christ and in His Church, as by nature we are in our first parents. G.o.d made Eve of the rib of Adam. And His Church He frameth out of the very flesh, the very wounded and bleeding side of the Son of man. His body crucified and His blood shed for the life of the world are the true elements of that heavenly being which maketh us such as Himself is of whom we come. For which cause the words of Adam may be fitly the words of Christ concerning His Church, 'flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones--a true native extract out of mine own body,' So that in Him, even according to His manhood, we according to our heavenly being are as branches in that root out of which they grow."[147]

FOOTNOTES:

[141] Compare pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.

[142] Heb. ii. 9-12, ix. 14, 15, x. 5-22, xiii. 12.

[143] See Rom. vi. 1-11; Col. ii. 11, 12; 1 Cor. x. 2, xii. 13.

[144] ?? ??at?. ????? is word as expressive of _thought_. ??a, the utterance of a living voice,--a _sentence_, _p.r.o.nouncement_, _message_; it is the Greek term employed in all the pa.s.sages here cited.

[145] The words "of His flesh and of His bones," following "members of His body" in the A.V., appear to be an ancient gloss adopted by the Greek copyists, which was suggested by Gen. ii. 23. They are unsuitable to the idea of a spiritual union, and interrupt rather than help the apostle's exposition.

[146] St Paul changes the ??e?e? t??t?? of the original to ??t? t??t??, which conveys the idea that marriage has its counterpart in the fact that we are members of Christ.

[147] _Ecclesiastical Polity_; v. 56 7.

CHAPTER XXVII.

_THE CHRISTIAN HOUSEHOLD._

"Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 'Honour thy father and mother,' which is a first commandment, _given_ in promise,--'that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.' And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord.

"Servants, be obedient to them that according to the flesh are your lords, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto the Christ; not in the way of eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as servants of Christ, doing the will of G.o.d from the soul; with good will doing service, as unto the Lord, and not unto men: knowing that whatsoever good thing each one doeth, the same shall he receive again from the Lord, whether _he be_ bond or free. And, ye lords, do the same things unto them, and forbear threatening: knowing that both their Lord and yours is in heaven, and there is no respect of persons with Him."--EPH. vi. 1-9.

The Christian family is the cradle and the fortress of the Christian faith. Here its virtues shine most brightly; and by this channel its influence spreads through society and the course of generations.

Marriage has been placed under the guardianship of G.o.d; it is made single, chaste and enduring, according to the law of creation and the pattern of Christ's union with His Church. With parents thus united, family honour is secure; and a basis is laid for reverence and discipline within the house.

I. Thus the apostle turns, in the opening words of chapter vi., from the husband and wife to the _children_ of the household. He addresses them as present in the a.s.sembly where his letter is read. St Paul accounted the children "holy," if but one parent belonged to the Church (1 Cor.

vii. 14). They were baptized, as we presume, with their fathers or mothers, and admitted, under due precautions,[148] to the fellowship of the Church so far as their age allowed. We cannot limit this exhortation to children of adult age. The "discipline and admonition of the Lord"

prescribed in verse 4, belong to children of tender years and under parental control.

_Obedience_ is the law of childhood. It is, in great part, the child's religion, to be practised "in the Lord." The reverence and love, full of a sweet mystery, which the Christian child feels towards its Saviour and heavenly King, add new sacredness to the claims of father and mother.

Jesus Christ, the Head over all things, is the orderer of the life of boys and girls. His love and His might guard the little one in the tendance of its parents. The wonderful love of parents to their offspring, and the awful authority with which they are invested, come from the source of human life in G.o.d.

The Latin _pietas_ impressed a religious character upon filial duty.

This word signified at once dutifulness towards the G.o.ds, and towards parents and kindred. In the strength of its family ties and its deep filial reverence lay the secret of the moral vigour and the unmatched discipline of the Roman commonwealth. The history of ancient Rome affords a splendid ill.u.s.tration of the fifth commandment.

_For this is right_, says the apostle, appealing to the instincts of natural religion. The child's conscience begins here. Filial obedience is the primary form of duty. The loyalties of after life take their colour from the lessons learnt at home, in the time of dawning reason and incipient will. Hard indeed is the evil to remove, where in the plastic years of childhood obedience has been a.s.sociated with base fear, with distrust or deceit, where it has grown sullen or obsequious in habit. From this root of bitterness there spring rank growths of hatred toward authority, jealousies, treacheries, and stubbornness. Obedience rendered "in the Lord" will be frank and willing, careful and constant, such as that which Jesus rendered to the Father.

St Paul reminds the children of the law of the Ten Words, taught to them in their earliest lessons from Scripture. He calls the command in question "_a first_ [or _chief_] commandment"--just as the great rule, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d," is _the_ first commandment; for this is no secondary rule or minor precept, but one on which the continuance of the Church and the welfare of society depend. It is a law fundamental as birth itself, written not on the statute-book alone but on the tables of the heart.

Moreover, it is a "command _in promise_"--that takes the form of promise, and holds out to obedience a bright future. The two predicates--"first" and "in promise"--as we take it, are distinct. To merge them into one blunts their meaning. This commandment is primary in its importance, and promissory in its import. The promise is quoted from Exodus xx. 12, as it stands in the Septuagint, where the Greek Christian children would read it. But the last clause is abbreviated; St Paul writes "upon _the earth_" in place of "the good land which the Lord thy G.o.d giveth thee." This blessing is the heritage of dutiful children in every land. Those who have watched the history of G.o.dly families of their acquaintance, will have seen the promise verified. The obedience of childhood and youth rendered to a wise Christian rule, forms in the young nature the habits of self-control and self-respect, of diligence and prompt.i.tude and faithfulness and kindliness of heart, which are the best guarantees for happiness and success in life. Through parental nurture "G.o.dliness" secures its "promise of the life that now is."